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| Throwback to that time in 2014 that I slept in their backyard and then sat on their graves! |
Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Laura, Rose, their extended family and friends, and all their writings is one of my Special Interests, and I will never not be down to read anything concerning any of them. I am fascinated by the bits of fact that mix with their fiction, the bits of fiction that mix with their non-fiction, the hints at juicy family drama, and how palpably trauma informed their writings, their behaviors, and their relationships.
Also, I am Pa’s biggest hater, and I will happily see him trashed anytime!
I don’t necessarily love Caroline Ingalls, either--she messed up Laura nearly as badly as Pa did--but I see, perhaps because I, too, am a woman who had a childhood and has children, how her own childhood trauma informed her own behaviors and relationships, and I can’t make myself blame and shame her like I can Pa. Seriously, fuck you, Pa.
To that end, I kind of liked that Caroline was high-key annoying in this book. I firmly believe that she literally was an annoying person! Reading Laura’s fiction and non-fiction, I VERY much get the vibe that Caroline could have been exactly as introspective and contemplative as she was in this novel. To be fair, she was constantly left alone with multiple small children in a shack out in the middle of nowhere with no amenities and a ridiculous burden of menial labor--it reads totally real that she had nothing better to do with her mind than chew over her thoughts and feelings and hold up a mental microscope to her every bodily function. RIP, Caroline--you would have loved LiveJournal!
Throughout the book, I really enjoyed the small call-outs to the overall Ingalls history that a less-avid fan would breeze past: Carrie is always portrayed as smaller and frailer than the other children, and detailing all the miseries of a covered wagon journey full of privation and hardship during Caroline’s pregnancy with her goes a long way towards explaining why. Oh, and there’s also the time everyone got malaria when she was a baby and she nearly died of neglect and starvation!
Speaking of that road trip from Hell, I get why Miller would write Caroline as perceiving herself to have the agency to postpone that trip, because otherwise it’s just too depressing for words, but… I think the reality was really just too depressing for words! I do not think for a second that Charles would have postponed that trip for any reason, because he was a selfish pig and he wanted what he wanted exactly when he wanted it. I have read nothing about Pa, in Laura’s rose-colored fiction or in her more reality-based memoir or in what little we can find about him in other historical documents, that has painted him in anything but the most selfish and unflattering light. I loved all the small moments of resentment of Charles that Miller let Caroline feel, and it’s just too bad that I have also read nothing about Caroline that has ever painted her as anything but completely in control of her deportment at all times, because I would have loved to see her, all hopped up on pregnancy hormones, rip Charles to shreds just one time. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he bought window glass instead of food! He bought a big-ass plow instead of the land to use it on! The actual timeline of the sale of the Big Woods house and the Ingalls' various wanderings is unclear, but early on it was very clear that Gustafson was going to cut and run out on the mortgage. Charles moved himself, his pregnant wife, and two small children across the country IN A WAGON and had no Plan B! Like, it’s the 1800s--what if Gustafson had simply died?!?
I can’t even with this guy.
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