Little House in the Big Woods

In my one-woman survey of modern American literature, I have two primary goals that shape my reading selections. One is to read "classics" (as determined by myself, my impressions of pop culture, or top-100 lists) that I haven't read yet but still deem to be generally important in 20th century American life. The other is to revisit works I enjoyed as a child, books aimed at a younger audience, but ones that seem to have withstood the test of time. Again, I'm looking more to re-read books that I enjoyed immensely and are also considered classics; likewise, I'm not planning on re-reading The Babysitters' Club anytime soon.

On that note, I decided to go back through the Little House on the Prairie books, in order, starting with Little House in the Big Woods. I remember reading them in probably the 2nd or 3rd grade, and pretty much every woman to whom I've mentioned that I'm reading these books now has a similar memory. I was extremely interested to see how these characters hold up, now that I'm an adult.

And these books are wonderful. They are very well written, and it's astounding to think of the changes that Laura Ingalls Wilder experienced in her life. She was born February 7, 1867; she is five years old in the first book, so it takes place in around 1872. The first book spans a whole year, as she describes the passage of time in a little cabin in the Wisconsin woods. After she reached adulthood, she surely must have realized how her story represents many old ways that no longer exist, and for that I am grateful that she decided to tell her story.



I was struck by the many differences in their day-to-day life. Laura and her older sister Mary each had one dress. Pa worked all summer, threshing grain by hand so that they would be able to eat over the winter. In the fall, he would hunt and hunt and they would spend days salting and preserving the meat, again so they would be able to eat. She describes these events lovingly; in her childlike way, she never knows how relatively little they have, and it certainly never seems like it. Theirs was a house of love.

In winter, they can still have butter, although the milk from their cow isn't as good, and the butter is white instead of yellow (I never knew this before!), but "Ma liked to have pretty things," so Laura describes a process by which her mother steeps carrots and strains them through a cloth so that the butter will be dyed yellow. Laura, as narrator, explains these acts matter-of-factly. I was continually impressed by the length of time it took them to do many things, but it never seemed to bother them.

In one chapter, she helps her father make bullets by hand, and he shows the lengthy process by which he subsequently loads the gun. After the corn harvest, they make one kind of sweet corn by soaking and boiling it for three days. At the end of winter, when the maple syrup starts running in the trees, they have a grand celebration for the last tapping. The women boil the sap into syrup, and the syrup boils down into all manner of special sweets - sweets that they get to enjoy just once a year. The success of the maple sugar affects how much money they have to spend later in the year to buy "store sugar." Just think - even buying sugar in a store was unheard of. Also in this book, Laura sees a town for the first time, Pepin, Wisconsin. Located on the far western edge of Wisconsin, even today it has about 580 residents.

I could go on and on, relaying these facts I learned about her young life!

The other thing I enjoyed most about this book was the creation of the characters. In some other books I've read recently (Tropic of Cancer(1934) by Henry Miller comes to mind) where the narrator and author were one, all too often those roles get confused. It's easy for the author to lose track of the character and often haphazardly inject themselves at will.

Here, though, Laura-the-writer does a seamless job of creating Laura-the-character. Her five-year-old spirit shines through, and the characters of her sisters and parents, too, are deeply developed. It helps, certainly, that they are based on real people, but the trick with fiction is in crafting believable, endearing characters. The narration is clear, almost as a five-year-old would describe things; I can almost her the ring of her voice and the peal of their laughter. Even though the words are simple, I can feel the warmth of Pa's fiddle singing them to sleep on winter nights, all tucked together in their little cabin.