When I first read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I was an eight-year-old in second grade. However, I realize that I missed a lot of the more subtle themes in the novel because I originally looked at the book as merely the story of a little girl living in the middle of a forest with her family. For example, I wanted to be just like Laura and Ma when I was a little girl. But, now that I more fully understand the gender roles for both women and men in the nineteenth century, I am glad I was born over one hundred years after Laura ("Wilder" Encyclopædia). Although I no longer view Little House in the Big Woods as just the story of Laura growing up in the Big Woods, my love for the book remains and even grows stronger due to my additional knowledge.

Eight-years-old at the time of my first reading of Little House in the Big Woods, I was only two years older than the Laura in the story. In fact, she turns six in the chapter entitled "Sundays" (Wilder 97). The simplicity of Wilder's language is what I liked best about the books at the time (Moore 105). She frequently uses short, simple sentences, which are easy for a beginning reader to understand. For example, Wilder uses this sentence style to describe the Big Woods:

                              As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole
                              month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were
                              no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild
                              animals who had their homes among them. (1-2)

Like most children, I also enjoyed Wilder's generous use of detailed descriptions (Moore 105). In the aforementioned quote, she does not simply state that her family's house is secluded in the middle of a large forest. Instead, she shows her readers the isolation by describing what is both found and not found in the Big Woods. Because of Wilder's attention to detail, an element in the book I still appreciate today, I was able to more accurately envision the world in which she grew up.

As a child, however, I thought that every story Wilder told was entirely about her and her family. I never considered, as Rosa Ann Moore asserts in "Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books," that Wilder may have dramatized actual events in her life for the sake of fiction (111). For example, to describe the house before winter, Wilder writes: "The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic" (18). Although the little house may have been full of food for the winter, she may have embellished the actual degree of fullness for the sake of fiction. Now that I think about this point at an older age, I realize the exaggeration of describing a house as bursting with food. Additionally, I consider the possibility of not all of Wilder's stories happening to her and her family exactly as she stated. As Janet Spaeth declares in Laura Ingalls Wilder, Wilder adapts her personal stories to accurately portray the latter nineteenth century, especially pioneer America (1). I believe her dramatizing of the truth into fiction helps make the history of the times more accessible to children. Reading a book full of stories about a little girl growing up in the 1800s was definitely more interesting and more likely to happen when I was eight-years-old than was my even glancing at an academic history textbook.

Furthermore, according to Janet L. Spaeth in her doctorial dissertation, "Over the Horizon of the Years": Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House Books, Wilder's stated intention when she began writing Little House in the Big Woods was to preserve and pass on the Ingalls' family tales (7). When I first read the book, I had no idea that storytelling was a traditional family custom, a custom Wilder learned from her father as he told his daughters family stories during cold winter evenings (8). Little House in the Big Woods is not just a story about Wilder's early years in the Big Woods of Wisconsin but also an account of the importance of storytelling for nineteenth century families. For example, Pa narrates several tales throughout the book: a man with two cats, "Grandpa and the Panther," "Pa and the Voice in the Woods," "Grandpa's Sled and the Pig," "Pa and the Bear in the Way," and Charley and the yellow jacket nest. As Spaeth additionally writes in Laura Ingalls Wilder, Wilder establishes an "atmosphere of family" by including some of the tales Pa told his daughters (11-12). In fact, Wilder creates a strong sense of family love through her use of intimate stories (Sutherland 44). As Wilder writes in chapter one, Laura lay in bed listening to the wolves howl outside:

                                   It was a scary sound. Laura knew that wolves would eat little girls. But she
                              was safe inside the solid log walls. Her father's gun hung over the door and
                              good old Jack, the brindle bulldog, lay on guard before it. Her father would say,
                                   "Go to sleep, Laura. Jack won't let the wolves in." So Laura snuggled
                              under the covers of the trundle bed, close beside Mary, and went to sleep. (3)

Though she knows that wolves are dangerous, Laura is comforted by what her father tells her and feels safe (Sutherland 44).

