Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1989
Abstract
Faith in the future, the virtues of persistence and hard work, the beneficence and occasional destructiveness of nature, the centrality of family, and the search for community are dominant themes of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books for children; one more theme is freedom. 1 But this freedom is never conceived of as absolute; rather, it is subject to a variety of constraints-external and internal-that interact with it in uneasy tension. The Ingalls family moved west to Dakota Territory in 1879 because of Pa's quest for freedom from the constrictions hemming him in on the more settled frontier. Farther west, he believed, people could exercise greater control over their lives and in so doing fulfill their destinies. People could make a decent living on a homestead in the West. "The hunting's good in the west, a man can get all the meat he wants," Charles cheerfully told his wife Caroline. 2
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 9 (Winter 1989): 27·35]. Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.