These Books Made Me
These Books Made Me
Little House on the Prairie Series
While Canada has Anne of Green Gables about a girl growing up in the late 19th century, America has the Little House on the Prairie series. This episode we look at 2 books from the Prairie series, Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie by author Laura Ingalls Wilder. These semi-autobiographical books follow Laura, her parents (Charles and Caroline) and her sisters (Mary and Carrie) from their quiet life in woods of Wisconsin to their perilous journey out to the prairie in the Kansas. Given the time period, Wilder and the Prairie series are not without controversy. We discuss women's roles during the time period, Charles's hasty and ill-advised decisions, and the overt racist depictions of Native Americans. We recognize these books' place in the children's literature canon but we also discuss what space they occupy in our present day.
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
Hi, I'm Maria. I'm Darlene. I'm Hannah. And I'm Heather. And this is our podcast, These Books Made Me. Today we're going to talk about The Little House on the Prairie series. Friendly warning as always, this podcast contains spoilers. If you don't yet know who turns a pig's bladder into a toy, proceed with caution. Content warning. While The Little House books remain... All right.
SPEAKER_02:So we'll go into our first few questions. What did this book mean to you? And was this everyone's first time reading? If not, how did this reread compare to your memories of reading it when you were younger?
SPEAKER_00:So this was not my first time reading it. My recollection was slim on these books. I think I read them when I was very, very small. But yeah, I mean, I remember liking them when I was little. just fine. But reading them as an adult, the first book is pretty charming and relatively inoffensive for the time period. It's an interesting look at living during that time. The second book has a lot of issues in the depictions of Native Americans. And so that was a little bit tougher of a reread and made me really think about how I would recommend it to people and what I would recommend it with. It was interesting to revisit them as an adult because they are you know, very important parts of the canon and they are still popular and people still come in to get them.
SPEAKER_04:This was my first time reading the series or the first and third book in the series. I remember the show mostly. My dad was a huge Western person. So we'd watch either, I can't remember if this came on first or Bonanza came on first, but they were always on TV. In Gunsmoke. In Gunsmoke. The Rifleman. But yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed the first book, getting to see how they would prepare for the winter, how they would freeze or smoke the meat. The second book was, I agree, very problematic. But I do think that these books are easy to read and follow for a younger reader. So I think... And on that end, it would still be a good recommendation to have for a child to visit and revisit. I think we talked about field trips as well. So they could always go hand in hand with other materials.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is my first time reading it. When I was younger, I was not a really big fan of historical fiction. So that would not be a way to really get me to read anything. I mean, reading them now, I can understand why we kind of still bring them up in conversation as like books that we recommend to kids. So it's nice to have read them now and understand kind of the pros and cons of why we still recommend them. But like Heather said before, I think for the first one, you know, you can probably just have a kid read that and be fine. But for the second one, there would have to be some conversations to be had in tandem with the book.
SPEAKER_03:This is not my first time reading the series. Although I honestly cannot remember if they were read to me or if I literally sat down and read them myself. These would have been either read to me or given to me by my mother. I am certain, made sure that my sister and I were exposed to these growing up. And I believe we both read the whole series or had them read to us. So certainly very different to read it as an adult where you're thinking more critically and have a lot more perspective on it than when you're a kid and you're just sort of absorbing the text as it's read to you or you read it. Certainly there's a lot more to think about and discuss. And I will say that, as you have already said, the second book that we read definitely didn't hold up. And we'll talk more about that in the discussion. Okay, so for our author bio, Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in Pepin, Wisconsin on February 7th, 1867 to Caroline Lake Quiner and Charles Philip Ingalls. She was the second of five children, although her younger brother, Charles Jr., would not live past the age of nine months. Pepin, Wisconsin was the setting for her first book in the Little House on the Prairie series, Little House in the Big Woods. The Ingalls family moved frequently throughout Laura's childhood from Wisconsin to Kansas in 1869, back to Wisconsin in 1870, to Minnesota, to Iowa, and then back to Minnesota. They would finally settle in De Smet, South Dakota in 1879. The third book in her series, the second that we are discussing today, and the origin of the series name, Little House on the Prairie, chronicles the Ingalls year in Kansas. They settled illegally in an area of southeastern Kansas that was reserved for the Osage Nation and moved back to Wisconsin after the threat of removal by federal troops was on the horizon. The Ingalls family attempted again to grow crops in Walnut Grove, Wisconsin, but experienced a catastrophic grasshopper plague and would eventually end up moving to Burr Oak, Iowa, where Charles Ingalls became part owner of a hotel. After returning to Walnut Grove, they moved, yet again, into the Dakota Territory and ended up in DeSmet. Laura's parents would remain in DeSmet, South Dakota for the remainder of their lives. In 1882, Laura earned a teaching certificate at the age of 15 and taught school for three years in order to help her family pay for tuition at a school for the blind for her sister Mary, who had lost her vision after an illness. At the age of 18 in 1885, Laura married 26-year-old Omanzo James Wilder after a two-year courtship. Laura quit her teaching job to help Omanzo farm their homestead. Their daughter Rose was born in 1886. After crop failures, illness, the death of their infant son, and several moves, Laura and Almanzo settled in Mansfield, Missouri, and established their final home at Rocky Ridge Farm. Laura Wilder began writing articles for local publications in 1911. Encouraged by her daughter Rose, who was also heavily involved in the shaping and editing of the Little House series, Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods in 1932 when she was 65 years old. The final book in the Little House on the Prairie series was published when Wilder was 76. She died at the age of 90. Her books have been enduringly popular, critically acclaimed, and have also left a complex and increasingly controversial legacy.
