A reader wrote in with a comment on this post (about Eliza Jane and Laura’s portrayal of her) that was so thorough and extensive I thought it deserved front-page notice.
I, too, have thought about this for many years, but here is my take on it. Every family has a difficult aunt or uncle or cousin or sibling. Some people are just difficult. Every family has someone you dread seeing at Thanksgiving and Christmas and pray you don’t get stuck next to them at the dinner table. It may not be that they are bad, or evil or even that you don’t respect them or trust them, they are just difficult.
Look at the history of both families. If I’m not mistaken, both are direct descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims. I don’t have time to page through all of Deb Houdek’s work on the geneaology right now, but I believe I remember seeing that some time ago. So you’ve got two families who descend from people who are willing to take on tremendous risk and hardship to live out what they believe. If Eliza Jane inherited that backbone, that would be something that would both make you respect and trust her highly, and something that would make you not want to sit next to her at Thanksgiving dinner.
Now take a look at Rose. Rose is famous for having had a highly successful career at a time when most women didn’t. She was a founder of the Libertarian movement and a friend of Ayn Rand. She is also notable for having divorced at a time when most women didn’t. This is another strong-willed, out-spoken woman cut from the same cloth as Eliza Jane. They were two of a kind. This is also a woman who built a house on her parents farm, for her parents, against their will. It was the very latest style in Connecticut, I’m sure, but it wasn’t their style. They lived in it for a while, then quietly moved back into their own house and abandoned it. Rose used it when she was home.
Lastly, take a look at Laura. She is hardly a shrinking violet herself. What kind of a woman would slap an Indian in the Dakota territories in the 1880’s? She’s lucky to have walked away from that alive, but I think perhaps the reason was first, that the Indians were so startled and second, that they recognized her fierce bravery and respected it. It is notable to that Almanzo and Laura competed with each other all their years in Missouri to see who could make the most money off their part of the farm, Laura with her chickens and eggs, Almanzo with the dairy cows. That is how Laura came to be a writer: by writing about her success as a farm wife in the Missouri Ruralist.
My take on it is that poor Almanzo, who was no coward himself but seems to have been a gentle soul, first was bossed around by his sister, then he married someone rather like his sister, and then he had a daughter perhaps even more out-spoken than his sister. The relationship between he and Laura seems to have been affectionate, based on her letters while she was visiting Rose in San Francisco, but I would imagine she could be a bit sharp when riled too. Understand that I’m saying this with a great deal of affection for Laura, but with an understanding too that she was human, and all humans have flaws. I would also note too that Laura had a fierce loyalty toward people she loved. This is most notable in that she fell for Cap Garland first (I’ve read this elsewhere, but you can also see it in the way she describes him), but when Almanzo came courting her and Cap courted Mary Power, she kept it to herself. Later, when Mary rejects Cap, Laura decides to stick with Almanzo anyway. She was too loyal to both Mary and Almanzo to risk hurting someone. But what I find rather sad was that when Rose was interviewing him late in life, he told her that his life had been mostly a disappointment to him. What a sad thing to say to your daughter. But he’d intended to be a prosperous and well respected farmer like his father, and weather, poor soil, bad economies, poor health and lack of sons had all been against him having any success.
I find it interesting to note that for three generations in Laura’s family, no boys survived early infancy. Her only brother died at five months, her only son died at three weeks and her only grandson, Rose’s son, died in infancy too. It makes me wonder if there was a lethal gene on the Y chromosome in that family. Ma had a brother, but that was the last male in the family to survive to adulthood. I guess we’ll never know, since the family died out.