Caroline Ingalls on How to be a Good Wife
Little House on the Prairie Changed My Brain Chemistry
One of the big problems of “the right wing” and indeed of any modern conservative movements is that it defines itself through the negative experience. While it is important to dismantle bad ideas and explain the errors in their justification, it is far more important to offer an alternative way of living and thinking about the world. It is not enough, for example to say that feminism is bad. We must also talk about the alternative. What does that look like? How does it work? What challenges inhere within the alternative and how can they be navigated? No where is this anti-feminist idea better represented for me than in the character of Caroline Ingalls.
Who is Caroline Ingalls? I met her for the first time bleary eyed and nursing a newborn when I first started watching Little House on the Prairie as a way to pass the endless idle hours. She emerged a blue-eyed simple beauty in a bonnet and apron. Unassuming, she wound her way around my heart. When women meet other women who are better than them, the usual response is a kind of illogical hatred or resentment as though the other woman’s perfection is an indictment on our own flaws. But Caroline Ingalls disproves this theory somehow because her light and warmth does not indict us mere mortals who cannot make our own clothes or weather the challenges of the hardy pioneer. Rather, Caroline invites us into her fold and inspires us. Not righteous but good. Not judgemental but also not tolerant of evil. Hers is a light that illuminates rather than blinds. In a way, this is the essence of an ideal woman: one who inspires. She is the muse.
There are so many bad examples of wives out there for us on social media and in the real world. All of these women seem to be at war with their husbands and their families. The feminist poison is the idea that insists that a woman serving her family is somehow an unfortunate subjugates slave and the family is an obstacle to her empowerment and self development. Caroline Ingalls refutes this rancid idea with power and fury and she does this without ever referencing it. She refutes feminism by being the opposite: she is an anachronistic character who teaches us what it is to be a good wife and how it can make us better women, and better people.
There are many things I have learned from Caroline Ingalls specifically on how to become a good wife. In this piece, I endeavour to explain some of them.
