Pioneer Days: The Works of Laura Ingalls Wilder

[Deleted]

Don't forget the first time she had lemonade at Nellie's birthday party! It was years till she tasted it again at the 4th of July celebration.

Meanwhile, Almanzo was going to those yearly all-you-can-eat local fairs! No wonder she focused on the food memories when she wrote the story of his childhood.

[Deleted]

All I really remember about Farmer Boy are the descriptions of all the food they had all the time. It sounded like they had Thanksgiving every damn night.

[kateln]

Jul 3, 2018 21:46:40 GMT -4 @roisin54 said:

All I really remember about Farmer Boy are the descriptions of all the food they had all the time. It sounded like they had Thanksgiving every damn night.

When the parents go away and the kids make ice cream and eat watermelon they grew on the farm? Nine year old me was like "heaven".

[cracker18]

Jul 3, 2018 21:46:40 GMT -4 @roisin54 said:

All I really remember about Farmer Boy are the descriptions of all the food they had all the time. It sounded like they had Thanksgiving every damn night.

Same! They would have been considered pretty well-off farmers of that time I believe. I also remember the one daughter getting in trouble for sipping her tea out of a saucer all English style...it must have been Eliza. Her dad didn't appreciate her fancy airs.

[Auroranorth]

It was Eliza.

The Wilders were pretty well-off at the time. And remember that they did large amounts of manual labor and didn't have central heating, so while by our standards they ate a lot, they also burned huge amounts of calories doing their work and keeping warm.

[ladytrentham]

As an adult, I've always thought it was a bit mean that Laura and Rose gave Eliza Jane such a rough treatment in the books. After all, she'd stepped up and taken in Rose for high school in Louisiana. (Crowley, LA, I think.) There was speculation at the time that Laura and Almanzo couldn't handle Rose's tougher teenage years and that the lack of secondary education in Mansfield was good cover for getting Rose out of some trouble. So it seems to me that "lazy, lousy 'Liza Jane" was a poor return for the help.

Just my $0.02.

[chonies]

Has Eliza Jane ever gotten serious biographic or literary attention? It might be interesting parallel fiction.

[Auroranorth]

There's William T. Anderson's A Wilder in the West: The Story of Eliza Jane Wilder , which has good reviews on Amazon, and seems to be a lot less biased against EJ.

I wonder if part of it was that Laura resented EJ for her influence on young Rose, who moved away young and didn't come back for years. Also, EJ was a pretty independent person who went off and made her own way in the world, then still managed to marry and have a child (at age 44) who went on to produce grandchildren, where Laura also had one child quite young but no grandchildren. The books didn't start being published until after EJ had died.

And I didn't realize till just now that Laura actually left out two of Almanzo's siblings, his oldest sister, also named Laura, and his younger brother Perley who I did know about.

Blog post on Eliza Jane

There are a couple of comments by her descendants, and they're pretty interesting.

[ladytrentham]

I have just ordered A Wilder in the West from Amazon. I will report.

[Deleted]

Finished reading the book, Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town, a YA book about a family chosen to participate in a reality show set in 1861 where they have live completely authentically as that time in history.
Strictly speaking, Laura hadn't been born yet in 1861, so I thought that was a bit gimmicky. Still, it was more or less accurate, I think, and I enjoyed hearing the little details about how they cooked, cleaned, did laundry, bathed (or didn't!) and what they substituted for toilet paper.
It was a fun, easy read just for those details (the plot was a bit silly and predictable) so I do recommend it.