[LMB] Ages, (or Little House with Green Gables in Oklahoma) mostly OT:

[Pouncer at aol.com]

Jason Long <sturmvogel_66 at hotmail.com>
 
>> I'm really not so sure that frontier women married
>>  as early as seems to be believed.
 
>My basis has always been the Little House books
>...  the  1870s of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood
> is an appropriate tech level  to compare to WGW.
 
Steam locomotives and riverboats criss-crossing
entire continents, and  all that?  Oooo-kay.
 
I'm having a harder time with time all the time, myself.
Persians and  Romans and Greeks, oh my! Was it bronze before
porcelean or the other way  'round?
 
Also, introducing my kids to, well, stories generally, I
find it hard  to separate historically-based novels I've read
and enjoyed and share from  the derivitive TV / DVDs.  Little
House, now, always shows up in my head  -- and theirs,
I suppose -- with Michael Landon as "Pa", whatever  image
I'd developed independently when Landon was still a twinkly-
eyed  young cowboy on a set pretending to be the Ponderosa.
(The set pretending ...  not Landon. Garble that syntax,
whydoncha?)
 
Similarly, I don't know if the line I'm about to quote,
appropos  (FINALLY) of the subject at hand is from the
books or the movies  of  Wilder's almost contemporary
Lucy Maud Montgomery. I think it was Anne  Shirley's
rich beau Morgan Harris who said:
 
"An early marriage indicates second-rate goods that have to
be sold in  a hurry."
 
OWTTE. (This from a middle-aged widower wooing the barely-
twenty girl  tutoring his teenaged daughter. ) Back
calculating: This was a generation  prior to World War One,
so put the comment circa 1890.  Harris's first  marriage and
attitudes then being exactly, not near, contemporary with
the  Little House era, 1870.  And the old lady Harris and
grandparents of  Pringles, who had their own opinions about
the right and proper age for girls  to marry -- which ones
had missed chances  and why -- all making  fortunes in the
era of great sail, circa 1830-1850.
 
Which gives us two prominent North American checkpoints on
attitudes  of that century, consistent with one another (,and
therefore inarguably  true?)
 
Discussions of this sort frequently invoke Juliet, and Lady
Capulet,  who asserts that she herself and many girls of
Juliet's age have been "wives  and mothers made" at not quite
14 years old. At which point real life fathers  of daughters
nearing that age point out the example shows how poorly  such
a marriage fares. Over 3 centuries this discussion plays
out among  impulsive daughters, concerned parents, and
matchmakers with an eye on the  financial bottom line and the
"keep her out of deeper trouble" idea seems to  be the only
compelling argument in favor.  By mid twentieth century  we
have R&H's blooming teen farmer girls attracting the
attention of  range-riding Oklahoma cowboys --"Oh, the
farmers and patrollers should be  friends, oh the farmers and
patrollers should be friends ..."
 
-- where was I?
 
Oh.  "I caint say no."  It's not entirely clear how old  Ado
Annie was, but compared to Laurie and other peers she was
a relatively  late bloomer who had "bloomed" suddenly,
recently, and, er,   prominently. I assume this change was
not delayed into the start of Annie's  third decade of life.
The story implies she, and Laurie, were teenagers in  roughly
their first summer of indisputable nubility.
 
How likely it is a couple of New York City/ Tin Pan Alley
guys were  correctly portraying a historically typeical
situation in 1905 Indian  Territory?
 
Eh.
 
Jason and I and, I suspect, a lot of us have a basis more in
long  running currents of popular cultural perception of the
matter than in actual  historical data.  Dawn's another of
the same ilk. It's dramatic and  thematically useful to have
a very young viewpoint on matters of the WGW  compared to the
experienced -- not to say cynical or world-weary -- view  Dag
initially offers. Dawn sees herself as exceptional, but to
the  story-reader, she's "May", or maybe even April, to Dag's
equally familiar  "December". Now, sometimes heroines of this
ilk wind up the Morgan Harris's;  sometimes they come around
to their Gilbert Blythe.  (ick -- Sunny as  Gilbert?!  ICK!
Ptooey!) I just suggest that part of the mental model  we
have of young lovers and teenaged brides is based on exactly
Jason's  sort (or mine)  of easy familiarity with stories,
and distant  recollection, if any, of actual history that Ann
Sharp shows.
 
>...twenty-four for the young man, twenty for the girl.
>...  numbers ... well supported once for Mr. and Mrs.
>Ordinary Person [with] a  baptismal date and
>a marriage date recorded, late 16th-early 17th  centuries.
 
Which conforms seemingly well with Mark A's rule:
 
>The bride should be half the groom's age, plus seven years.
>  Groom - 18
> Bride - 16
 
Or (and better) 24 and 19, yes?
 
I thought I remembered that rule as one of Aristotle's
rather than  frontier folklore.
--




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