Will the Real Nellie Oleson Please Stand Up

Genevieve Masters. 

From the first time she disdainfully muttered "country girls" to new girls Mary and Laura Ingalls, the name Nellie Oleson has become synonymous with the ultimate playground antagonist. However, readers of the original "Little House" books might be surprised to learn that the girl Laura Ingalls described was not actually one person. Instead, the character of Nellie Oleson was a composite super-villain created by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who blended the traits of three different girls she encountered during her childhood on the frontier.

Nellie Owens

The first and most significant inspiration for Nellie was a girl named Nellie Owens. Much like the character in "On the Banks of Plum Creek," Nellie Owens was the daughter of a local shopkeeper in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Her father, William Owens, ran a general store that competed with other local merchants, and the Owens family enjoyed a level of relative luxury that the Ingalls family lacked.

 Nellie Owens was known to be proud of her fine clothes and her status as a merchant’s daughter, which sparked the initial rivalry with Laura. While she provided the name and the base personality for the literary Nellie, she wasn't the only girl to leave a mark on Laura’s memory.

Genevieve Masters

A few years later, after the Ingalls family moved to De Smet in the Dakota Territory, Laura encountered Genevieve Masters. Genevieve was the daughter of a former teacher of Laura’s from Walnut Grove who had also relocated to the plains. Genevieve was widely considered the "queen bee" of the De Smet school circle. She was sophisticated, wore stylish clothes from the East, and looked down on the local girls. Laura’s descriptions of Nellie’s haughty attitude and her leadership of a mean girl clique in "Little Town on the Prairie" are based on her real-life friction with Genevieve Masters.

Stella Gilbert

The third piece of the Nellie Oleson puzzle came from a girl named Stella Gilbert. During the "hard winter" and the subsequent years in De Smet, Stella was a beautiful girl who became Laura’s rival for the attention of Almanzo Wilder. In the book "These Happy Golden Years," Nellie is depicted as trying to steal Almanzo away by joining him on buggy rides. In reality, it was Stella Gilbert who was the girl in the buggy. Laura’s jealousy and the competitive tension she felt regarding Almanzo were funneled into the character of Nellie to give the fictionalized version of her rival a familiar face.

Introducing Nellie Oleson

By combining the name and family status of Nellie Owens, the urban sophistication of Genevieve Masters, and the romantic rivalry of Stella Gilbert, Laura Ingalls Wilder created a character that was far more interesting than any single person could be, and more complex than the caricature played out on TV. It allowed her to condense several years of childhood conflict into one consistent foil. 

While the real-life Nellie, Genevieve, and Stella eventually moved on to lead their own separate lives, they remain forever linked in history as the three women who stood up together to become the most famous "bad girl" in American literature. 

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