SPEAKER_00:All right. We're going to split up the plot summaries here and tackle them one book at a time. Little House in the Big Woods. Little House in the Big Woods was the first of multiple works of autobiographical fiction by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The book opens with vivid descriptions of place, a hallmark of all of Wilder's works. The Ingalls family, Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, and baby Carrie, are homesteaders in the woods surrounding Pepin, Wisconsin. The Family Lives in a Small Log Cabin and the girls play with their dolls in the attic. Dolls may be a generous description here, as Nettie, Mary's doll, is in fact a rag doll. However, Laura's doll, Susan, is a corncob. The snow comes and the pace of family life changes as everything moves indoors. Pa still goes out trapping, but most of Laura's days are spent inside helping Ma with turning and mending and preparing for Christmas with their cousins. Christmas brings antics in the snow with the cousins and true joy for Laura when she receives a little rag doll she names Charlotte. Towards the end of winter, a sugar snow comes, which sparks a communal gathering at the home of Grandpa and Grandma Ingalls. All of the neighbors come to help harvest sap and boil it down to make maple syrup. This is truly the social event of the year, and everyone puts on their best dresses. Ma gets out her fancy Delaine dress, and Mary and Laura wear their new dresses Ma sewed them from calico pock purchased in town. The aunts put on their finery and take pains with elaborate hairstyles and corseting each other within an inch of their lives. Pa fiddles and there's a fierce dance battle between Grandma and Uncle George. Grandma jigs Uncle George under the table and then goes right back to cooking. Spring brings the first trip to town for Laura. She's awed by the fabric in the store, the pebbles at the lake, and the fancy candy. Spring and summer bring cheese making, the joy of a bee tree, harvesting grain with rented machines, and a charming anecdote about why you shouldn't play tricks on people in which cousin Charlie has a wicker man moment with a swarm of angry yellow jackets. We leave the happy family cozy and warm in their little log house as the season changes to fall and another year begins. Okay. So I guess we will just jump into the discussion of book one here. So Little House in the Big Woods. And we are looking at basically a year in the life of the Ingalls family when Laura was quite small. I think she was only around four or five in this book.
SPEAKER_03:And it's worth noting that that's different from her biography. She would have been to when they moved away, I believe, if I remember correctly. She was born in 1867, and they moved, I believe, to Kansas in 1869, if I'm remembering correctly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and these are autobiographical fiction, so there are some liberties taken, but there are a lot of things that are drawn from real life, even some of the characters beyond her family are real people. So in this first book, they are, you know, homesteading, but they're more established where they are. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the sort of idea of these like rhythms of family life and how we feel that's depicted. And does it appeal? What, you know, how does this book work for us as just a work of literature, if we're considering it from that angle?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like I said, when I was younger, the idea of historic fiction was just not interesting to me because I was like, that was so long ago and I would have never wanted to live during that time. I think as an adult, I do have a bit more curiosity about it. And so I think that it helped me understand things a little bit better. Like it put into perspective just how much they had to work for pretty much everything that they ate. And yeah, like also... being in this modern time, you know how you like spend your time. And it was just really interesting to note like how they spent their time. Like Pa was basically out of the house like the whole day and he would be hunting and he would be, would he be farming in the first book? Yeah, they
SPEAKER_00:had plants down. I mean, they referred to bringing like the garden vegetables in and the onions and the potatoes. So like he definitely was farming. There's also the whole thing with the threshing and the the grain machines. So he was planting, I think, wheat, a lot of winter crops. He had potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, and then they had garden vegetables that they were harvesting throughout the summer. So definitely subsistence farming. And then maybe, maybe there were some like minor sales of their farmed goods, but I think it was primarily subsistence farming.
SPEAKER_03:But there was more hunting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think, yeah. really driving their income, you know, as he was selling his furs.
SPEAKER_03:And he did fishing. I think, yeah, they talk more about fishing in this book.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he did a little bit of fishing, got some white fish. They ate one and then salted and put the rest up for winter.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I mean, it's really interesting to kind of see sort of what a quiet family life would have been in that time period, the things that they would have been worried about versus not worried about. And I know there was like one time she does kind of like break down at least for her mom's schedule. It was like wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, turn on Thursday, clean on Friday, bake on Saturday, and then rest on Sunday. And yeah, those things seem pretty simple, but because back then There was obviously no modern technology, right? Washing would take a full day. Baking would take a full day. So I thought it was interesting in that sense to kind of, I guess, understand what family life was in the 1800s. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:just the amount of time it took to prepare food, to clean your clothing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it was really interesting for me, like just random things in it. It was like... At one point, I think it was during the winter, the mom, it said, like, I think Laura said that her mom liked everything neat and pretty. And so, therefore, she, like, dyed the butter. And I was like, that's such a random thing to do. Yeah, they would,
SPEAKER_04:like, boil the carrots and kind of, like, shred
SPEAKER_02:them to color the butter. And I was like, why would, like, why would you make butter pretty? Like, I guess I would just... To have a nice thing. I mean,
SPEAKER_00:I
SPEAKER_02:think...
SPEAKER_00:You know, she references that her mom, you know, the Delane dress she wears for the dance had been made by a dressmaker. So my impression was that her mom was maybe of more means when she grew up or, you know, they were more of a town family. So they were having some more purchased items. And so something like the butter may have reminded her of that. It also reminded me of when we did Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you know, Katie... Nolan gives the kids the coffee every day, even though Francie pours it down the drain. But she sits with the cup and she smells it. And having something a little fancy or something for them that they could waste made them feel less poor. So I think it's just, you know. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:I guess I was more so wondering where the concept that butter that was more yellow was prettier. I guess that was, yeah, I was like, where did that idea come from? Because it doesn't really explain those little things. I kind of just said like, these are the kind of things that they do, like you said, to kind of, yeah, to like have things be more pretty or like presentable or just nicer. I was curious.
SPEAKER_03:The energy that they put into like making a mantle for the little China sculpture. That doll sculpture. Was it a shepherdess? I can't remember. Yeah, the China doll. And he builds her a shelf for it. It really should have gotten broken at some point in the wagon, probably. It's a good point. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:I guess just the material goods in general, I think, are... You know, it's in sharp contrast because a lot of the things like the work, that is still a reality for many farming families. And you do have homesteaders now too. I mean, there are plenty of people that choose to live that way now. But even for, you know, career farmers and ranchers, the day-to-day doesn't look much different than this, except you're using more machines and then you hop on the internet when you get home to... buy your seeds or something rather than necessarily having to go to town. But it's a hard life. It still is. Manual labor is a hard life. And so I think one of the big contrasts to me was just how few material things they have because really everything you have to produce for yourself when you go to town... the money that you get from the things you produce for yourself is so limited that you're maybe just getting a little sugar. You're getting one candy. You're getting those things. And I thought it was interesting with the dolls. So we have Ma's China doll.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_00:then you have Mary's rag doll. And Laura didn't even have that. She had Susan, the corn cocktail. I still, my favorite line out of any of these books is it wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corn cob, which is one of those like sentences that probably shouldn't exist in English, but it's great that it does. But, you know, even like the idea that, that making a rag doll and having the items to make a rag doll was enough of a stretch that that was the Christmas gift is like, you know, There is not much stuff. You know, it's very functional focused. So I think that was maybe a good contrast for a kid reading today to examine how many material goods we have and how Americans in particular, I think, are extremely obsessed with stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Did they... Did we learn what happened to Susan when Laura upgraded to an actual rag doll at Christmas? I don't
SPEAKER_00:know. I would think she just kept her.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Or maybe it went down to... Or gave her to Carrie.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, I was going to say that like for Susan, I thought it was so hilarious that sometimes she would hold Nettie, which is Mary's doll, like rag doll. And then she would be like, but I'd only do it when Susan wasn't looking. Yeah. So cute.
