Review a House Full of Females Plural Marriage and Womenã¢â‚¬â„¢s Rights in Early Mormonism
"Well-behaved women seldom make history" My wife and I named our only daughter Emmeline later Emmeline B. Wells, the 5th president of the Mormon Church building's relief society. The reason we felt strongly about using that name was Emmeline B. Wells was both a potent Mormon, a writer, and an early feminist and suffragette. She advocated for a woman's right to vote and edited the Women's Exponent in 1872. She was also the 7th wife of Daniel H. Wells, a Mormon apostle and subsequently mayor of Salt Lake City. That conflict, or apparent conflict, between early on Mormon feminism and polygamy is a rich and fascinating territory. It is complex, fluid, and sometimes appears contradictory. However, in the hands of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, this absorbing attribute of women, organized religion, family, suffrage, and the early Mormon church becomes a tapestry sewn together by various voices through Ulrich's well-honed skill at analyzing early diaries, notes, letters, poems, albums, and the fifty-fifty quilts of members of the LDS faith (primarily women) from the beginning of the LDS church through 1870 (the twelvemonth women's suffrage passed in the territory of Utah*). For those who are unfamiliar with Ulrich, she was the one who fabricated famous the phrase: "well-behaved women seldom make history". She also wrote the landmark book, A Midwife'due south Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. This landmark volume was (and is) very influential for subverting many ideas of pre-industrial labor, gender roles, and HIStory. She is Harvard's 300th Anniversary University Professor, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize, former President of the American Historical Association, and is a Guggenheim and MacArthur fellow. She is just a bad ass. If nosotros ever have another girl, we might only name her Laurel and purchase her a diary. * It was later repealed under the Edmunds–Tucker Human action and was eventual returned in 1896 when Utah became a land, but that will probably need to wait until Professor Ulrich writes A House Full of Females, Part two: 1870 to present.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Not my favorite. It was horrifically sad, tragic and dismal. No doubtfulness the inquiry was extensive, but like most nonfiction books of this nature, it definitely had a slant. Omit this, spend 4 pages on that, barely mention this, yada yada, yada. I know, it is just a pet peeve of mine....only I like my nonfiction the same style I like cheesecake. I prefer the whole thing and not just a slice....and that is what this felt like. It was just a piece of the story. This also felt actually long, probably because it was. I listened to the audio. The narrator had a pleasant vox, simply another pet peeve is when unproblematic words are mispronounced. Being from Alaska, when I listen to stories with my home state as the setting, I wait the names to be pronounced correctly. Even though the names and words in this book aren't almost as complicated as some Alaskan names are, information technology however needs to be correct. So two stars.
This is the kind of historical project I would dream of taking on: studying a large collection of journals of every-day people and weaving them together to tell a story about life in a sure society. I loved learning what Ulrich skillfully pieced together. Utah'due south pioneer women were criticized and pitied for being victims of polygamy with its apparent patriarchal sublimation, simply in truth they were some of the most independent and powerful women of their era. Yes, they did bow in obedience to the challenge of plural matrimony, but in doing then they subjected themselves to God more than than men. Inside their homes they were ofttimes chosen on to provide economic and familial management for years at a fourth dimension while their husbands served far-flung missions. Many plural wives were obstensibly heads of their own households, every bit their men divided their time betwixt families. Get-go in the 1840s they organized Relief Societies and other service-oriented councils that gave them leadership experience that was later on called upon past national women'south suffrage leaders. Women were granted the vote in Utah in 1870, before whatever state in the Union other than Wyoming, and exercised this right with pride. Utah wives too possessed easier access to divorce than their American contemporaries, because Mormon marriages (plural or monogamous) could be dissolved by "common consent," while in the rest of the United States a judgment of guilt (generally proven adultery) was required. I was surprised at how many plural wives actually did divorce their polygamist husbands. As I read excerpts from many of these women's journals, I felt such pride in these cultural and bodily ancestors of mine. Most of them didn't especially desire to be plural wives, only they had testimonies of the Gospel, and determined to live what they didn't fully understand. I see this as evidence of their strength. I'll admit that the primary sources quoted made me recall less of some of the pioneer men; after learning virtually William Clayton'due south wandering eye I was perturbed to read from his diary that Brigham Young was set to teach him about plural marriage and "give me a favor which I accept long desired." I tin can't say that I'm persuaded by Orson Pratt'southward exclamation that polygamy was for the adult female's do good considering "the promulgation of monogamy ha[s] brought horrendous evils on the earth, including the prostitution, degradation, and misery of women." And it bankrupt my heart to hear first wife Emma Clawson's feelings most her married man's young bride, "a new wife is a new thing, and I know it is incommunicable for him to feel any different towards her just at present, still it make[s] my middle ache to think I accept not the same love." Polygamy is a tough discipline, and perhaps some LDS church members would rather not read this book. Ulrich is an upstanding Mormon, but she is besides a scholar, and she doesn't paint things in a too-rosy light. Reconciling this hard part of my organized religion's history with my dearest and loyalty to the church today is not easy, merely I call back it's an important thing for which to strive.
