Gender Roles in Little House on the Prairie: Chapter 5

In the 19th Century, gender roles were as traditional as they have ever been. The male of the household would make all of the important decisions, as well as do most of the out-of-house labour and have a proper job. His wife, on the other hand, would be left saddled with doing the housework, looking after the children (if any are present), and generally being a 'yes woman'. This is largely due to the old-fashioned (at the time as well as now) that thanks to evolution, only men had the brains to be able to 'make the important decisions'.

'Little House on the Prairie' is no exception to this rule, appearing to be heavily in favour of traditional gender roles. An exemplar part of the novel for these gender roles to appear in is Chapter Five, otherwise known as 'The House on the Prairie'. In this chapter, Pa and the rest of the family find somewhere to settle, and decide to build their titular abode; or rather, Pa decides that they shall build the house there, saying 'Right here we'll build our house.' The fact that he doesn't even consult his wife, let alone the rest of his family, about this decision, proving that the 'man of the house' truly makes all of the important decisions in the life of the family, for better or worse. Pa is still the central figure in the family, and even outside of the chapter, and even outside the book itself, Pa, or Charles Ingalls, is portrayed as the centre of the family. The picture below is proof of this, with Charles being in the centre of the picture, literally.

As well as making all of the important decisions, Pa also does a lot of the hard, manual labour, such as '[taking] a bucket and his ax' and 'going to get a load of logs from the creek bottoms', and is portrayed as the epitome of masculinity and strength, as 'all by himself, he built the house three logs high'. Pa is portrayed in this manner as a nigh-infallible human being, one who can do no wrong. However, Pa is actually far from infallible, as he fails to prevent Ma from being hurt by a falling log, and he comments on that matter with 'I blame myself...I should have used skids.' This allows the reader to realise that not only is Pa far from perfect, but also that he is in fact only human, and humans all make mistakes. However, it also could be said that, through Ma's failed attempt at helping Pa build the house, it is shown that hard labour is not what women should be doing, or perhaps even that they simply aren't built to handle such heavy-duty work. The rest of the family, particularly Ma, is saddled with doing the housework, such as making the tent on arrival, and even the children are dragged into it. Only Laura manages to get away with doing anything remotely out of the ordinary, as she often goes off exploring, due to her intense curiosity. The expression of Laura's inner thoughts allows the writer to buck the trend of the time and give Laura a (contextually unusual) sense of importance, but this is still not enough to dislodge Pa as the central character, or the deep-set gender roles which are present.