SPEAKER_03:I'm imagining like a... story situation where the dolls are moving around when the Ingalls are out of their cabin.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like that's very relatable too. Like that is still like a thing. I mean when I was a kid it was like with my few little stuffed animals it would be like well if I sleep with this one tonight then I have to do a different one tomorrow so her feelings don't get hurt. It's like this is a pile of stuffing. But Yeah. When you're a kid, you do imbue them with those sort of like personalities and thoughts and
SPEAKER_03:yeah. I bet the ragdolls look down on Susan. Susan, you're just a corn cob. You can't sit with
SPEAKER_04:us. Well, I think that was also, it connects to nothing goes to waste. Like everything has to be used. And when we would visit my grandfather, who was also a farmer, it was the same thing. But for us, we weren't just eating like pigs it was goats so like here you see them excited to play with the bladder because it gets turned into a balloon that they can play around with with Jack so just everything gets preserved everything and just the preparation started so early to prepare for the winter the long winter at that so I thought that was also just interesting because while it shows them kind of holding on to like the smaller personal things it's just like just again, just how little they do have. And want to maintain. You can't go to Costco.
SPEAKER_02:You can't go to Costco. Yeah, I think this is one of those books that if my parents knew that this book existed and like what the themes were, they would have like wanted us to read it as kids because they were always like, you don't know what it was like in El Salvador. When we were growing up, like we would have to walk like miles to go to school. I walked four hours to get to my school. Yeah. And I'd be like, yeah, there's no way that I can like really put myself in that position. And like things are a little bit different, but I understand their like desire to still, even though you can't understand it, to like still let you know, like, hey, like have some sort of gratefulness for the life that you have.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And again, like some of this is not that far removed for folks still. And even, yeah, I mean, we're a generation removed from from it, basically. My grandfather built their house with his own two hands, and that
SPEAKER_02:was normal. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:that was insane. That was not a thing that was out of the ordinary, particularly. And I think about my cousins running the ranch and stuff, and it's just a tremendous amount of work. So you can't just go on vacation because who's taking care of the cattle when you're gone? So even though you have modern trappings and such, the work is still there. And you still are doing these things, planning around the season. So many of us are very far removed from that now, but someone's doing this. This is still someone's life. So I think it's probably good in that sense for... Kids to read it. And yeah, like you're saying, Darlene, just for the gratefulness of like, oh, it's nice that I have more than a corn cob for a doll. It's nice that I don't have to do backbreaking manual labor to wash my clothes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it put into perspective, talking about like modernization, there was like a tool or something that would, is it that they would Is it oat that it would like turn out or what
SPEAKER_00:was it? Oh, they were doing, so they were growing wheat. So they were, they were like threshing off the grain and then combining the rest for straw to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then they were. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. And then he. Because
SPEAKER_00:the machines came with the horses that go in the circle and it, it's like a combine thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because Paul was talking about how that would have been like weeks worse for them. And like they still wouldn't have gotten as much as they did with using that machine. Oh, that's
SPEAKER_03:when their family was there near the end.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, which we should speak about that because the Charlie incident. So I guess just for context, the first book in particular, but this comes up in the second book a little bit too, throughout the book are interspersed stories that Paul is telling, which are kind of like moral tales or they're like fun hijinks I got into as a child because I was naughty. And so like, you should learn this from it. But then we have the cousins come to help with the harvest and Charlie is old enough that they decide to take him out to help in the fields for the first time. He was apparently not really old enough because he couldn't handle it and he was bored and he acted like a little kid and got into mischief instead of helping. And one of the things he was doing was he was the boy who cried wolf, basically. So he would scream, they'd come running and then nothing was wrong and he thought it was very funny. And then they hear him screaming and they don't come anymore because he's tricked them a couple of times. But he has gotten himself into a disaster with a swarm of yellow jackets, which have stung him all over his entire body, which is really severe. You can die from that. And they present it in the book as like, well, he got what was coming to him and see, like, don't act like Charlie anymore. They treat it in such a like, you deserved this fashion that it's like a little bit jarring to read that story for me. Because again, this is like a near death experience for this child. Yeah. And they are, I told you, sewing him while he is like mummy wrapped with mud all over him just to take the like swelling down and to try to leach some of the toxins out of him. I don't know. That just felt so extreme to me. Because the other morality tales, they weren't great either. They usually involved somebody having to get a switch. But they weren't quite that extreme to where like, see if you misbehave, you die. Which I guess would have been a really valid concern then. There's no F-pins. So those stories were meant to be instructive to keep kids alive. But that to me was a really jarring thing. We wouldn't tell a child a story like that these days, I don't think, as a, ha ha, that was funny when Charlie almost died, make sure you listen to Pa. I'm a little surprised
SPEAKER_03:that it got to the point where he was still playing those games and hadn't been... switched or something, frankly. I think
SPEAKER_00:they just didn't have time because they were trying to like harvest stuff. And so they were kind of on the clock of like, we got to get this done before sun goes down. We got to get this done before it rains, I think was the real concern. So they just ignored him.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, perhaps that was what overrode the way that discipline, and granted, we only really see it in detail with one family towards one gender. But you do...
SPEAKER_00:There's a strictness. Paul does say something, right? That, like, they are bad parents, basically, because they haven't gotten... They haven't, like, whipped them. And that if he was the dad, he would have whipped them. And that wouldn't have happened.