At terminal. A book on Mormon history that non only includes women, simply focuses on women, treating them as consummate subjects who led rich and varied lives full of loss, pain, and stalwart faith. I especially loved reading about the many accounts of women administering healing blessings to their beau sisters. And how sick I felt reading well-nigh how Eliza R Snow'south forgotten diary would have burned if someone had not pulled information technology from the burn down box because it looked interesting. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich does an award to our Mormon foremothers by telling their stories--through incredibly meticulous enquiry--with dignity, honesty, and honey, thus crediting their vital contributions to the success of early Mormonism.
This book is about much more than than polygamy and women's rights, although you lot'll learn much nigh those things hither. A House Total of Females is a compulsively readable cultural history of the first forty years of the Latter-day Saint experience told from the basis upward. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich expertly weaves together scraps from diaries, letters, and other day-to-solar day records created in ink, cloth, memory, and other materials—all of which are used to examine the development of Mormon theology and culture. Ulrich'southward book upends traditional narratives using the voices of Mormon women—voices which have too often been unheard in previous accounts, voices preserved in long-forgotten records stored in old breadboxes or woven into quilts passed downward through the years. As a new history, A Firm Full of Females surely ranks amid the all-time books nigh early on Mormonism.
This is a book I volition read again. Information technology is total to the brim with my people. All the lines from which my father descended were these, many-wived men and one-husband-at-a-time-women. Their convictions were deep and their commitment to beingness a peculiar people even deeper. Until it wasn't. There are so many stories riddled through my family lines that have missing or turned facts, with wholly disingenuous outcomes that it was a relief to have the words of a real, alive scholar on my specific people. What really happened? I know some of it, and in some cases even more than than is here, but there were others that had answers to questions in these pages. And some mysteries still remain, sadly. Yep. I volition read this again. Would love to ask questions of this author . . .maybe she knows how to solve my mysteries. Or where to look. Regardless of my quandaries, I respect the honest, forthright information shared, untwisted and merely the facts. No affair what, it is admittedly astonishing how creatively people will design their societies to accommodate their perceived needs - long earlier their laws catch up to adjudicate either for or against said designs. And by and then, there is oft a pattern established that fifty-fifty if abolished, retains an echo that never is completely silenced.
I loved this less than I wanted to, but information technology was yet an impressive and much needed piece of work of history. A decent corporeality of scholarship has been washed about the intersection between polygamy and women's rights between the late 1860s and the 1890s (a FASCINATING time in Mormon women'due south history), but there hasn't been much written virtually the lead-up to those years. Ulrich's work fills that gap. Unreasonably, I was a piddling disappointed that A House Full of Females didn't cover 1870 on, since information technology would be wonderful to run into that scholarship done really, actually well by someone similar Ulrich. Oh well. No ane tin can reconstruct an entire club based on the writings of everyday people the way Laurel Thatcher Ulrich can. She's a master of writing social histories (if you lot haven't read The Midwife'due south Tale, her Pulitzer Prize-winner, go do it at present). In that respect, A House Total of Females doesn't disappoint. Using letters, diaries, coming together minutes, and even quilts, she analyzes the experience of early on Mormon women as polygamy was first introduced and was somewhen made public cognition. She follows the Latter-24-hour interval Saints from Nauvoo to Utah and beyond, trying to understand and faithfully represent their attitudes and experiences with plural matrimony. These are the years when the strangest and most secretive stuff happened in regard to polygamy, so I loved reading a history done by a true historian (not an apologist) who as well happens to be LDS. She knows the history and civilization of the church and is respectful of the claimed spiritual experiences of her subjects, but she's still a historian. She'due south very honest and appropriately analytical virtually the past, and I'm and so happy that high-caliber history nigh the LDS church has been coming forward more often in contempo years. Side annotation: I did detect it odd that so much of A House Full of Females was pulled from Wilford Woodruff'south diary. Ulrich explains that he was probably the virtually prolific periodical author in early Mormon history, but information technology withal seems curious to me that a book about women's history was largely based on a man's diary. Where the book fell short for me was in its discussion of the women'due south rights move. Ulrich touches on it, merely I wish information technology had been more fully integrated throughout A House Total of Females. I came away with a better understanding of the history of polygamy, only I don't feel similar I sympathize any better than I did earlier where Mormon women's back up of the suffrage movement in the 1870s and beyond came from. I