I’ve been reading Little Town on the Prairie again. The whole “Miss Wilder teaches school” section is one I usually skim. Yes, Miss Wilder seems to be an unfair teacher. But Laura Ingalls went on to marry Miss Wilder’s brother and even let her own daughter live with her one day. And everybody knows now that Nellie Oleson (actually Nellie Owens) never lived in De Smet, so you can’t really blame any of the story on her. Gennie Masters was supposedly the inspiration for Nellie’s De Smet character, and in real life, it’s obvious that some of the other big girls in school were quite friendly with Gennie, even if Laura herself might not have been.

Tonight, I really paid attention to all the times Laura wrote about Miss Wilder’s unfairness.

After Carrie is forced to rock the seat by herself, LIW writes that Laura “hated Miss Wilder, for her unfairness and meanness.” Laura grows angrier and angry as she rocks the seat herself, and says on the way home that “she would have done it again.”

The next morning, Laura still hates Miss Wilder for her “cruel unfairness to Carrie.” After noon break, Laura again thinks that she would “never forgive Miss Wilder for her unfairness to Carrie. She did not want to forgive her.” And even later: “She did not forgive Miss Wilder. She felt hard and hot as burning coal when she thought of Miss Wilder’s treatment of Carrie.” Even after the boys are openly chanting the verse about lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane: “She blamed herself, yet she still blamed Miss Wilder far more. If Miss Wilder had been only decently fair to Carrie…”

Over the weekend, Laura is miserable, but she still feels “a scalding fury against Miss Wilder.” Yet after Pa and the other school board members have visited the school and Pa asks Laura to explain her part in what has been going on in the school, she doesn’t mention Carrie at all.

Suddenly everything revolves around Nellie Oleson’s behavior to Laura and her family in Walnut Grove. Nellie’s past meanness and Laura’s dislike for her are understandable, especially when you bring in the whole “town girl / country girl” backstory. But Miss Wilder was an unfair teacher, and I would have liked to have seen her treatment of Carrie at least mentioned when the whole story was wrapped up so neatly.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Eliza Jane Wilder actually taught the fall 1882 term in De Smet. Frank Clewett taught the winter 1883 (January – March) term in De Smet. Laura Ingalls Wilder writes this part of Little Town on the Prairie as if it happened the previous year, in 1881. Eliza Jane Wilder left De Smet in August 1881 to stay with a friend in Valley Springs, Dakota Territory. She did not return to De Smet until February 1882.