On the Banks of Plum Creek: HERE WE GO

This series, man. Big Woods was the first, Prairie was the most racist and the one the TV show was named after, the love interest doesn’t show up until Long Winter, but On the Banks of Plum Creek is, for my money, where the books really get started. Why? Because this is the book that introduces the two main themes of the series (other than food): Nature as Incomprehensible Proto-Cosmic Horror and Beauty, and MOTHERFUCKING NELLIE OLESON.

Let’s talk the second first.

Whatever her flaws as a human, and there are plenty, Wilder really got a few things about being a kid and did not sugarcoat them. (See also: the bit where they go to church and Laura likes the preacher but the sermon is veeeery long and boring, Sunday School is extremely basic, and nobody can fucking sing.) With Nellie Oleson, she made one of the most hateable child characters ever and did not succumb to the trap that many other authors and frankly better humans fell into: making her an object of sympathy. At no time is it suggested that Nellie’s obnoxiousness is the result of Secret Pain, or that Laura should make overtures to her. She is not redeemed. They do not become friends.

This is awesome.

I get, from the perspective of an adult writing books and a semi-adequate liberal, why other authors fall into the angsty-backstory-for-the-bully trap: we are not supposed to believe that children are just awful, or to root for their complete mental and physical destruction.

That doesn’t work on your average kid.

I wrote earlier about Clarence and the hornets, and how this all seems awful to grownup readers, but as a child? There are few things more satisfying than seeing another child deservedly get it in the neck. It was a great day in school when the teacher was yelling at someone who wasn’t you or your friend.

Similarly, the point about how you should get to know your enemy and discover that everyone has their own problems and give peace a chance and all that is a deeply, deeply unsatisfying plot element when you’re a child. I find it a deeply unsatisfying one now in most cases, and also the stress on forgiveness as long as the other person Has Problems and the idea that the abused person should be the one extending the olive branch strikes me as wildly fucking toxic in general, but that’s way more thought than I gave the issue when I was eight. At eight, it breaks down very simply.

Is this person a dick to me? Yes.

Do I care why? No.

Do I care if they grow and change? Also no.

Do I want to see them infested with leeches, and then later walk smugly away from a Christmas party, having gotten way better winter accessories than they have? OH HELL YES.

And oh hell does Nellie deserve it. She goes from just being snobby and gloating to throwing tantrums (and physical assault) when she doesn’t get her way on the playground–and how much, as someone who has dealt with her share of WELL MAYBE I’LL JUST QUIT THEN Martyr Moose assholes, do I love when she threatens not to play and runs off and every other little girl is just like, okay, don’t let the good Lord hit you? SO MUCH–to the TOTALLY A TRAP party.

Who invites all the girls in school over and then says they can’t play with her things, just her younger brother’s? NELLIE FUCKING OLESON, apparently. (Until she gets miffed at not being the center of attention and starts showing off dolls that people are Double Secret Not Allowed to Touch so she can freak out about people maybe touching them, oh my God I know far too many grown-ass adults like this girl.)

Sidebar: Wow do I identify with Laura in the “I could be meaner than her than she is to us, if Ma and Pa would let me,” in the same way that I love Esme Weatherwax’s “If I had been as bad as you, I would have been a whole lot worse.” I don’t have many ethics, but I have some and they’re mostly centered around not being That Person, so there was a certain kind of World of Cardboard frustration when my social circle included a bunch of emotionally-manipulative, throwing-tantrum, wounded-kitten-act twits and I was like “…I could run fucking circles around you except I’d have to be like you and ugh NOT WORTH IT.“

So okay. Ma throws a reciprocal party for Mary and Laura. Nellie shows up and is just THE WORST, to Ma’s actual face and everything–like, what even is the good of living in an era where you could slap other people’s children if you don’t give Nellie a black eye for that “I don’t wear my best dress to the country,” bit, Caroline?*–and Laura deploys marine life to EXCELLENT EFFECT and gets in zero trouble over it. Ma also explains vanity cakes in a way that absolutely seems like shade, and she’d made them before Nellie and her Attitude were in attendance, so did she deduce certain things from Laura and Mary or what?

That, except for the fur muff Christmas tree plot, is it for Nellie, FOR NOW, because the second part of the book kicks in, and there’s enough of that to make this post a two-parter.

In perhaps an excessive bit of English majoring, I did notice that Nellie has about the same color palette as Mary, and is likewise more stereotypically feminine than Laura…and this book is roughly the one in which the Laura-Mary rivalry ends. There are a few quarrels over who’s the boss (Angela, obvs), but there’s a part on the first day of school where Mary says “Anyway, there’s two of us,” and that mostly seems to be that.

There’s also a part at the swimming hole where Pa and Laura are out in the deep water, and they can’t stay because “they must go back to the bank and play with Mary.” On the one hand, as the Kid Who Did Not Like Deep Water, I appreciated Mary’s viewpoint there, but on the other? This is why, try as you might to treat them equally, close-in-age siblings are going to haaaaaaaate each other sometimes when they’re young. You can understand accommodations and that it’s worth not doing the thing you want to do forever because you like the other person when you’re older. At eight? Your sister is literally The Reason You Cannot Have Nice Things, UUUUUUUGH.

Eventually they grow up and make each other cocktails, if it helps. Or my sister and I did, anyhow.

*Obviously I don’t support hitting actual children in any era.