SPEAKER_03:It is kind of puzzling that Charlie shows a level of what the book would call... What Laura would call naughtiness. That you would think would have gotten him, like, extremely... punished in like a corporeal sense by one of these two patriarchs. I don't, we don't know a lot about his actual parents in this, but it is kind of surprising that he was allowed to keep clowning around until the yellow jacket. Until he almost died. Nearly killed him. But that's
SPEAKER_04:what I also thought the whole Sabbath situation and the And especially Laura wanting to play was interesting because the story he shared was, I think, of his... The sled. The sled. And that they were in so much trouble because while that dad was reading, they decided to go play with the sled and they weren't supposed to because it's the day of rest. But then even after all that's said and done, he's just... Which, speaking of gender, what I thought was interesting was, like, in air quotes, like, the spanking that Laura gets for her birthday. Yeah, that was creepy. Yeah, and it's just, like, so that you can grow straight, I think is what he said. Yeah, that was weird. And I was like, that's definitely weird. So I thought that was... definitely interesting because like none of the girls, like she was acting petulant because she wanted to play, which understandably you've been cooped up for so long. And I think it was, that was the middle of winter. I can't remember, but yeah, no, I thought that was an interesting change of like, well, you're not going to get hit or But like you're going to get spanked because your birthday. But she said it didn't hurt. It was like spanking. It was love taps. But that's why I thought it was interesting compared to like. I thought she did get in trouble for. She did get switched for that. Yeah. She did get switched. That's where I got confused.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. She did get switched when she misbehaved. On Sunday. For wanting
SPEAKER_02:to play, yeah. Oh, okay. Or did she play or she
SPEAKER_04:was wanting to play? She was wanting to play and she was, I know she was getting loud about it. So dad brought her over and explained the story. But then that's where I got confused. I wasn't sure if he switched her before her birthday came up the next day or if it was the Spanx.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think he switched her and then told her the story as a like, this is what happened to me too. but that's why you got to behave kind of thing. Like he felt bad that he had to switch her. And so, yeah. I also wanted to ask you guys about feminism. You know, we look at all of our books through a feminist lens. What do we think about feminism in these books? I think it's complicated.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is complicated because I was... paying attention to Ma's character a lot to kind of get a sense of what her role was. And I mean, there was a lot of times that Pa at least would tell her things and they would discuss things. But at the end of the day, I think they were kind of like, not at the mercy of, but they would have to do kind of whatever Pa eventually decided they were going to do. But I mean, there were, you know, there were times where I think that she... kind of had the authority to do something, especially like in how she was like raising Laura and Mary and Carrie as well. I think
SPEAKER_03:the domains were very clearly established. There were lines drawn on where Carolyn had authority and where Charles had authority.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but she felt, I guess she also like felt safe enough or I don't know, like she also could defend her family if she needed to. Granted, that was kind of just like a circumstance kind of thing. Like if he wasn't around, like she had, like she could take the gun and like shoot whatever animal could potentially be endangering them. So yeah, little pockets of like authority, but not really. There's
SPEAKER_03:certainly a self-sufficiency there that comes from living independently and in the wilderness, basically,
SPEAKER_00:for
SPEAKER_03:both adults.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think there's some moments of, and we'll talk about this more with the second book, because I think that she tries to depict Pa as pretty progressive for the time on several things. And we see little glimpses of that in the switching incident about the Sundays. Laura was asking about the story that he told about the the brothers getting in trouble because they sledded. And Laura said, did little girls have to be as good as that? And Pa said, it was harder for little girls because they had to behave like little ladies all the time, not only on Sundays. Little girls could never slide downhill like boys. Little girls had to sit in the house and stitch on samplers. So I think there's sort of an interesting acknowledgement by Pa at times, at least, of... It would be tough to be a woman. And you see him really, I think, trying to make things nicer for Caroline at times. He wants to buy her the pretty fabric that maybe she would have had more of before she chose to marry him. There's a real sense of a matriarchal... gravitas to grandma you know she like wins the jigging contest and like people all kind of look to her for like how the evening's gonna go and stuff so like there's some yeah there's quiet nods to the power that women have but it's yeah at this time period certainly we had very strict lines of behavior and decorum and And then Laura, I think, is, you know, obviously presented in contrast to Mary, who is the more proper sister and has big, like, first child energy. And Laura is kind of the more rough and tumble tomboy girl who gets into trouble and, yeah, you know, plays with the dog on Sunday and gets spanked. It
SPEAKER_04:reminded me a lot of Little Women as I was reading and I was like, oh, wow, which is about the same as well. So I thought that was also interesting.
SPEAKER_00:With Meg and Joe and Mary and Laura. Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't remember enough about Carrie or Grace as they get older in the books, if they end up being like Bess and Amy at all, but it's interesting. Do we want to dive into book two? I think most of the things we want to talk about are going to need to reference both of them. Yeah. And our second book, Little House on the Prairie. So much for the cute and seemingly unproblematic little house in the big woods, folks. We're moving out to the prairie because Pa has decided the woods are getting too crowded. Word on the street is the government is displacing more native people in Kansas, so it's a land grab for the white settlers and Pa wants to be first. There's really so many things wrong with this plan and things go about exactly as you'd expect, which is not great. Let's start with the catalyst for this move, which is Pa hearing that the Washington politicians are opening Kansas to settlers. Well, they're not, but we're not going to find that out until the end of the book, but we're moving based on a rumor. The family packs up their covered wagon with all their belongings and leaves their cute little house and all their family support and connections behind because Pa has dreams or something and wants people to get off his lawn. The trip itself is treacherous and involves crossing a frozen river and fording a stream and the drowning death of the family dog, Jack. Psyche, Jack isn't actually dead. He comes back a chapter later only to have a fairly miserable life chained up later in the book because Pa messed up with this whole moving plan. The Ingalls eventually make it to Osage country in Kansas and settle in on the prairie. They spend a very hard year homesteading with a near-death experience for Ma when Pa drops a crossbeam on the house on her, a near-death experience for Mr. Scott, the neighbor, and Pa when they hit gas while digging the Ingalls