Laura Ingalls Wilder was a cunning writer. She realized that sugarcoated medicine is easier to swallow than a bitter pill. Consequently, her well-thought out belief in the individual’s responsibility to be good and obey the law is slipped quietly in between descriptions of Laura and Carrie enjoying the Fourth of July. In addition to slipping in a deep thought she provides a consequence that motivates action in the reader.
Freedom and Obedience in Little Town on the Prairie
In Little Town on the Prairie, Laura, Carrie, and Pa walk into DeSmet so that they can celebrate Independence Day. The day is full of firecrackers, lemonade, and horse races. However, the citizens of DeSmet remember to pause and think about what they are celebrating. A man stands up and shares a brief history of America and its fight for freedom. He follows his ad-lib history lesson by reading the Declaration of Independence. Pa leads the listeners to respond by breaking into the song. The combination of these three events ferments in Laura’s mind to create a breakthrough idea. Here is how Laura describes the moment:
“‘So here we are today,’ the man went on. Every man Jack of us a free and independent citizen of God’s country, the only country on earth where a man is free and independent… It’s Fourth of July and on this day somebody’s got to read the Declaration of Independence. It looks like I’m elected, so hold your hats, boys; I’m going to read it.’…Then Pa began to sing. All at once everyone was singing: ‘My country, ‘tis of thee…Great God our King!!’
The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock-still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America’s king.
She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means you have to be good. ‘Our father’s God, author of liberty—‘ The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.”
The Missouri Ruralist
On May 1, 1922, Laura writes about the connection between breaking laws and murder. She talks of a rebellious young boy who kills birds in the nest and a nineteen-year-old who kills several people. She suggests that they are the same crime and vary only in degree.
Laura reminds readers that children come in contact with the commands of their parents before any other commandment or law. As a result, she is convinced that parents need to show wisdom in translating the laws of nature, God, and society into rules that children can learn to obey. If children disobey it is the parent’s responsibility to punish the child for disobedience. She argues that if parents do this children will “learn the lesson every good citizen and every good man and woman learns sooner or later—that breaking a law brings suffering.” (267)
She reminds her readers that breaking the laws of nature results in physical punishment and that disobedience to God’s law results in spiritual and mental suffering. She writes that “Man’s laws, being founded on the Ten Commandments, are really mankind’s poor attempt at interpreting the laws of God and for disobeying them there is a penalty. The commands we give our children should be our translation of these laws of God and man, founded on justice and the law of love, which is the Golden Rule. And these things enter into such small deeds. Even insisting that children pick up and put away their playthings is teaching them order, the law of the universe, and helpfulness, the expression of love.” (267)
Do You See the Similarities?
Laura summarizes her revelation in DeSmet by saying “The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty...you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.”Her revelation echoes what she wrote in the Missouri Ruralist “The commands we give our children should be our translation of these laws of God and man, founded on justice and the law of love, which is the Golden Rule. And these things enter into such small deeds. Even insisting that children pick up and put away their playthings is teaching them order, the law of the universe, and helpfulness, the expression of love.”
The Differences
The difference between these two statements is one of audience and of motivation. The article written in 1922 was intended for adult farmwomen. The book was for children. Laura doesn’t beat her young readers over the head with the fact that their parents are their immediate lawgivers and their job is to obey them. Rather, she cunningly slips in a bit of brilliant motivation by reminding the children that when they grow up, no one will tell them what to do and they are free but the only way to be free and to enjoy that freedom is to obey the laws of nature and God.
Letting a Child Figure it Out
Then like a wise parent, she doesn’t continue beating the subject to death, she moves on to a very exciting description of horse races.
Hines, Stephen W. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist. University of Missouri Press. 2007 ISBN 978-0-8262-1771-4
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