For example, in manosphere terms, both Pa and Almanzo (and Almanzo’s dad, too) are Alphas: capable, confident, leaders of men. Pa could build a freakin’ house from scratch using basically and ax and a pocketknife, plus he was on the schoolboard, AND he could stare down a lynchmob. Almanzo and a sidekick risk their lives (and their horses’ lives) to save the town from literally starving to death.

Speaking of horses: I think that was one of the key attractors for Laura. She LOOOOVED Almanzo’s horses, and quite possibly his ability to control several nearly-wild horses. It’s like a motorcycle: chick crack.

We can also analyze the stories from a Moldbug/Seeds of Albion class/ethnicity angle. The Ingallses and the Wilders are both Puritan/Brahmin/New England families….and it shows. Almanzo might not have been the scholarly type, but his family was—heck, his sister was a schoolteacher, just like Laura and Ma. Of course, there were no other professions for women, I know. These families also had low time preference, and the Wilders as described in Farmer Boy seem to be quite prosperous. Both families are quite patriotic, which is a curious difference between Brahmins Then and Now. I think Steve Sailer has talked about how the Brahmins used to think of this as THEIR country, and took seriously the business of running it. Now the Brahmins “leapfrog” America to show how concerned they are about the rest of the world. They are Congregationalists (that’s only mentioned in passing in the books, I think), and they seemed to actually believe in God, so they hadn’t fully evolved to the modern Brahmin faith of Universalism (although NB that Unitarianism is an offshoot of the Calvinist Congregational church).

TL;DR – reading books is fun when you think about them via the Red Pill.