Romance in Little House on the Prairie

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series delivers both strong and troubling romantic relationships. 

The most fascinating occur in These Happy Golden Years. The prior books, told from the point of view (mostly) of Laura as a child, encapsulate the wonder of childhood. Children don't necessarily see their lives as ridden with troubles and near starvation, even when adults believe they should. I discuss elsewhere why Hitchcock very likely didn't perceive World War I as a traumatic event, simply because the child Hitchcock accepted it as a norm. 

However, as Laura and the books age, more awareness creeps in. 

In These Happy Golden Years, one of the last books, Almanzo is courting Laura. She is teaching in a distant settlement and staying with a very unhappy couple, the Brewsters. The wife is unhappy about living in a settlement so far from any social structure with few to no social peers. 

One has only to watch the PBS House series to realize what a difference it makes to have a "milieu." One of the failings of that series was that the families didn't have anybody to get on with, to the point where the single sister in Manor House became depressed and left. 

Mrs. Brewster is to be pitied. She is also terrifying. In a scene straight out of horror, teenager Laura details a scene in which she wakes to find the wife holding a knife over her husband. 

Laura's unease is alleviated when Almanzo drives out to the settlement to pick her up. As a reader, I can remember feeling the same intense relief as Laura at Almanzo's appearance. It is a true "rescue" that the sweet-natured Almanzo takes upon himself to perform. 

Like Austen, Laura Ingalls Wilder chose quite deliberately what to leave in and what to leave out while constructing her novels. She didn't generally go in for pure horror (though the grasshoppers' chapter still haunts me). Nevertheless, the Brewsters versus Almanzo is no mistake.