a well, a near-death experience for bachelor neighbor Mr. Edgar, when he tries to play Santa Claus for the girls and a near-death experience for the whole family when they all come down with malaria because they don't understand mosquitoes. They are luckily saved when Jack the dog fetches Dr. Tan, a free black doctor who works in the area treating settlers and the Osage people. They also repeatedly have Osage visitors who take their cornmeal, though that really seems like pretty cheap rent for all the land that the Ingalls set up on that didn't belong to them. We get lots and lots of descriptions of the Osage people as scary savages Pa doesn't want to be forcibly removed, so they pack up their wagon the same day and leave the little house on the prairie behind. Okay, so I guess for discussion, now that we're diving into both books, maybe we could start with just comparing and contrasting the two books a little bit, because I do think they diverge in certain ways. I mean, there's a lot that's similar. Obviously, the voice is the same, and there's a lot of attention given to landscapes and day-to-day family life and descriptions of the home and, you know, everything that's happening to them, the food. But like Hannah said, I think the second book is much plottier.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. If you can call it that. Yeah, I think there's... It's bigger in a lot of ways. And I think it's worth noting also, although certainly there's many other differences, they are without their extended family in the second book. They don't have visits. They don't have their presence at holidays. There's no cousins. There's no grandparents. They don't have that, you know, jigging scene or the getting ready with the fancy hair preparation that Laura watches in Fascination and the... putting on the corsets, they are without their family in the prairie. So it's pretty much, there's a real sense of isolation in this, not flat, but seems flat when they're traveling at
SPEAKER_00:territory. Well, and danger's kind of ever-present there, and that's not really the case in the first book. You know, the danger is always... The hunting, yeah. Oh, animal, yeah. Don't get eaten by a bear, don't get eaten by a wolf. But it's controlled. They know where the animals live. They, you know, generally the animals stay away from the house. They've got a dog. And on the prairie, they don't even have a house. For like a good chunk of the book, there is no house. They are living out of a wagon. And then they are living out of the wagon converted into a tent, essentially. Which, as a parent, that's a lot. Like, that's a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I, as I read the second book, or at least the second book to us, which is Little House on the Prairie, I was just like, I didn't understand like why he was so concerned about moving out west. I think... I think there are nods to or like, you know, hints here and there that he was saying like he was getting neighbors that were getting closer to him. And I don't remember where I read it, but it said that I guess it was giving more context to it and just saying like, as more people populate an area, you know, not as many animals are out. So hunting was going to get more difficult. But sometimes I'd have to remind myself that it was a sort of autobiography because I'd be like, like, why is he doing this? Like, is it for the plot? Like, you know, and then I was like, no, like it just would have been in that time and thinking you had all these opportunities if you just went out West, you know, and he seemed to really relish in being like self-reliant and doing things. But I'm like, yeah, you just moved your family away from its community. Like, yeah. Was that really the best choice for your family?
SPEAKER_00:No, it clearly wasn't by the end of the book. I mean, I think Pa is sort of depicted as a romantic in a lot of ways. You know, he's softer and gentler in some ways than the other men. His music is really important to him. He seems to clearly love his wife and want to dote on her as much as he can within his means. And I sort of feel like this... get up and go. Because he seriously, the beginning of the first book, he's like, we gotta go tomorrow. You know, like, we gotta go. And poor Ma, it seems like she's just kind of like, really? Okay, I guess we're going. And, you know, I think that that romanticism is why a lot of people went West. They just, it's the grass is always greener mindset. So like, yeah, things are getting a little bit harder where you are, but you also have a support network. Like Hannah was saying with your family, you have neighbors to rely on. You have a town that is accessible when you need to get there. So just taking like everything and scrapping it and then going to a landscape you've never even been in which he doesn't really seem to entirely know how to navigate either is a choice but you know I guess it was this idea of we can put a claim on more land and we can be the first to be in this place and
SPEAKER_04:yeah which almost immediately puts the whole family in danger when they cross the river which thankfully we know Jack doesn't die but the fact that Also, that became a very personal journey and pretty traumatizing for Laura because she knew that Jack was tired and he probably wasn't going to make it across. So everyone thought that he had died. So I think for as much as he wanted to get away from neighbors, they ended up coming across so many close neighbors on the prairie where they moved. So much so that they ended up like with Edwards kind of trade work. So Edwards would help them build a house. And the Scotts. And the Scotts. So it was just... I mean, at the same time, you ended up finding a community there and relied on them to help you get your house built as well. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:it was odd too, because they're awfully close to, there's like an Osage settlement. Now, granted, they end up moving camp at one point, but like they are describing multiple neighbors closer than it seems in the big woods, because I think they said the Scots were only two miles away. Edwards was not much farther than that, I don't think.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they were able to see smoke from the camp where the Osage were without any trouble. So he didn't really get them to an area with fewer or
SPEAKER_04:neighbors. And it was the same with the hunting stuff. Like you have a lot more bachelors in that area who would probably go off to do more hunting as a sport than just hunting for food or for survival. I
SPEAKER_03:mean... I was, I probably need to do more research into this, but I found some hints when I was looking up information for the author bio that they were moving, you know, partially because Paul maybe had wanderlust, but also he, it sounds like the family was not doing well. They kept failing at what they were, at their farming. I mean, like that's, and maybe, you know, we're not seeing that always clearly depicted from Laura's childhood slightly romanticized perspective, but they're not successful in their ventures, so they keep trying to make things work. I think it's probably worth noting that she doesn't depict them helping run or own a hotel as they do at some point. That's not part of this life on the frontier, but at some point, Charles Ingalls is part owner of a hotel in one of their... one of their ventures. So they keep trying things. They move, they try something else, they move back, they try something else. They can't find something that sticks.
SPEAKER_00:No, Pa definitely is like one of those pipe dream guys. I think we probably all know someone like that that always has a new venture where it's like, Oh, I'm selling LuLaRoe now. Oh, I'm selling this. I'm juicing things. There's always another pipe dream where it's like, this is going to be the one.
SPEAKER_03:We're going to live like kings of this land.
