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And, of course, Laura had sisters and companionship of other children in her childhood and Rose did not. She had an extremely different experience growing up. And that was not the case of Rose and her mother or of the Wilders at all. It's not just - their harmony, this - the harmony against the elements, their harmony, their unity. Not only that, I think one of the great attractions of the "Little House" books for children is the incredible attunement of this family to each other. WERTHEIMER: And now the question is just - you know, it strikes those of us who are fans of the books as amazing because the family unit and the way they all felt about one another and they - the way they pull together and whatnot, that is just essential "Little House." Rose always felt bitterly that she had been -that she had a very unhappy childhood and that she had had no understanding at all from her mother and… THURMAN: Well, Rose was an only child and she was the only child of a mother who was so deprived and overworked herself that even if she had not been a rather puritanical, repressed woman, she would probably not have had much time or energy to lavish on Rose. What was the relationship like between these two? WERTHEIMER: Now, her daughter who was - whose name was Rose, Rose Wilder Lane, they appeared to - I mean, Rose Wilder Lane is believed by some students of the "Little House" books to have had quite a bit to do with writing, or at least, heavily editing the "Little House" books, editing the style of writing and so forth. And she really made a little writing career for herself long before the "Little House" books. And they wandered around for years until they settled in the Ozarks, on a farm called Rocky Ridge, where they really eked out a living, and where Rose grew up as really the child of refugees - laughed at by the girls in school for her bare feet and her shabby clothes.īut as they establish their prosperity in the town of Mansfield, Missouri, Laura began to contribute to a farm journal, and she began to write columns about her experience as a farmer and a farmer's wife. They lost their second child - it was a boy - their house burned down, they pretty much went bankrupt. Pretty much every disaster that could happen to them did. And it tells the story of the early years of her marriage to Almanzo Wilder, which were, if anything, more - much more harrowing than her parents' experience as pioneers on the frontier right after the Civil War. THURMAN: Well, the series really ends with the book that was not published in her lifetime that she kept in a drawer, and I think she was right about it.
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I guess that means that we know quite a bit about her from her - in her childhood years, but not what she was like as a grown-up. I think that while many of us are familiar with her name, Laura Ingalls Wilder, not very much - not many of us know very much about her that she didn't tell us in those books.
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WERTHEIMER: Well, thank you very much for coming. JUDITH THURMAN (Staff Writer, The New Yorker): Hello. Judith Thurman is in our New York bureau. Our e-mail address is And you can join the conversation at our Web site, go to our npr.org and click on TALK OF THE NATION. "Little House" fans, we want to hear what keeps you going back to this classic series. Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane were ambitious, politically savvy women and they're profiled by New Yorker contributor Judith Thurman. We've followed the struggles of the Ingalls family in the books and on the television show as they fought to hold onto their farm, struggled against monster blizzards, suffered through the occasional grasshopper plague and, of course, climbed in the covered wagon, set off for somewhere else to start over.īut if you think the Ingalls family is interesting, you should meet the Wilder women. Young Laura Ingalls of "Little House" fame. Now, for generations of girls, the expression pioneer girl conjures up a half-pint, pigtailed child, crossing the country in a covered wagon.