Belated Fourth of July thoughts

[pameladean]

Exterior:

It used to be easier to see fireworks displays from our back yard. But we have been here for going on eight years, and the trees have grown taller. I went out for my walk at dusk, and heard many more fireworks than I saw. I did see several instances of small groups having their own small front or back yard displays, with fountains and sparklers; very fine to look at. I'd taken my cellphone and left my answering machine on the message that suggests people call the cellphone, and I got a call from Eric just as I was crossing Blaisdell at 37th to head home. I went around to the back yard and sat in the nice new cheap lawn furniture (well, a piece of it) and discovered that I could see much of what was probably the Powderhorn Park show from right there. I checked out the view from the alley, and that was better, but not so comfortable.

Interior:

I am set in my ways, and on the Fourth of July I always puzzle over the following passage from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie:

The scene is a Fourth of July celebration in De Smet, South Dakota;
there has just been a reading of the Declaration of Independence, after which everybody sings "My country, 'tis of thee." The year is somewhere in the 1880's.

"The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and th esong 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 an dof 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."

This is the same character who a few year later will both say she does not want to vote and that she will not say "obey" in her marriage vows.

This is the same character whose family settled in Kansas illegally and was made to move by the government when it for a short time upheld the treaty made with the Indians.

This is a nice knot, part of the permanent furnishing of my untidy brain.

Pamela

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Literary characters who have contradictory natures are my favourites. They're harder to deal with in real life, though.

[pameladean]

And of course there's some debate over how literary and how historical the character of Laura is.

Pamela

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

But Laura isn't a literary character, she's an autobiographical interpretation of the author. So it does make it very interesting there--is she saying one thing because she should, without believing it? And if so, which? Although--does she not think women should have the right to vote, or does she just not want to vote herself? Because it's a valid choice not to vote, and no one can make you vote, which still ties into her comments there.

I read all the earlier books repeatedly (the first book I read cover to cover was little house on the prairie), but the later years ones never interested me so much--I don't think I read "These Happy Golden Years" more than once.

[pameladean]

I think an autobiographical interpretation of the author is a literary character, but not JUST a literary character; so, as you say, the situation is more interesting.

She says what she says about voting when she's talking to Almanzo about the wedding ceremony. He asks if she is "for woman's rights, like Eliza [his sister, who is the villain of an earlier book]?" and she says, "No, I do not want to vote." That doesn't make it much clearer, does it?

I was given the first one when I was Laura's age, five, and I grew with them. Then I got the last few when I was too young for them, but I reread them all anyway because I wanted more. You could probably get a decent thesis out of their influence on my work.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Was Willa cather one of your influences, too?

K.

[pameladean]

Only My Antonia. There is something so very weird about Cather. After reading some feminist essays about her work I read more of it, and after it's done composting I'll undoubtedly be able to cite her as an influence, but not in the same way as Wilder. I completely did not get the one Cather I read, even with guidance from reading it in school. But I kept rereading it. Slash writers will understand this, I think.

Pamela

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I vaguely recall hearing that the published books are Wilder's daughter's editing of the original manuscripts, so what we have is someone's edited version of the autobiographical interpretation of the author. And I think I need to sit down from all that layering.

[pameladean]

I am not entirely persuaded by those arguments (that the daughter did it), but certainly I'll agree that the character is constructed.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I like fireworks up close and personal.

B

[pameladean]

I dislike crowds, traffic, and mosquitoes up close and personal.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Life is trade-offs.

When I lived in Chicago, I watched the fireworks from a friend's boat on Lake Michigan. We were closer than everyone else, we were away from all the crowds, and there were no mosquitos. We had to wait an hour afterwards to bring the boat in and avoid traffic, but it was still the absolute best.

B

[pameladean]

I'd find that a decent trade-off. Having gone to see fireworks at Richfield, Nicollet Island, and Powderhorn Park from time to time, I don't find the trade-offs work for those occasions.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I agree with you re Powerderhorn; they're not spectacular enough. But a spectactular in one of the top tier U.S. cities--now that's something worth a whole lot of crowding for.

B

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Exactly. I love fireworks, but--what you said. When we used to take the kids to the State Fair (back when they were young enough to be takable [that doesn't look right spelled either way, and isn't in MW10]), we would get to the corn stand before the time we expected the fireworks to start, get our corn, find a place to sit, and watch the fireworks from there. That was almost perfect.

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

I just reread all the Little House books in December, right after we moved. (I couldn't find any of my books, somehow that set had gotten in with my clothes, so that was all I had to read at the moment.) and I remember that part bothering me too. I hadn't thought of it since then, interesting that you've been puzzling over that part for years.

[pameladean]

I used to read them all in succession, so the contrast stood out. And I really liked Laura's insight when I first read it; or at least, I really liked the depiction of insight, of the moment when one has a completely new thought. So it stuck in my mind longer than other things, maybe.

Pamela

[(Anonymous)]

If I remember correctly, this is one of the passages particularly discussed in _The Ghost in the Little House_ as being one of Rose Wilder Lane's extensive rewrites of her mother's work.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I'm missing something. I don't see profound contradictions here. What I see is the usual discontinuity between church on Sunday and Monday morning's work. In one sense, I think that Laura's revelation is very much like my own. I discovered that, without the law of God, the only way I could decide upon how to act was to accept that the world was real and that my actions had consequences. Laura seems to be finding something very similar, although she finds it in the presence of God, rather than in his absence. For her, all the other layers of authority are stripped away, and she is left answering for her own self to the Laws of Nature. Her revelation is not, I think, part of the Christian cycle of sin and redemption. Rather, it is an overwhelming certainty of existence and responsibility.

I really must read these books again.

My mother didn't vote based on the convoluted theory that if she voted the same way Daddy did, then his vote would essentially count twice, which was not fair, and if she voted the opposite of his vote, then she negated his vote and was opposing her husband. I don't know when she stopped being that silly, but I remember that explanation vividly. Euyech.

[pameladean]

It's just that she's saying that, in America, nobody can tell anybody what to do. But that is simply not true. I think you are right that she's thinking of interior moral decisions, but to believe those are unaffected by exterior things like the lack of a vote for women and the ability of the government to hale you out of the land you spent several years plowing and defending because the government decided it wouldn't break its treaties after all, just strikes me as weird.

Pamela

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think I'm between Lydy and you here--I do see some contradiction, but it strikes me as minuscule compared to the contradictions I see every day in people's approaches to life, the universe, and everything. Very few people have a totally integrated philosophy of life; for one reason among less admirable ones, very few people, even among those who have the intellectual capacity, can take the time out from ordinary life to do the concentrated thinking necessary to develop a totally integrated philosophy of life.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

And you know, you can make interior moral decisions on your own even if you live in a constitutional monarchy.

I think she was confused about scale or something -- if the government can move you off your land, it doesn't make much difference to your moral responsibility to yourself and to the universe if the head of state is elected or unelected.