WEBVTT - 4. Daughter Dearest pt. 2: Politics and Rose 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:05.880 Last Week on Daughter Dearest Rosewelder. 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:08.879 Lane was the only living child of Laura Ingalls Wilder 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:12.399 and her husband Almonzo. She was born in South Dakota 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:15.520 in eighteen eighty six, when Laura was nineteen years old. 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:21.280 Much like Laura, Rose grew up in abject poverty. Unlike Laura, 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:24.360 Rose was able to get an education and in the 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:26.640 nineteen twenties went on to become one of the most 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:31.479 successful freelance writers in the country. In the early nineteen thirties, 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:33.959 Rose lost all her money in the stock market crash. 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:36.800 She then began to collaborate with her mother on what 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.519 would become the first book in the Little House series, 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.360 Little House in the Big Woods. At the same time 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.200 Rose was helping Laura, Rose was secretly writing her own 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.960 book based on Laura's life, called Let the Hurricane Roar. 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.640 Rose secretly sold this book to the Saturday Evening Post, 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.960 and when Laura realized her daughter's deception, this non surprise 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.480 caused a huge rift in their relationship, a rift that 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.280 was only overcome when Rose and Laura were forced to 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.680 revise Farmer Boy together, the second. 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:10.679 Book in the Little House series. 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.120 Laura was so disturbed by Rose using her story and 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.600 then weirdly combining it with the story of Laura's parents, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.160 Charles and Caroline. That sometime in the early thirties, shortly 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:27.000 after Big Woods was published, Laura sat down and wrote 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.199 down her own account of what had happened. She wrote 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:34.200 it for herself and never meant it for publication. We 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.759 know this book today as the First four Years. This 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.520 is where our story picks up. It's an important moment 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.479 and one that would forever warp Laura and Rose's legacies, 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:51.080 but they'd never know it. The truth is, the First 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.280 four Years is arguably the reason we are still talking 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.160 about Rose today, and not just because she's in it. 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.720 It's publication after bo both Laura and Rose's death led 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:05.960 people to start asking the question still being asked by 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.800 some today, if this writing was so different from the 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.720 rest of the series? Did Laura actually write the Little 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:13.400 House Books? 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:17.840 If you look at all the available information, and you 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:20.360 look at Laura's writing, and you look at Rose wilder 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.480 Lane's writing, Rose wilder Lane wrote the books. 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:28.239 We know that Rose and Laura had a complicated, tumultuous, intense, 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:30.200 codependent relationship. 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.160 I can only say that Rose wilder Lane and Lauren 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.560 Goes Wilder's relationship was complicated, and you know all mother 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.400 daughter relationships are complicated, but it was fraught with an 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.040 additional layer of professional rivalry. 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.560 But how intertwined was their creative process. 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:51.040 I think she said, Mom, tell me the stories, and 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:52.679 then she wrote them down. 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.119 She made up some stuff, she made it cozy. 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.280 It's impossible to leave her out. She has just woven 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.440 into the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.840 There are other people woven into this story who also 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:14.280 can't be ignored. A decade after her death, Laura Ingelswilder's 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:18.240 entire legacy landed in the hands of a man she'd 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.120 never met, a man who almost immediately sold it to 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.200 Hollywood and then turned around and used the proceeds to 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.000 make a run for president of the United States on 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:34.280 the Libertarian ticket, which brings us right back to the 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.840 first four years. It was this man, Rose's heir who 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.560 discovered the first four years in some of Rose's papers. 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:48.560 After mis Laine's death in nineteen sixty eight came the 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:53.040 discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:58.520 four years. So Roger, being the heir, took that manuscript 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:03.400 to Harper and Rowe and Ursula Nordstrom immediately wanted. 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:06.560 To publish it, and thus was launched one of the 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:12.600 literary world's great conspiracies. Decades later, people are still asking 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:17.440 the question did Rose write the books herself or was 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:22.479 she just her mother's very heavy handed editor. How much 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:27.279 of Rose's political ideology ended up woven into Laura's story. 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.800 How is Little House connected to the libertarian movement? And 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:35.520 is Rose responsible for funding the education of two of 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:41.120 the most powerful right wing operatives in America. That's coming 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.560 up on part two of Daughter Dearest, Politics and Rose. 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:52.080 I'm Glennis McNicol and this is Rose Wilder Lame. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.360 Let's begin in the early nineteen thirties. 