SPEAKER_00:Oh,
SPEAKER_03:we got to leave in an hour. Pa
SPEAKER_00:makes a lot of bad calls in the second book. The first book, you know, not so much goes wrong in that. But again, they have this whole support network there. The second book is just bad decision after bad decision. And even like, I feel like the book tries to soften it sometimes, like it's an accident or, you know, it's really Mr. Scott's fault that he didn't put the candle down that day. Pa never would have done that. But it doesn't change that like Pa had talked to him about it and then still didn't check him on it, even though he knew it wasn't important. Like he has some very haphazard, decision making throughout the books where it's just kind of like you are consistently putting your family in danger for your dream because I don't get the impression that this is Caroline's dream like she's going along with it because she's married to him and that was the way of the world then but I don't think she wanted to leave the big woods. No, and she gets hurt
SPEAKER_04:with the house
SPEAKER_03:getting built as well. Because he drops the house on her. Like she's the witch in the woods. The
SPEAKER_00:witch in the woods. The witch in the east, bro. I know. And seriously, like her poor foot. Yeah. And it's like, it's not broken. But then when they describe it, it's like, no, that was broken. Yeah. That's
SPEAKER_03:not a sprain. Also, a sprain is sometimes worse to heal than a broken bone.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I mean, like, even more so just the fact, I mean, we'll talk about like Native American depiction but she was obviously afraid of Native Americans and it didn't seem like they really came across that many Native Americans where they were before I think they would come across some but not really to the extent that they did once they went to the prairie so like if nothing else she was definitely not in favor of moving closer to Native Americans for her own you know prejudice and whatever upbringing and whatever she's like her about them before or whatever her dealings were. Because we don't know, like, I don't think they really ever explained why she was so afraid.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, I think that the neighbor woman, Mrs. Scott, established that she lost family members in a massacre in Wisconsin or Minnesota. Minnesota. And so... Clearly, like she talks to Caroline about that and she's like, no, not in front of the kids. But it seems like there would have been word of mouth, at least, if not news from various places saying like, oh, all these settlers got killed. These people were killed in this place. On some level, I understand the fear. Now, it's their own fault because they showed up on someone else's land and built a house there. But at the time, I don't think that would have been the thought process. So from her end, she goes from her nice house in the woods where she isn't bothered by anybody and everyone in a five-mile radius is related to her. And then she is put in a place with no walls, no house.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:out in a field, no cover, with strangers, you know? And then we see consistently throughout the book, men just show up at the house and take the cornmeal, which again, seems like a small price to pay for stealing their land. But from her end, she has people she can't communicate with come into her home. She is a woman alone with small children because Pa's out doing his Pa things.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they come in and take her food. Like, if a strange man came into my house, that would be scary to me if I did not, you know, regardless of who he is. So I can see, like, why she was so scared. But Pa put them in that situation. It's like, why did you do that? Yeah, and I
SPEAKER_02:feel like she never really called them out on that. Like, she would say, like, a few things here and there that, like, obviously she was afraid. But it was never, like... you know I don't understand why we needed to do this I yeah and speaking I think we kind of mentioned this earlier in the episode or maybe it was in our first try of doing this episode but we did mention that like Laura is obviously like writing this as an adult and just kind of you know like mixing like her actual life and then you know some fictional situations but it's It does read like someone that maybe later on may have a better understanding of things because it did seem like they were trying really hard to make Paz seem progressive. But it was like contradictory, like within the same line, because it was like he's like, well, no, they're not bad people. Like we're essentially people are stealing their like we're stealing their land. It's that manifest destiny idea. But then he was like, but. But we deserve to steal their land. But, you know, like I heard that this, you know, they were going to allow this land to go to white settlers. So that's why I'm here. So it's like he's doing the very thing that he's understanding that they're upset about. And so it was just kind of like, how progressive could that really be? And for the
SPEAKER_00:time, it probably was progressive because he's at least not saying that. the only good Osage is a dead Osage, which is what the neighbor is saying. But again, it's that manifest destiny idea where it's like, well, if you're white, you're entitled to that. And that's too bad for them, isn't it? Like there's no, he admits it's too bad, but he's not going to stop doing what he's doing because he believes he's entitled to it. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Before. Sorry, go ahead. What I was just going to say before we move on, just very quickly, like, The first time we see Carolyn kind of lean into this romantic notion of the move is when she says she wants her clothesline. It's kind of like the first time where she's just like, kind of like, okay, we're going to move on. We're going to start this. But then Pa goes, well, I want a well. And I think that's like, I think they do the well before they even touch a clothesline. Which
SPEAKER_00:makes sense, though, because otherwise he has to leave to fetch water and he can't go ranging out because she can't get her own water because it's too far to bring it. But then the well is its own thing as well. Then the well is a near-death experience as well. So, yeah, it's just one after another. Speaking of near-death experiences, they all get malaria and almost die. I think... It is interesting to note that they are saved miraculously by the dog and a doctor. And the doctor was a real person, which was really interesting because I was reading it and I was like, a black doctor? This is out of left field. Like, what is he doing out on the plains? He was a real person. It did not seem that Dr. Tan actually had formal medical training, but he apparently was quite successful. He was a free black man. who learned essentially by doing in a lot of places and did in fact save a bunch of people from various catastrophes, illnesses, and was very well off. By the time he died, he owned like hundreds of acres and was quite successful, which was, I wish he had gotten more time in the book because that's actually a really interesting story compared to Pa who's just making mistake after mistake.
SPEAKER_03:With the state of medical training in the 1800s, it's possible that going to medical school would have not made a huge
SPEAKER_00:difference. This is true because he gave them quinine for the malaria. So he gave them proper medical care. He wasn't, you know, homeopathic-ing them back to help. I mean, if we can go back
SPEAKER_03:real briefly to what, you know, Pa's... moving them to Kansas onto the Osage Reserve Territory. Yeah, it's a really interesting contradiction. I was trying to find some quotes in the book, but states at one point, when white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west any time now. That's why we're here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now you understand. And then Laura asks, but Pa, I thought those Indians, won't it make the Indians mad to have to? And then he cuts her off and says, no more questions. And then cutting to the end where they learn they have to move. And I think he says this a couple of times, but I could only find... One, just now looking through the book, like there was, I think he read something in some newspaper or heard word
