Guest post by Sue Poremba
When my daughter married six years ago, it was a quiet affair in front of the justice of the peace with only parents, siblings, and grandparents in attendance, and a garden party afterwards. We planned that wedding in less than a month. I’m still not sure how we made it all work – and we didn’t have to hand-sew dresses and sheets and underwear.
The chapter Haste to the Wedding, Ma and Laura are working double time to finish the black cashmere dress that Laura will wear on her wedding day, a dress so complicated that even though I’ve read this chapter dozens of times, I’m still blown away that it could be finished in a matter of days. It took me a full nine-week marking period to make a jumper that required nothing more than sewing the seams – and my mother still had to help me finish it.
The part of the chapter I like the best is the packing of the trunk and the bundle. It is a subtle nod to the other books, to the other parts of Laura’s life that we got to see. Charlotte and her clothes. The Dove-in-the-Window quilt. The goose-down pillows. The glass boxes. The red-checked tablecloth. Even the calf Pa hitches to the back of Almanzo’s wagon.
When I was a little girl, this scene made me wish for a hope chest, and I’d look around my bedroom, wondering what I would want to bring with me to my new life. When the time came, I remember packing, very gently, the stuffed animal that I loved as much as Laura loved Charlotte. The quilt my great-grandmother made for me. Special presents. The Christmas ornament that would connect my new tree to that of the trees of my childhood. Laura’s packing is a universal theme and perhaps it is the scene that shows the true closure of her life as only a daughter of Ma and Pa.
This is a quiet chapter, a reflective chapter. It ends with Laura asking to hear all of the old songs from her childhood, the last time we readers “hear” Pa’s fiddle. Laura is wistful. We are wistful. This is the point where Miss Laura Ingalls ends. In the morning, she’ll be Mrs. Laura Wilder. More importantly, we are saying good-bye to Pa and Ma, even though we will see them one more time in the next chapter. But we will never see them quite the same.
I wonder how many times during the making of the wedding dress, Ma thought about the “dress in black, wish yourself back” saying and worried about Laura’s future. I never got the impression she liked Almanzo very much. Of course, we know that Laura and Manly were married for a very long time – and through those hard times, I wonder, too, if that saying ever entered Laura’s mind.
When my daughter married in haste, she too wore a black dress and I thought of Laura’s and Almanzo’s wedding. Maybe there isn’t anything to those old sayings.
Comments17
Dear Sue: That was wonderful! You did such a beautiful job on this chapter, capturing exactly what I felt each time (and there have been dozens) that I read this chapter. Wistful. A perfect adjective. And to picture you packing your own hope chest, wistful. . . . Here’s to your daughter and all the girls “married in haste” and hoping they never “wish themselves back.” Jan
Loved this, Sue. I was always sad for the ending, but happy for the new beginning.
How different it was in the TV show where Ma encourage Laura in her pursuit of Almanzo while Pa was dead set against it. Then again, the show was a bit screwy when it came with the whole Laura/Almanzo romance. Getting back to it, one would think Ma would be pleased as punch to have a daughter married at eighteen. In those days having a bunch of old maid daughters was an embarrassment. Besides it was less mouth to feed.
One does notice that Laura doesn’t have too much heart to heart talks with Ma as she did in the TV show. While she obviously respect and love her mother, I did not get the impression they were close. The only thing close was when Laura was teaching. In an earlier chapter, Ma was a bit annoyed with all the suitors Laura was attracting. Maybe she was upset that her favorite daughter(Mary) was supposed to be the one who taught and the one with the suitors. She probably dismissed as Laura too wild to get a husband in her eyes without knowing that the men would want a strong spirtied wife to help them instead of some ladylike girl.
As for Laura wishing her self back, I don’t think she really have any regrets. She could have done far worse even if she didn’t have financial worry. She could have an abusive husband for crying out loud. Instead, she found a man who appreciated her input and advise. So she didn’t do too badly.
