Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder by John E. Miller

Author:John E. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826261151
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

It was good advice, hard-won from a decade of learning the writing trade herself. But Rose's sincere desire to transform her mother into a more professional writer, and thereby also enhancing her financial situation, was also inextricably tangled up with her own vague feelings of inadequacy in her mother's presence. Being an only child undoubtedly increased the protectiveness and concern that both parents exhibited toward her, but in the case of her mother the imperative to exercise control appears to have been especially prominent. Rose, in many ways, was just like her mother: ambitious, strong willed, cantankerous, and inclined to act on her beliefs. Both strongly desired freedom of action; both consciously understood the necessity of reining in one's own instincts and inclinations by practicing self-control. Such a personality, however, increases the likelihood that a person will periodically unleash her aggressive impulses on other people. In the case of Rose, whose letters, diaries, journals, and published writings testify eloquently to this pattern of behavior, the evidence is more conclusive than for her mother, because she left more traces behind.

Rose could not appreciate what she considered to be her parents’ excessively frugal mode of existence. She had experienced poverty while growing up, and hated it. Deprivation as a child had humiliated her, and the memory of it continued to cast a pall over her. Her parents’ penny-pinching habits made no sense to her. She did not understand why they should work so hard to save when it seemed much easier to earn a little extra income. “I never saw any human being so determined to be hideously and insanely extravagant,” she wrote her mother, “you will spend a hundred dollars, any time, for one dollar bill.” Able to earn as much as a thousand dollars for a short story that she could turn out in days or weeks, Rose could not understand the mentality of people—even if they were her own parents—who were so close with a dollar. She insisted that her mother, too, could—indeed, should—be earning four or five thousand dollars a year from her writing. But only if she would take Rose's instruction. This relationship between tutor and trainee cast Rose in the dominant position, something that she had not been able to assume with her mother before, despite the widespread acclaim that her writing talents had earned for her. Now, for her mother's own good, she would have to listen to Rose. “Just because I was once three years old, you honestly oughtn't to think that I'm never going to know anything more than a three-year-old,” she wrote her. “Sometime you ought to let me grow up.” Rose's resentment was palpable, but it was tempered by her genuine love for her mother. She offered Laura strong encouragement and reassured her of her love in closing the letter.16

Boosting her mother's writing career was the best way Rose could think of to assist her parents in becoming more financially independent. She did feel obligated for their welfare, but she hoped to escape getting physically tied down to them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.