SPEAKER_00:of birth. He heard the Washington man were going to,
SPEAKER_03:yeah. He's talking to Mr. Scott and he's saying, no, Scott, I'll not stay here to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw. If some blasted politicians in Washington hadn't sent out word, it would be all right to settle here. I've never, I'd never have been three miles over the line into Indian territory. It's also like, just move three miles back. Like, what are you doing? So like, he made the decision to just move his family based on something tenuous. Like, was it a newspaper thing, or did he hear a rumor? Like, we don't fully know, but, like, he made this decision to go into what he calls Indian territory, like, because there was some decision that either he thought had been made or was going to be made. I mean, that's how they had been operating. It seems tenuous, even based on, like, how he
SPEAKER_00:describes it. No, I mean, to me, I read it as... He heard like word on the street, like probably when he went to town or something, somebody that read a paper, because we don't, I mean, I don't know if Pa can even read, was saying like, oh, those folks in Washington are talking about opening up the Kansas territory for settlers. And he was like, this is my time to shine. Like, I'll be the first there. So, I mean, I think he was trying to kind of jump. He was trying to get there first. So that they would arrive once the decision went into place, but they'd beat the other people that were looking to do the same thing. Because he says somewhere, I think early in the book, like they'll have their pick of land because they're going to be like the first ones, you know? So it was ill-advised from Jump, but so is like a lot of what he does. Like it felt very in keeping with everything else he does in the book where it was like, That was a weird decision to make, man. And I think
SPEAKER_03:historically, I think the territory did get opened up to white settlers. And I think the Osage did get moved like a couple of years later. So he, I mean, it sounds like politically there was stuff that happened to break the promises to the Osage and move them like a couple of years afterwards. I'd have to double check that. But so he wasn't. wrong, but it was illegal and they were told to skedaddle, I guess, at least at this time. But yeah, it was a wild decision to move your family illegally based on maybe rumors. Sorry, I didn't mean to be real. You're saying I just wanted to... No, no, I think that's important. Go back to that real quick. Where... Where are we gone to after that? I didn't want to derail
SPEAKER_00:your point after that. We should probably talk a little bit more about just the depiction of the Osage, especially in the book. There in the second book, I felt like there was a really weird dichotomy between... You have the neighbors depicting them very much as savages. Like every time they talk, it's like the only good Indian is a dead Indian. And there's like all of this, you know, fear that they're going to, you know, come and wreck everything. Basically, they're going to steal our stuff. They're going to, you know, pillage and all of this. And then on the other side of that, you have sort of a fetishization thing by Pa and Laura, I think, of the Osage. Pa's like real into this chief. And there are several times in the book where Laura describes the chief on horseback and like, you know, describes him in a very like regal sort of way. But that's not really good either, you know? And then that leads to her whole thing with the, when the Osage are traveling on horseback, There's a papoose on the side of the one woman's horse. And Laura's been wanting to see a papoose since they started. And she gets like really obsessed with this baby and throws a huge fit because she wants to keep the baby, which is weird. But there is just this weird like fetishization, I feel like, at points. And... I'm not really sure where that's coming from. I don't know if she was using that as kind of a softener to show like, well, I understand now this was bad what we did, but we did it in like the least bad way or something. Because she does, I think, try to depict it sympathetically towards Pa, even though all of this was a disaster. So I just wanted to talk about that a little bit because it wasn't... I don't know. I think in my memory, I was thinking it was just going to be this very like noble savage idea. But you really do have kind of two different sides of you have the noble savage idea and then you have just the like super racist savage idea. So you get both direct racism and more like subtle, nuanced racism. Racism.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Well, I can't remember if it's right before they move to the prairie or as they're moving. But Laura's thought is, if my dad knows how to handle wild animals, he knows how to handle wild men. So going from that to her being obsessed with that baby was also just pretty intense. Because even when they see... Two men go into the house where Ma is with baby Carrie. Like the first thing that thinks like mom's in danger, mom's going to die. So I think that also just kind of like just gets progressively a little fetishizing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think what you said about the sort of the fetishization and the dehumanizing portrayal. I mean, just the physical descriptions, you know, the hair, the skin, the eyes, the... I mean, they're described in a very, like, animalistic, alien way. Like, they're constantly referring to their black eyes. Yes. Like, they're described... I don't know. It's very... It's very strange the way they just describe their physical appearance and their mannerisms.
SPEAKER_00:Well, she kind of describes the way she writes the baby, not the way that Laura's talking about it, but the way she writes that scene. I feel like it very closely mimics the way that Pa talks about the fawn. I think that's in the first book towards the end where he doesn't shoot the deer because he's so enamored with... the scene and the fawn and the eyes of the animals, which is not a great parallel,
SPEAKER_04:right? I also wasn't sure if she was kind of also leaning into the idea of like a doll, which again is an object to play with. It's
SPEAKER_03:not a human. Yeah, there's no recognition of the fact that this is a baby that has a mother. And it's not something to be grasped and obtain like a doll like it's also i mean laura having a temper tantrum about something she can't have it's such i mean you you sort of remember how young she's supposed to be and she's almost portrayed like an older child for so at least her interior voice for a good deal of the series seems almost older than she's supposed to be but you get you get a sense of like A very young child having a temper tantrum about something extremely ridiculous for almost the first time. It's very jarring on multiple levels.
SPEAKER_02:We can go back, I guess, to that conversation. But I was thinking now that like Maria was talking about the doe. Or no, you were talking about the doe that he didn't kill.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I was wondering now about that scene because we were discussing how maybe things weren't looking so good in the big woods. Like because then like when he tells her that story at the very end, it's three separate animals or two separate animals that he just killed. decided not to kill yeah and this is a man that's like killed and hunted most of his life at this point so i wonder if that was just his romanticized way of like or you know just him creating a narrative around why he didn't bring any animals for them but it was actually because maybe he didn't actually find any
SPEAKER_00:You think it was a story so that they wouldn't be like, why didn't you bring any music to night pod? He just proactively lied about it. Now I'm thinking
SPEAKER_02:maybe that's what it
SPEAKER_00:was. Which is what he was
SPEAKER_04:saying, too. It's just like people are scaring off the animals.