I don’t think Laura was in any great danger of becoming an ‘old maid.’ Contrary to myth, most young women DIDN’T marry in their teens at that time, and on the western frontier where men outnumbered women by a considerable margin she would have had plenty of options.
And as for ‘one less mouth to feed’, I think Laura contributed far more, economically, to the family than she cost them. Not only her wages from teaching, but her ability to help Pa with the farm work. Even regarding housework, one gets the feeling that her younger sisters got off pretty easy. When Carrie volunteers to do the housework so Ma and Laura can finish her dress, she implies that she and Grace has never done much. While Carrie is mentioned occasionally doing housework in past chapters and books, (stirring potatoes, making her bed, washing dishes), at an age when Laura was already ‘wiping her own cup and plate’ Grace was nothing more than a hindrance around the house.
I don’t think that it is uncommon for mothers to think that men aren’t good enough for their daughters! I think that Almanzo being 10 years older than Laura was one issue for Ma. She might have wondered why he hadn’t settled down before with someone closer in age. Maybe she hoped Laura would marry someone more educated with a secure job instead of a farmer. Pa had tried to make a go of farming and it hadn’t turned out very well for him.
I do find it strange that most of Laura’s family never visited Rocky Ridge Farm. Carrie made a few trips eventually, but Pa, Ma, Mary, and Grace- never! It does make you wonder. Perhaps it was simply a matter of finances and health issues. I know that it took a long time for Almanzo and Laura to get on their feet in Missouri, but his family seemed to visit occasionally.
Ma and Pa didn’t seem to be real visitors. I thought of this when Cousin Alice came. She and her sister were only 40 miles away but I can imagine that Ma and Pa never visited them–ever, even to bring Mary to see them. So I can imagine that they did not visit Laura just because they just did not travel. (And Laura didn’t visit De Smet either.) I wonder, as time went by and things became harder for Almanzo and Laura, if Ma at least didn’t criticize Almanzo’s getting deeper and deeper in debt, and Laura resented it. In any case, this chapter does close the life of Laura as we knew her. The end of this book is almost too much to bear. Looking from 35 years after I first read it, I know it didn’t strike me then as much as it does now the closing of a chapter, her childhood. Now it makes my heart ache.
When I first read this chapter at age 9 or 10 one morning before school, it made me sad enough that my mother noticed something was wrong. She wanted to know what it was but we didn’t talk about feeling much in my family so I didn’t really have the ability to explain to her what was making me sad. I didn’t feel that Laura loved Almanzo much. On reading the books again for the first time 45 years later, I am more aware that the lack of joy I perceived also extends to Laura’s family.
As I re-read the books, I have been more willing to give Laura the benefit of the doubt that she was in love, but, being of her time and her family, to have elaborated more than she did about her love would have felt unseemly.
Yet, I appreciate knowing from these read-along entries that others find the circumstances of her wedding somewhat disturbing. While I don’t think she would have been comfortable expressing the excitement that might accompany the progression of her relationship with Almanzo to marriage, it still seems that she didn’t enjoy the unconditional support of her parents or great joy on their part.
@Anita…
I’m sorry that you are disappointed in the lack of “romance” in THGY. I see it differently. Perhaps because I’ve read the ‘Pioneer Girl’ manuscript and a lot of other LIW related ephemera, I know that Laura loved Almanzo very deeply, and vice versa. As she said in THGY, her parents knew what she was too shy to say.
Laura wasn’t writing a Harlequin romance, she was writing about her life. And her family weren’t extremely open with feelings hard;y ever. Laura wrote about being shocked when her Mother showed her feelings at all. It isn’t that the feelings weren’t there, they just tried their best not to show them.
Her parents showed their support by buying a sewing machine and helping her with her trousseau, and doing what they could in their own ability to help Almanzo and Laura have a good start.
I’d like to know more about this “Pioneer Girl” manuscript you refer to. I’d appreciate any info.