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.719 As you will recall from our last episode, Laura has 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.480 just finished writing Little House in the Big Woods. Rose 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.719 has secretly written and sold Let the Hurricane Roar, using 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:53.239 facts from Laura's life and childhood, but changing them around 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:59.160 in confusing ways. Upon discovering this deception, Laura is understandably 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:03.360 upset with Rose, but she's also confused, and it's this 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.200 confusion that leads her to straighten out the facts of 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:11.279 the story for herself. Nancy tis dad Coople, editor in 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.440 chief of the Pioneer Girl Project, believes when Laura read 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.160 Hurricane and saw how her parents' story had been reworked 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.000 using details of her own life, she sat down and 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:23.760 wrote The First four Years. 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:30.160 Her objection, I believe, was to the confusion that Lane 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.359 added to the story, and that's why I think she 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.720 wrote the First four Years because she wanted to get 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:40.440 her own story down the way it happened, at least 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.480 in her mind, and not the way Lane would fictionalize it. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.080 Keep in mind the timing of that writing, because here's 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.480 where we're going to leap forward all the way to 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.760 nineteen seventy one, which is the year the First four 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.760 Years is published. Rose has been dead for three years. 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.479 As everyone who owns the Yellow Little House on the 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:05.240 Prairie box set knows, the First four Years is positioned 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.320 as the last book in the Little House series. The 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.520 issue is there was nothing in the First four Years 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:15.480 publication that alerted readers to the fact that it may 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.040 have been written before the other books in the series 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:22.040 and not as their conclusion. Nor was the reader made 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:27.200 to understand that neither Rose nor Laura had ever intended 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.040 the First Four Years to see the light of day. 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.320 As Wayne told Harper's in the sixties, A books not 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.520 ready for publication. I thought my mother had destroyed it. 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.480 It was never intended to be published as the first 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.320 four years is jarring. The tone is completely different from 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.920 the rest of the books. As a child, I believed 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.200 all the books had emerged straight from Laura's head, and 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:54.960 this made the first four years especially shocking. 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:59.640 Where had my Laura gone? This new Laura was cynical 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.560 and angrier. Nothing in this world felt safe or appealing. 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.239 Here's Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser. 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:14.560 It's so different and kind of disappointing in some regards, 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:19.960 and to an adult who's studying Laura, it's an invaluable 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:26.920 document because it shows her struggling to incorporate the worst 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.000 moments of her life in a way that would fit 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:35.320 in with the uplifting narrative the arc of the series. 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.000 It's definitely easier as a grown up to understand the 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.240 first four Years as a first draft, something that was 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:47.440 never intended for publication, written by Laura for herself as 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.199 a way to keep her own memory separate from Rose's 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.800 fictionalization of them. And it's also easier to understand why 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:58.520 Laura dropped it the subject matter was too unbearable. In 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:01.199 the first four years of their marriage, Laura and Almonzo 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:05.280 lost multiple crops, they went into enormous debt, they lost 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:10.200 an infant son, Almonza was handicapped by diphtheria, and their 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.959 home burned down, all before Laura turned twenty two. Can 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.120 you blame her for not wanting to revisit that She. 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.679 Just couldn't do it. I mean, there just was no 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.439 way that she could do it, And I think she 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.280 thought about it after she had finished the series in 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:33.080 nineteen forty three. She definitely thought about returning, probably to 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.800 that manuscript and trying to work it up into a 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:41.000 completed sequel to the series. But also I think there 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.680 just wasn't any way to write about her adult experiences 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:48.520 as an adult in a way that would have been 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:50.920 acceptable to a children's audience. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.439 But that's not how the publishers presented the. 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.679 First four years, and the difference between this and the 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:04.560 previous books inevitably led to questions, how could the writing 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.800 be so different? Where was the Laura we knew and 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:12.920 loved from all the other books. Decades later, someone would 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.520 try to answer this question. It's at this point that 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.920 Rose's story starts to loop back and forth in time. 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:20.199 A little bit. 