As I already mentioned, reading a fictionalized account of a little girl close to my age growing up in the nineteenth century allowed me to envision myself living at the same time. After my first reading of Little House in the Big Woods, I wanted to be just like Laura and Ma. I wanted to learn how to churn butter, sew my own clothing, and braid straw into hats. I even bought the Little House cookbooks so I could learn to cook the same kind of food as Ma. In fact, I thought taking care of my own little house would be a lot of fun. However, after rereading the books as a twenty-year-old, I more fully understand just how much work women in the nineteenth century were expected to do and the duties that had as the family caregiver. Every day began with the same routine for the Ingallses women. Ma first prepared breakfast for her family, and Laura and Mary helped her wipe the dishes clean. Then, the girls made the beds, and Ma pushed the trundle bed under the big bed. After all that preliminary work, the daily household chores finally began (Wilder 27-29). Each day had its own specific work, which Ma kept track of in a saying that was familiar to most women of the time (Spaeth Horizon 24):

                              Wash on Monday,
                              Iron on Tuesday,
                              Mend on Wednesday,
                              Churn on Thursday,
                              Clean on Friday,
                              Bake on Saturday,
                              Rest on Sunday. (Wilder 29)

As Spaeth writes in "Over the Horizon of the Years", although the above system appears random, the routine was an effective way for nineteenth century women to manage all their household duties (24-25).

Furthermore, women were expected to work even during festivities. I was surprised that Grandma stayed in the kitchen to stir the heating maple syrup while the rest of her friends and family enjoyed themselves at the sugar snow dance. She even playfully scolds the men when they try to drag her from the kitchen to join the fun:

                                   Everybody was laughing, over by the kitchen door. They were dragging
                              Grandma in from the kitchen…Her cheeks were pink from laughing, and she
                              was shaking her head. The wooden spoon was in her hand.
                                   "I can't leave the syrup," she said. (Wilder 146-148)

But, as a woman, Grandma is in charge of making sure the syrup does not boil over or burn. She must ensure her family has enough maple sugar to last until the next sugar snow. Unlike today, women could not make a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up more sugar when needed. In fact, for the Ingallses women, the nearest store was an entire day's journey away. And, in contrast to the relatively inexpensive sugar available nowadays, store bought sugar was a costly luxury so women made their own sugar from maple sap out of convenience and practicality. Additionally, since preparing and cooking was seen as women's work, Grandma and her female relatives had no choice but to make the maple sugar or let their families go without. Wilder describes her grandmother diligently minding the maple syrup during the sugar snow dance:

                                   They all ate till they could hold no more, and then they began to dance
                              again. But Grandma watched the syrup in the kettle. Many times she took
                              a little of it out into a saucer, and stirred it round and round. Then she
                              shook her head and poured the syrup back into the kettle.
                                   The other room was loud and merry with the music of the fiddle and
                              the noise of the dancing.
                                   At last, as Grandma stirred, the syrup in the saucer turned into little
                              grains like sand, and Grandma called:
                                   "Quick girls! It's graining!"
                                   Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia and Ma left the dance and came running.
                              They set out pans, big pans and little pans, and as fast as Grandma filled
                              them with the syrup they set out more. They set the filled ones away, to
                              cool into maple sugar. (Wilder 152-153)

Of course, the Ingallses women cared about their families and thus performed the tedious task of preparing maple sugar, even amidst the festivities of the sugar snow dance.

However, this is not to say that men did not do their share of household labor. As an example from Little House in the Big Woods, before the sugar snow which held back the leafing of the trees and allowed men to collect the sap longer, Grandpa tended to the making of the maple sugar. He first had to collect the sap by drilling holes in and placing hollowed sticks into the trees. He then had to carry the heavy buckets of fresh sap to an iron kettle over a huge fire where Wilder retells through Pa the story of Grandpa boiling the sap until it grained into maple sugar:

                                   "He empties the sap into the iron kettle. There is a big bonfire under
                              the kettle, and the sap boils, and Grandpa watches it carefully. The fire
                              must be hot enough to keep the sap boiling, but not hot enough to make it
                              boil over.
                                   "Every few minutes the sap must be skimmed. Grandpa skims it with a
                              big, long-handled, wooden ladle that he made of basswood. When the sap
                              gets too hot, Grandpa lifts ladlefuls of it high in the air and pours it back
                              slowly. This cools the sap a little and keeps it from boiling too fast.
                                   "When the sap has boiled down just enough, he fills the buckets with
                              the syrup. After that, he boils the sap until it grains when he cools it in a
                              saucer.
                                   "The instant the sap is graining, Grandpa jumps to the fire and rakes it
                              all out from beneath the kettle. Then as fast as he can, he ladles the thick
                              syrup into the milk pans that are standing ready. In the pans the syrup
                              turns to cakes of hard, brown, maple sugar." (Wilder 124-127)

As illustrated, Grandpa works hard over a roaring fire to provide for his family.

Just as women were given the role are caregiver for the family, men were assigned the role of breadwinner. As Spaeth continues in "Over the Horizon of the Years", Wilder dramatizes the father as provider role in her story about Pa bringing home a bear and a pig (21-22). In the story, since he could not determine whose animal the pig was, he tells Ma, "So I just brought home the bacon." (Wilder 26) Bringing home the bacon is a metaphor for the person who provides food for the rest of the family. Later in the book, Wilder maintains Pa's position as the breadwinner when he informs Laura and Mary about Old Grimes, an old man who blew away in a gust of wind. Pa tells his daughters that Old Grimes' wife skimmed all the cream from the whey. Because Old Grimes drank the skimmed whey and therefore never gained any weight, he got so thin that he just wasted away until the wind picked him up. Pa finishes the story by complimenting Ma who then compliments Pa:

                                   Then Pa looked at Ma and said, "Nobody'd starve to death when you
                              were around, Caroline."
                                   "Well, no," Ma said. "No, Charles, not if you were there to provide for us."
                                   Pa was pleased. (Wilder 193)

Wilder successfully shows her readers the stereotypical roles of men and women in the nineteenth century by including such stories.

Finally, when I thought I wanted to be just like Ma and Laura as a child, I had very little comprehension of what went into dressing like a lady. Wilder describes her aunts getting ready for the sugar snow dance. First, the two women washed with store soap, another luxury of the time, and painstakingly pinned up their hair. Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia then put on their knitted stocking and buttoned up their best shoes. Wilder then illustrates the process of squeezing into corsets:

                              They helped each other with their corsets. Aunt Docia pulled as hard as
                              she could on Aunt Ruby's corset strings, and then Aunt Docia hung on to
                              the foot of the bed while Aunt Ruby pulled on hers.
                                   "Pull, Ruby, pull!" Aunt Docia said, breathless. "Pull harder." So
                              Aunt Ruby braced her feet and pulled harder. Aunt Docia kept measuring
                              her waist with her hands, and at last she gasped, I guess that's the best you
                              can do."
                                   She said, "Caroline says Charles could span her waist with his hands,
                              when they were married." (Wilder 139-140)

Not only are corsets now known to be dangerous and unhealthy because of the damage done to internal organs, but putting them on was a tedious and difficult process as well. After Wilder's aunts compress their waists to as small as possible, they put on three layers of petticoats. Finally, over all their underclothing, Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby dress in their beautiful gowns for the sugar snow dance. I am certainly thankful that I no longer am required to wear quite so many layers of clothing.

After rereading Little House in the Big Woods twelve years subsequent to my first reading, I am amazed by some of the points I now more fully recognize. As a little girl, I wanted to be just like Ma and Laura although I had little comprehension of the gender roles of the nineteenth century. I also viewed the books as merely a story about six-year-old Laura living in the middle of the Big Woods of Wisconsin with her family. As I said before, while I no longer read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder as just the story but as a book with deeper themes, my love for the book remains and even increases because of my more adult understanding.

"Wilder, Laura Ingalls." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 23 Apr. 2005 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9076984>

Moore, Rosa Ann. "Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books." Children's Literature 4. Butler, Francelia, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975. 105-119.

Spaeth, Janet. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.

Spaeth, Janet L. "Over the Horizon of the Years": Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House Books. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1986.

Sutherland, Zena. Children & Books. 1947. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1981.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. 1932. New York, NY: Harper Trophy, 1971.