feel like, since the title suggests it, Ulrich might have done a better job of integrating the story of Mormon women with the national women'due south rights movement. That fabric is there. Nineteenth century ideas about woman every bit the "angel of the dwelling" and the family unit's moral guardian directly translated into women's view of themselves as the nation'southward moral guardians. It seems to me like those narratives would accept blended in and so well with Ulrich's discussions of polygamy. But now I feel ridiculous considering I'chiliad talking abut how someone like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich could be a improve historian. She's still the best. A warning for audiobook listeners. I wish so much that either the publishers had called a reader familiar with Mormon terminology or that the chosen narrator had done some research. Susan Ericksen mispronounces things all over the place in ways that will bother LDS readers or anyone who knows Mormon lingo. Names like Lamanites, Nephi, Zion, Zina, and And then MANY others are consistently mispronounced. It felt similar she hadn't even tried to acquire the typical pronunciation, and that really bothered me. Information technology reflects poorly on Ulrich'south work and might cause LDS readers to question the validity of the enquiry, which is really unfortunate. Information technology's not the volume's fault - it's the audiobook reader's. Concluding thought: I was bummed that Emmeline B. Wells was only mentioned once, because she's my accented hero. It makes sense because she didn't become prominent until correct around the terminate of the fourth dimension menses covered, merely I just honey her and desire everyone to know her. That is all.
Others tin can do a better job evaluating Ulrich'southward arguments, but I'll say that her book is invaluable in its reconstruction of Mormon women'southward lives between 1835 and 1870. What engaged me most was the staggering variety of these women'south experiences and their adaptations to the vicissitudes of life, including remarriage, housework, and social organizations.
The most impressive part of this large book was the meticulous research and general gathering of artifacts- diaries, poems, letters, quilts, and daguerrotypes, that was required to produce such a detailed await into polygamy and early feminism within the Mormon church. I had the opportunity to attend a lecture and reading with Laurel and her enthusiasm and no-nonsense responses to difficult questions ("Do you really believe Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ?") definitely influenced how much I enjoyed and appreciated this book. My favorite parts were the poems written by sisters, peculiarly Eliza R. Snow, which illustrated difficulties, doubts, hopes and wishes of Mormon women, many of which I share. I felt an increased sense of pride for the Relief Club after learning of its controversial origins. Feminism is "in" right now and the gathering of women is more than popular and fashionable than e'er. This is not a criticism of modernistic-twenty-four hour period feminism, but a little humble brag that I accept been a member of one of the oldest girls-only clubs in the United states of america since I graduated high school. I take ever struggled with the patriarchal nature of Mormonism, and while this book did non erase every criticism and doubtfulness, it certainly softened my heart and increased my understanding and religion in a organized religion I often throw my hands up in frustration. I think many will likewise enjoy the candid diary entries and messages from, these, for lack of a better give-and-take, sassy women of the mid-1800s. This book is thorough, well-written and surprisingly entertaining. I highly recommend for those interested in women's roles inside the Mormon church building, Mormon women and polygamy and all my feminist Mormon sisters <three Mormonism has always been a faith of second chances. How else did its early on adherents persist in building one promised Zion after another, fifty-fifty when the early ones failed? In the same mode, conviction in new ancestry allowed hostage female leaders to plough the other cheek when officious men disparaged their religious gifts or denied the promises they believed God had given them. Living in their religion, they learned wisdom by the things that they suffered, and when the opportunity came in 1870, they defended the right to speak for themselves.
I really appreciated this book. It was a deep social history which I haven't really read before, so it took me some fourth dimension to go through. It was refreshing to read an early history of the women of the LDS church written past a historian who attempted to deliver unbiased facts the best she could. It was heartbreaking to realize what depth of struggle these women experienced. Growing up I heard the stories of physical hardship and sacrifice, but its sad to realize that at that place is a whole part of emotional hardship and cede that is not openly talked almost. While being refugees time and time again these women were trying to come to terms with polygamy and having husbands called on crazy long missions. Its lamentable to me that information technology took me nearly 30 years and active searching to have a fuller idea of these female pioneers. I wish we would talk about these things more openly. As and LDS woman I am attempting to empathize polygamy and meet how this doctrine fits in with my faith. Although this book didn't really help reply my questions fully I think it is a proficient historical starting point. I'm grateful Laurel Thatcher Ulrich took on this topic. I really admire her.
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