SPEAKER_00:Right, and these weren't afraid of him, and he felt like he then couldn't do it for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_03:It's probably worth noting that there was a war that used to be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for children's literature that was changed in 2018 to the name Children's Literature Legacy Award due to concerns about racism in her books.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was a hot topic in libraries for a while. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The only other thing I wanted to touch on was just as a writer, Obviously, these books are a product of the time. And certainly, even as she was writing them, she was an old woman. It was not like we were in a better place at that point in terms of how the Osage would have been viewed or anything. You still had very much a white manifest destiny view of pioneer times. But I will say that I think she's charming as an author. Yeah. Her voice in this, I get why these have endured for kids. She remembers what it was like to be a kid pretty well. I think that she describes that well and her attention to detail. The books are warm and cozy and you feel very present in the spaces. She describes the scenes very well. So I think she certainly had talent. It's kind of... again, hard to fully recommend these books without like recommending some context for them. Again, I feel pretty safe with book one. I think that one is, you could give that to a family without much hesitation, but Little House on the Prairie, you would definitely want to be like, hey, it gets kind of rough in here with the way that people are depicted and might want to do some educating on this or read it together. And there's been a
SPEAKER_03:lot that's been written about her work and the decision to change the award and about her legacy in life and what was maybe changed. And it does present an idealized past. And also there were some things that were adjusted in her book. So at least there was a line about there was no one There was no people there, only Indians, I'm paraphrasing, but that was changed after some justifiable outcry about that. So, and we can link in the show notes or the blog to a lot of the very thoughtful discussion about the, you know, all of this so people can do more reading because it's more than we could really get
SPEAKER_00:into on our episode. And there, you know, there's also probably some value in reading, you know, that lens on things to really understand how things happened and why things were that way at the time. It's just always with kids. I think you want to make sure you're giving context to things because otherwise it's just like, oh yeah, that's how I'm supposed to think too. And no, you're not. Let's talk about why Laura felt like that. And let's talk about what those people felt like when this family just showed up and built a house on their land, which is bizarre. You have to imagine from their perspective, that's wild behavior from the Ingalls. So yeah, I don't know. I'm glad we read them for this. I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about them. I will mention, I guess, just for self-disclosure purposes, I did not have my kids read these books growing up. So take that as you will. But they weren't things that I felt like, oh, my kids need to read these. These are really important books. But they have endured.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, I think thinking about Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, Born 1867, so shortly after the end of the Civil War, and then she lived until 1957. So she saw a lot of things happen in the United States. It's a very interesting perspective.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you want to keep those perspectives, too, of like, there is like a tendency to kind of, I guess... like rewrite history and kind of make it seem more positive than it was or downplay some things. So you can point to something like this and just say, like, this is what it was and why the perceptions of people were what they were at that time. And then, like you said, you can always read stuff that gives it even more context from another lens, especially from like a Native American perspective.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so for our game segment, we are going to take a highly scientific playbuzz quiz and learn which Little House on the Prairie character we are. Our first question is, which activity is most appealing to you? Our choices are singing, reading, fishing, traveling, camping, or spa day. I don't know why spa day is an option. I'm scared of who traveling is.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I think I'm going to do traveling,
SPEAKER_03:though. You might as well add screen time, because spa day is about as much of an option as screen time here. I'm going to go with reading. I'm going to go with traveling. I'll go with camping. Okay, I'm having Monty Python vibes with now, because the next question is, what's your favorite color? Okay. Purple, blue, pink, yellow, green, or black.
SPEAKER_02:Where's orange? I'm going with green. I'm going to go with black.
SPEAKER_03:If these all go yellow. All right. The next question really should be, what is your quest? We're choosing a quote. The quotes are, she had not known before that it takes two to make a smile. I don't remember that. Well, maybe that must have been a book we didn't read. Well, we'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started. The candlelight was dim as though the darkness were trying to put it out. The stars and stripes were fluttering bright against the rain, clear blue overhead, and their minds were saying the words before their ears heard them. Snow, as fine and grainy as sugar, covered the windows in and sifted off to the floor and did not melt. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago. I
SPEAKER_04:like the candlelight was dim as though the darkness were trying to put it out. Yeah, I like that one too.
SPEAKER_02:I remember when I read this line, I thought it was really interesting. So I'll choose it, but it's, they could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago. I
SPEAKER_00:guess I'll go with the snow one. Our
SPEAKER_03:last
SPEAKER_00:question. Weird question.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Why is that a... Don't question the science, Heather. Which word speaks to you? DIY? Courage? Brilliant, vibrant, leisure, or wanderlust? Wanderlust.
SPEAKER_04:Just think of paw. Yeah. Which maybe that's why I shouldn't.
SPEAKER_00:I'm going to get paw now. But yeah, that's my favorite of those. Wanderlust is a great word. I'm going to go with the vibrant. I feel it a lot. I'll just put leisure. Oh.
SPEAKER_04:Oh.
UNKNOWN:Oh.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not paw. I'm not either. I thought it was going to be paw. Did you get Laura? I did. I came
SPEAKER_03:out as paw. Although I can't read the description because it instantly went to a quiz about will you be a lizard or will you be a cat?
SPEAKER_02:I was going to say mine jumped to witch pop tart. That's my
SPEAKER_03:next
SPEAKER_02:one
SPEAKER_00:too. But I scrolled up and there is a description for Laura. Let me see if the description came back. You're determined, as independent and inquisitive as you may be, you're connected to your roots Adventures bring you true love and new beginnings, yet nostalgia keeps you grounded. Wait, who are you again? Laura. For making fun of the science of this quiz, it actually did a better job than most of the quizzes that we have
SPEAKER_01:taken. All
SPEAKER_00:right. Well done, Harper Collins.
SPEAKER_02:Interestingly, I feel like me, you, and Maria all chose different things, but I got Laura too, and
SPEAKER_00:so did Maria. Well, this is like the rapper quiz from the last episode where we all chose different things, and then we all
SPEAKER_03:snooped. It's rigged. All three of you are Laura? All right. Well, I actually got the description to come back so I can read the description. I don't, I'm questioning this choice, but you're the fun loving caregiver of your family, but you certainly don't like to settle down. Wanderlust takes you to many places with family at your side. I did not choose Wanderlust. Why did it give me this choice?
SPEAKER_00:Should have just found out what pot tarts we are. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Darlene, I think you're the Bechdel. Yes. Sorry, I was actually starting the Pop-Tart quiz. Each episode, we ask whether our book passes the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test asks whether a work features two female characters who talk to each other about something that doesn't involve men or boys. So, does it pass?
SPEAKER_00:This one's tough. There's not a lot of talking... Between, I guess, Mrs. Scott and Ma talk a little bit about stuff, but I feel like a lot of that is about the massacre, which did involve men and boys. We don't really see the aunties talking while they get ready. I guess they talk about pulling the corsets tighter. I
SPEAKER_03:mean, I think Ma asked Laura to... crawl across the floor and bring Mary water while they're dying of malaria. Does that count?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, the bear. Oh, when the bear comes. I don't think they knew at the time. So yeah, Ma and Laura, when they encountered the bear that Ma thinks is the cow. Yes. There is a conversation where she tells her, like, go in the house kind of thing. And then when they're putting out the fire in the second one, when Pa is not there. Mm-hmm. She tells Laura she was like really brave and strong and stuff. It's minimal. There's not a lot of dialogue in these books. You instead get these like long stories from pop, but there's not a whole lot of... Yeah, I'm not real sure this passes the smell test on the Bechdel because... Really, everything is centered around the men. And I think that's a function of the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Women talk about corsets and getting their waist small.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So that a man can span their waist with their hands.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I guess it's maybe a technical pass. Yeah. Not in the spirit of it, certainly. Agree.
SPEAKER_04:Well, that's it for this episode of These Books Made Me. Join us next time when we'll discuss a book in which someone has a crow for a pet. If you think you know which book we're tackling next, follow us on Instagram, we're at thesebooksmademe, and drop a comment on our Guess Our Next Read post.