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.920 Right now, we're going to jump forward all the way 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.280 to nineteen ninety three, when a man named William Holtz 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:34.480 published a biography of Rose called Ghost in the Little House. Holtz, 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.200 a University of Missouri professor, felt Rose had not received 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.360 her due for her impact on American culture and politics, 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.760 and when about rectifying that Ghost in the Little House 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.880 remains the only full biography of Rose, and Rose was 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.520 absolutely deserving of her own biography. But Holtz's description of 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:02.760 Laura and her and Rose's relationship left readers aghast. Holtz 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:06.959 referred to Laura throughout the book sarcastically and demeaningly as 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:11.920 Mama Bess, Rose's pet name for her mother, and seemed 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:15.240 to take on Rose's view that all the hurdles in 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:20.920 Rose's life were indeed Laura's fault. In Holtz's view, Laura 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.760 was an exacting and unloving mother and Rose was a 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:31.160 deeply sympathetic and beleaguered daughter. But the real shock was 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.240 the seven page appendix, which laid out Holtz's argument that 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:36.320 it was Rose who. 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.240 Had written the books at the time. 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:42.679 Ghost in the Little House was published, The public's understanding 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.559 of Laura was almost entirely the product of the books 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:50.600 and the hit television show to the world. At that point, 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.800 Rose was perennially a small child. Now Here was this 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:59.680 hearpy mother and her silently toling daughter. The book inevitably 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.680 land like a bomb in the little houseworld, and lo, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:12.920 a full blown conspiracy was born. Part of the reason 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:15.880 the conspiracy was able to flourish so well was that 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.959 a sort of vacuum of information had always existed around 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.800 Laura's authorship of the books. During her lifetime, Rose had 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.520 relentlessly insisted that her mother had done all of this 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.280 work on her own. And it's hard to gauge how 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:32.000 involved Rose actually was because Laura didn't keep a journal, 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.120 and for a long time their collaboration happened in person. 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:37.959 All we really have to go by are some letters 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.600 of correspondence between the mother and daughter. So when Holtz 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.280 pressed on the unlikeliness of a sixty five year old 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.360 woman penning these masterpieces without help, and then used Rose's 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.840 letters and journal entries to back up the argument that 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.160 Rose had been a collaborator, the theory began to take 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.320 root that Rose was the true author because there was 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:58.720 very little to counter it. 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:04.560 So who actually wrote the Little House Books? Laura or Rose? 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:10.480 From an obsessively researched twenty twenty three viewpoint, it seems 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.320 clear that the answer probably lies somewhere between the two, 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:19.120 much closer to Laura than to Rose. Caroline Fraser believes 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.800 there are absolutely scenes written by Rose in some of 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.880 the books, including some of the scenes that stand out 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.720 to readers as especially political, like the Fourth of July 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.880 scene in Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura includes 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.720 a speech about the glorious fourth and how most of 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.720 the people there are trying to pull themselves up by 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:43.119 their bootstraps. She then reprints the entirety of the Declaration 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.440 of Independence, which I must tell you is deeply confusing 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.320 to me as a child in Canada, and follows this 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.719 with Laura's desire to say amen at the end of 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:53.240 the reading. 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.400 I think that we can identify, you know, based on 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:02.640 manuscript evidence and and also style, we could certainly identify 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.199 certain scenes, you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:12.280 in Farmer Boy and Little Town. I think it is 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:17.640 that she clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.280 own voice into writing. 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.360 Fraser also thinks that Rose and Laura may have brought 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.600 different strengths to the books, including the fact that Rose 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.120 may have been more talented at writing dialogue than her mother. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.120 You can see Rose, I think you can hear her 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:37.200 in some of the dialogue. You know, she was quite 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.200 gifted at doing that, compared to her mother, who I 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.840 think that was a really hard thing for Laura to 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:50.200 reconstruct natural dialogue, especially at the beginning. So you can 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.920 see their contrasting styles coming through, where Rose was bringing 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.240 this kind of sense of stability and safety and sort 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.480 of gentleness us to the stories, some of which is 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.360 quite necessary, I think. But in other moments you can 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:11.480 see Laura's vision, which was a much you know, more stark, 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:17.200 more plain, more confrontational, a little bit almost you know, 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:20.880 like this was the way it was. This, This is 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.520 how hard it was to live this life. That's Laura. 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.040 There's also the fact we have Rose's own writing to 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:32.560 go by. We know what Rose's authorship looks like. Here's 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:33.560 Pamela smith Hill. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:41.160 Rose weather Lane's writing is it's very distant, it's very 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:46.680 kind of turgid prose. She uses lots of abstract rather 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:51.360 than concrete vocabulary. When you read Freeland and Let the 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:53.960 Hurricane War, it's almost as if Rose weather Lane is 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:59.800 trying too hard. They don't have that sense of effortless 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.080 artistry that the Little House Books have. And then there 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:08.480 are passages in both of those books where she basically 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:13.840 plagiarizes her mother's Pioneer Girl text. So she'll take a 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:19.600 description from Pioneer Girl, an eloquent, beautiful description of a 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:24.600 pioneer sunset that is lyrical and poetic, and she will 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.040 PLoP it into the middle of Let the Hurricane War 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.520 and Freeland, But she uses abstract vocabulary, and it's kind 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:37.840 of clumsy and sophomoric. So I think there are things 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.320 we can never know about the chemistry between Lauren Goswilder 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.080 and Rose Wilder Lay. But the idea that Rose Wilder 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:49.280 Lane is singly responsible for the Little House Books doesn't 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:51.360 hold water when you look at her own writing. 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:56.760 Both Nancy Tysdad Coopele and Caroline Fraser agree it's almost 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:59.080 impossible to credit Rose with authorship. 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:03.520 I believe Rolas was just really a brilliant editor. 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.480 I think she was an editor and she was an agent, 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:13.240 and people don't really understand the extent to which editors 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:19.040 and ancients shape people's writing and how they tell their stories. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:22.159 Their goal, for the most part is to help people 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.800 tell their story the best way possible, and that's what 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:26.840 Lane is doing. 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.080 They both contributed a lot, but Laura was the person 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.840 who wrote the books. You know, Rose was an editor. 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:40.560 She was certainly a heavier editor than most people might conceive, 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.199 but that also is not unheard of. 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.680 Whatever her limitations as a writer were, there's no question 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:53.640 Rose was an exceptional editor. Even Laura's official editor, Ursula Nordstrom, 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.800 once remarked that the only manuscripts that ever came to 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.359 her perfectly formed were that of Laura's and shark Arlette's 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:01.119 web author E. B. 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:01.560 White. 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.600 Laura herself always recognized this as one of Rose's strengths. 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.600 In a letter, she once told her daughter, I am 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:11.200 glad you like my use of words and my descriptions, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.080 but without your fine touch, it would be a flop. 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.359 I think to people who don't have that experience with publishing, 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.200 that may be a shock, but it's certainly a factor 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.119 in many works. But you know, I'm not one of 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.600 those people who thinks that the book should be by 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.120 Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Now, I don't 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.200 think that's That's not how it works. 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.960 In my opinion, the story is Wilder's voice, that child 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.520 like wonder that the world is Wilder's and it is 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:46.439 laying that is helping her shape this. 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:54.840 So, Joe, as a reasonably objective observer, knowing all this, 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.000 what are your thoughts now on who wrote the Little 0:18:59.000 --> 0:18:59.560 House Books? 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.840 It sounds to me like Rose is the editor that 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:08.680 all of us would love to have, That she is engaged, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:10.600 that she is hands on, and not just hands on, 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.040 but that she's getting her hands dirty in a manuscript, 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.159 which I personally think is very important for an editor. 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:21.640 But I will lean towards given all of the information 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.720 that we have, and will lean towards Laura writing the 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:27.560 books and Rose editing. 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:32.640 I agree, Rose just sounds like the editor you dream of, 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.840 you know, who really understands what you're after and helps 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.800 you get there. But we also know what Rose's books 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.200 look like, and there's no magic in them, like all 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.840 of this magic is clearly coming from Laura. 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.640 And I also, just on a very basic level, I. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.960 Find it really difficult to imagine that Laura at age 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.640 sixty five would be like, Okay, Rose, here are my stories. 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.280 That's one thing, but please feel free to sign my 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.320 name to this and then send me out in the 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:02.399 world as a liar. 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.520 Because that's like, that's a lot. 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:06.160 That's a lot. 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.080 Why would do either of them try to execute that 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:10.400 on a very very practical level, And why would Laura 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.040 be out there taking credit for something that wasn't her work. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.560 But you know, there's also something about the first four 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:21.600 years that reminds me of the Harper Lee book Go 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:22.520 Set a Watchman. 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.680 Yes, yes, that's exactly what I've been thinking this entire time. 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.639 This smells of ghosts at a Watchman. I think we 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:32.439 need to explain how this actually came about. 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.840 So Ghost Set a Watchman was It turns out the 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.800 original draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Harper Lee 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:45.880 turned into her editor, and her editor said, no, pull 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:47.879 out this part where you're a kid and turn that 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:52.359 into a book which came out as To Kill a Mockingbird. 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:55.080 Which is an American classic, which is an American classic. 