In the process of getting Little House in the Big Woods published, Laura first wrote out her life story as a first person memoir. There are three versions of this that survive. If all goes according to plan (and even with the goodies at the Book Expo I’m still not holding my breath), an edited and annotated version will be coming out from South Dakota Press this fall. Check with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum to get information on getting copies of the original manuscript.
Well, I also found Laura’s “relationship” with Almanzo lacking an explanation.
For once, there seems to me no real reason to marry other than the pride of being married before her 19th birthday (just like her mother, there was earlier mention of this “family pride”).
Laura was very close to her family, the “loss” of Mary had already ended much of the family life/ traditions (Christmas etc.) and the only aspect that Laura is really thrilled about are Almanzo’s horses.
Now they could be a way of secretly displaying her feelings for her, but then again even Ma says something in the line of “I do think you don’t care for the man, only for his horses” (no exact quote, don’t have the book at hand right now).
If this seems all too Victorian, contrast it with the scenes about Cap Garland and Mary Power, where we get lines like “his whole face lighted up”, “he looked pleadingly at Mary Power” etc.
So Cap is allowed to show some feelings, but Almanzo is not.
To me, as an adult, this reads like a convenience marriage which might have brought love later on.
The only evidence for Almanzos care or love for Laura in the book to me is the pantry.
His drives to pick her up from school seemed rather like a bargain to me – I pick you up, give you something, that you want (to be with your family) and you do me favor later on… ;-).
Susan,
I would agree with you that, at least as portrayed in the books, there wasn’t a lot of ‘passion’ shown in their relationship. (And, as has been discussed at some length when talking about their lack of children after their son died, whether physical ‘passion’ played a huge role at any point.)
But I don’t see anything about a rush to be married by 19 just for the sake of being married.
From Laura’s POV what I see expressed was:
1. They get along well. (She mentions this to Mary, something about how just seem to belong together.)
2. She doesn’t want to teach school anymore, and once she’s married she won’t have to (won’t be ABLE) to do that.
2a. Not expressed as such, but I think she feels that it’s time to be working for herself and her own future, not her family. (Remember the conversation in “Silver Lake” where she and Lena go to get the washing, and learn that the laundress’s 13 year old daughter has just been married? They are shocked, but then say something about how she won’t have to work any harder, but she’ll be working in her OWN home and having babies.
3. There may be some small feeling of guilt/obligation in that she’d been tying up Manly’s time and affections for over 2 years now … and he IS getting to the age when he really needs to be getting married soon.
And yes, we have been shown repeatedly that the Ingalls aren’t a family that shows strong emotion. She WAS, ‘starry eyed’ after her first kiss, and Pa is able to sense her feelings for her new fiance. This lack of emotion isn’t the norm for all late Victorian families … but it is for the Ingalls.
And finally, realistically, in the 19th century marriage still WAS, to a large degree, a practical and economic relationship. Women needed to be married so they could be cared for and produce children. If Laura had found a man who liked and respected her, who seemed well fixed to be able to support her, who didn’t drink or gamble (at least not in the classic sense) and who she liked and respected as well — she was doing far better than most young women of her time, place and social class.
I recently discovered this website and am trying to catch up on the book read-a-longs. How I wish I knew about LauraPalooza 2015, though I did visit DeSmet just last weekend. 🙂 I am hopeful to do LauraPalooza in 2017!
This hasty wedding chapter resonates with me, because 2 years ago my lovely stepdaughter and son-in-law married in a quick wedding. The bride wore a dress she had purchased at Target, and she added a few hand-sewn frills on herself. Her grandmother made a wedding cake, and we had a small family reception after their marriage at the courthouse. It was the perfect beginning.
I look forward to more read-a-longs. Are there any plans to do any for the earlier books?
Hi,
I’ve lurked here off and on through the years. Not too long ago, I found this song on YouTube as sung by the Irish choir Anuna, and yes, it is at the end of this chapter in These Happy Golden Years. I’ll post the link below. It’s not every day a Little House song ends up on YouTube:
Love’s Old Sweet Song
https://youtu.be/OiIU-y-5oJA
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