From The New Yorker: Wilder Women.
William Holtz points out that Laura had been so harried by poverty and hardship-doing some of the man’s work that Almanzo couldn’t manage, in addition to her own-that she might not have had much left to give, except the example of self-denial. Rose herself could be grandiose and domineering. There is nothing explicit in their letters (few of Laura’s survive, one a belated paean of gratitude) to suggest that Wilder merited the accusations, even though she accepted Rose’s extravagant gifts and literary labors on her behalf with a sense of entitlement that was more like a child’s than like a mother’s. Rose, in her less aggrieved moments, could admit that Mama Bess, through no fault of her own, had the wrong daughter. Whatever their disappointments, they kept them from each other.
