Caroline Ingalls: A Good Homemaker

I love Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I have read the Little House on the Prairie series many times over the years, both as a child and as an adult.  I am currently rereading them aloud to Sebastian and he is loving them.  Whenever I finish a chapter, I tell him what the next one (that we will read next time) is titled and he always says something like this, on the chapter where Pa builds a new floor and roof for the house, “Oh, can we please read one more chapter, I never knew how to build a roof before.” Or, when we will be reading about building a fireplace, “Oh, can we please read one more chapter, I really want to know how to build a fireplace.” As a young girl, I was never very interested to read about how Pa built everything, but that is what Sebastian loves. (This is but another example of the differences between little boys and girls.) These books are so wonderful to read to one’s children as they have MANY examples of how a child should obey his/her parents.  There is one instance where Laura is out in the barnyard at night with her mother. They are going to go and milk the cow since Pa is away in town and when Ma goes to pat the cow, she discovers that it is in fact a bear.  She turns to Laura and says “Go into the house Laura” and Laura turns and obeys.  This scene was a perfect opportunity for Sebastian and I to then have a conversation about the importance of obeying one’s parents without arguing. The last thing I want is to ever be in a dangerous situation, to tell my son to do something, and for him to turn to me and say, “why?”  There are many wonderful teaching moments within these books, but I digress.

   It is always fascinating to read books as a child and then to reread them as an adult. This is not the first time that I have read these books since I became a homemaker but each time that I do read them, I am more and more impressed with Ma.  In my mind, Ma is the perfect example of a good homemaker.  Here is a woman who, without complaint, moves from a comfortable home in Wisconsin that is near lots of family members, to the wilderness of unsettled Kansas, miles from another human being and even further from civilization.  And she does not do this only once, but rather moves multiple times in order to start all over.  She works so hard to provide and care for her family, and even in the wilderness, she teaches her daughters how to be young ladies.  As a former schoolteacher, she was extremely well educated and she passed her love of learning on to her daughters.  I think that Caroline Ingalls is a homemaking inspiration and I always work so much harder around the house after reading about all of the things that she did just to keep her family fed and clothed. But she didn’t just do the bare minimum, wherever they went, she made a home for her family. Laura often describes how comfortable and clean their houses were with the checked tablecloth and lamp on the table, the beds neatly made in the corner, and the little china shepherdess up on the mantle.  Caroline Ingalls cared for her family and she did so to the best of her ability.