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:01.040 Decades later, after harper Le's death, find ghost at a 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:05.639 Watchman and republish it as a new undiscovered book with 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:10.560 very little framing of how this book exists and why? 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.880 And everyone read it and was like, what is this? 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.480 Why is Atticus a racist? Where's this unwieldy, terrible book 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:21.800 coming from? And it launched a lot of questions over well, 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.600 did Harperley actually write to Colon Mockingberg? But I think 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:27.320 the same thing happened, which is they found an original, 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:32.360 unpublished draft, published it without context, and all it did 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:33.800 was lead to more questions. 0:21:35.400 --> 0:21:36.359 Exactly exactly. 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.240 It goes at A Watchman, much like the first four 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.359 Years was never supposed to see the light of day. 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.439 And there's a reason that these books sat in the drawer, 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.280 and then there's a reason, of course that. 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:49.720 They were later published. 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:59.840 And I think that that reason is money, money, money. 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.000 Money, money, money, and also the deceptiveness of publishing it 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:03.879 is like a new book, Like if they'd been published 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.760 within the context they were written, that could be fascinating 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:09.800 from research purposes, but published. 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:11.960 As like here's a new book, it's like, well what 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:12.600 is this? 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:13.560 Yeah? 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:14.680 Exactly exactly. 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:17.520 Funnily enough, go said A Watchman has a ton of 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.719 politics in it too that were really questionable. And I 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:24.199 think what we're headed into after the break is like 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.320 how much of Rose's questionable politics are in Laura's books. 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:40.280 As a kid, the Little House Books felt like a 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:45.200 story of family, hard work, and adventure. As an adult, 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.159 it's easier to see there might be another message beneath 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:50.280 all the coziness. 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.720 I loved that this was her story, and I loved 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:55.960 that it came from her memories. 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:01.120 That's politics. Writer Rebecca Traster. She loved The Little House 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:02.040 Books growing. 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:04.760 Up, and I think especially growing up with my own 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.240 mom and her sister, who had these memories of a 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:11.679 rural life that was so distant from anything that anyway 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:12.480 that I lived in the. 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:15.440 Suburbs, like, I really valued that kind of. 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:18.440 Storytelling about you know, remember how we used to do things. 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:21.560 Coming back to them as a grown up, she was 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.160 less concerned about the authorship question of the books than 0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:29.760 the politics she found there. Politics that sounded an awful lot. 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:34.000 Like Rose, she was just manipulating her mother's memories to 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:35.440 serve her own political purposes. 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:39.240 There are many people who consider Little House to be 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:42.240 a libertarian fantasy, and one of the main reasons for 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:46.240 this is that Rose, in later life became a strident 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:50.040 voice in the libertarian movement. But how did she get 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.399 there and how much of the politics people claim to 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:56.720 see in Little House are actually hers, and how much 0:23:56.760 --> 0:23:57.800 are actually Laura's. 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:04.440 The fact that Rose's politics shapes these books is really 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:06.600 important to understanding American history. 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:11.959 These days, we understand complicated to be a word we 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:15.080 attached to any woman who was living outside her culturally 0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:19.639 prescribed role. But Rose really was very complicated. She was 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.919 incredibly smart and talented in a time and place that 0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:27.280 did not reward or support women for being so. She 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:30.480 suffered debilitating bouts of depression before we understood it to 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:34.679 be a disease. She'd been divorced, She'd lost a child, 0:24:35.040 --> 0:24:38.679 She'd traveled widely. She made a lot of money and 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:41.760 was very bad at managing it. For all the financial 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:44.720 support she gave her parents, they were often supporting her. 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:50.000 She had no living children but repeatedly adopted sons. And 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:54.679 she had increasingly extreme political views. These last two are 0:24:54.720 --> 0:24:58.879 key and dominate the legacy of Little House in bizarre ways. 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:04.560 Let's start with the increasingly extreme political views. Rose had 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:07.879 always had strong beliefs largely rooted in the triumph of 0:25:07.880 --> 0:25:11.640 the individual over the government. You can see this theme 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:14.600 reoccurring in her stories of Jack London and Herbert Hoover 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:18.520 and later in the novels about her parents, especially her father. 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:22.879 But during the depression, these beliefs hit a fever pitch. 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:29.480 Rose loathed FDR and Eleanor. In a number of letters 0:25:29.520 --> 0:25:32.960 she wished them both dead and volunteered to do the killing, 0:25:33.560 --> 0:25:36.440 which was not unusual for her time and place. As 0:25:36.520 --> 0:25:38.200 Pamela smith Hill notes. 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:42.960 We do know that the Wilders opposed the New Deal. 0:25:43.320 --> 0:25:47.280 They were not great fans of FDR. But almost everybody 0:25:47.359 --> 0:25:49.840 in Wright County, Missouri at that time, almost everybody in 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:53.560