How will the Little House on the Prairie remake intersect with the tradwife and homestead nostalgia movements?

There’s a remake of Little House on the Prairie due next month, which is exciting stuff for those who grew up watching the 1970s and 1980s long-running series.

Starring Australian actor Luke Bracey as the patriarch of the Ingalls, a pioneering American family in the 1870s and 1880s, the story is adapted from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical books, which have endured for decades as a cornerstone of US children’s literature.

The series could very well prove to be a hit, both commercially and critically, and the first trailer released today hints at a treatment that aims to capture the idealism and challenges of homestead life in the 19th century, as well as modern sensibilities that seek to acknowledge the reality of Indigenous Americans whose land was being stolen.

Once the series is released, it will be interesting to see how the show will intersect with the current cultural moment, because its timing is nothing if not noteworthy.

While it’s a tad reductive to describe Little House on the Prairie in broad strokes as the story of a family establishing themselves in the frontier, building a house, farming and generally trying to be self-sustaining during the pioneer era, it’s hard to detach that narrative from the recent cultural surge of tradwives, nostalgia and a yearning for the days of yore.

These movements are political, rooted in white Christian nationalism, and anyone who pretends they’re not is either being disingenuous or wilfully ignorant.

In fact, Wilder and especially her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, both espoused libertarian views in their lifetime. Lane, in particular, was critical of US federal government programs and likened Franklin D. Roosevelt to a dictator due to his Depression-era New Deal reforms to alleviate poverty.

You can easily link the travails of a 19th century homestead family and the individualist philosophies of Lane and Wilder. Lane was heavily involved in the editing of her mothers’ books, which were first published in the 1930s, decades after their setting.

Which is not to say that this Netflix remake will be some kind of anti-government, survivalist right-wing fantasy. That seems unlikely, and its showrunner, Rebecca Sonnenshine, most recently worked on The Boys, which made incisive commentaries on Trump-era political extremity and fascism.

The current pre-occupation with aping a homestead-style life can be seen in the popularity of tradwife influencers on Instagram and TikTok, who post videos and images of a seemingly idyllic lifestyle off the grid, making their own bread, milking their own cows, and generally being “freed” from the drudgery of urban post-modernity.

It had been a niche internet thing about a decade ago but exploded into the mainstream in recent years as social conservatives pushed back against progressive values.

At the core of it is a dangerous advocacy for antiquated gender roles in which the wife is subservient to the husband, and should fulfil a purpose centred on homemaking and child-rearing.

You can see how that would appeal to right-wing and conservative forces who have long railed against increased rights for women, queer and gender non-conforming people. But there’s another aspect to it.

For others, the failures of late-stage capitalism have seen women’s labour continue to be devalued in the marketplace, and to be able to “opt out”, as it were, is not not-alluring.

Instead of endless meetings and the knowledge your male colleagues are being paid more than you, you run your own day baking biscuits.

That’s not the reality, of course, but like so many internet-fuelled trends, there’s an aesthetic element where everything is curated and any unpleasantness is cropped out of frame. It all LOOKS really lovely and feminine.

All those wildflowers grown in your own garden, perfectly picked and placed in a lace ribbon-trimmed vase, why wouldn’t you?

Prairiecore and cottagecore had already emerged as trends before the pandemic but being locked down and nesting with sourdough starters certainly supercharged it. You’ll find it still in Instagram-popular fashion brands such as French label Sezane.

Two months ago, Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear was published and immediately made a splash, appearing on book club lists and already snapped up for a film adaptation with Anne Hathaway.

The protagonist is a tradwife influencer named Natalie (Burke said she didn’t base Natalie on anyone specifically, but the characters bears a striking surface similarity to Hannah Neeleman, whose account Ballerina Farm has more than 10 million followers) who presents to the world a portrait of perfect homestead life.

She has five children and is pregnant with a sixth, sells raw milk at the farmers markets, posts recipes for homemade butter and calls her egg-laying hens “ladies”.

The reality is quite different. She struggles to connect with her children (she had undiagnosed post-partum), hates her aimless, conspiracy-addled husband, and has dozens of employees who actually do all the work.

Yesteryear is meant to be a scathing satire of tradwives as sold by the internet – and it, and all the accoutrements required, is a commoditised life, fully participant in a capitalist ecosystem.

For the aspiring tradwives and their ilk, Little House on the Prairie could end up being another goalpost on their way to cottagecore self-sufficiency.

Or maybe they’ll realise that actually living in a 19th century homestead means doing without matching Le Creuset pots and antibiotics.