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uppity mormon women

Introduction: Uppity Mormon Women
Author's Note: It's August 18 and to celebrate the passing of the amendment that allowed women to vote, I thought this would be the best time to post my Uppity Mormon Women series. This was inspired by cassiphone's (Roman) Women's History Month. Go read it if you haven't.

Now, not all the Uppity Mormon Women I'm going to share with you were notable for their suffragette activity, but have distinguished themselves enough for me to find sufficient info on them in my meager library to say something interesting about them. It's hard being on the other side of the planet from Utah sometimes. (Other times, I can't be far enough away. I still love Jello though.)

Enjoy.

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In the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, American history has been marked by the influence of Mormon^[1] Women. Alas, not many people know the stories of these forthright and courageous women. Compared to the views of women's roles at the time, they could be considered rather uppity. But they were blessed in that they lived in a faith and a culture that allowed them to become more than just chattel, more than a simple housewife, to sit meekly at home, raise the children, keep the house and generally not be heard.

If you told an early Mormon woman that she was supposed to be the meek stay-at-home housewife, she'd laugh in your face.

An interesting thing about early Mormon culture is that there is a strong belief in the equality of women. They were encouraged to be individuals, to seek out education and interests outside of the home. Brigham Young, an early LDS leader, firmly believed that women should be educated, and not just the usual schoolteacher or nurse stuff. He wanted to see women as doctors! Law, science, politics, music, theater... there was no such thing as a course of study that was "for men only".

Many women had interests outside of the home and were encouraged in such.

Another interesting thing about early Mormon culture was the practice of plural marriage (polygamy). Many people outside of the Church couldn’t understand this. As far as they believed, plural marriage was some sort of bizarre practice that enslaved and sexually exploited women. And to the outsider, it's easy to see how that view came about.

What they didn't know about early Latter-Day Saint plural marriage practices:

1. Not everyone practiced it. In fact, it was only practiced by a minority, because...
   
2. The men who practiced it did so only after they were asked to by church leaders. A man couldn't just wake up one morning and say, "Gee, I think I'll go get me a second wife." He had to be able to financially support a subsequent wife/family as well.
   
3. A man could only take on a second wife pending approval of the first wife. If she said no, then her word was the final word!
   
4. The man had to court his potential second wife. If he asked her to marry him and she said no, that was the end of that.
   
5. Not every plural wife was sexually involved with her husband. Sometimes subsequent wives were wives in name only, where they received financial support, social acknowledgement, and that was about it. Some of Brigham Young's wives were wives in name only. (Factlet: out of his fifty-two recorded wives, only sixteen had children.)
   
6. Divorce was allowed if the marriage wasn't turning out to be a happy one. Latter-Day Saints weren't just advocates of marriage, they were advocates of happy marriages, and if it wasn't a happy and successful one, then it was better it was ended.
   

Now while I understand the practice of polygamy in the early days of the Church from a historian's, this practice was discontinued in the 1890's and has been prohibited ever since then. Modern polygamy, practiced by disassociated groups is nothing like the original practice of the Latter-Day Saints. I do not advocate old men taking teenage wives against their will and keeping them isolated, uneducated and practical slaves who are unable to obtain a divorce. I do not advocate the disillusionment and eventual banishment of "surplus" teenage boys from the community. For the most part, I don't believe polygamy in the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries can work. I knew several girls and women, while in college, who came from polygamous families, and not a single one of them painted a good picture.

My interest and explanations of polygamy are purely from the historian's point of view.


My background: Other than being a raving bluestocking Uppity Mormon Woman myself and having come from a background full of more Uppity Mormon Women who insisted on sharing the stories of my Uppity Mormon Ancestors, my first job was as a living history interpreter at Old Deseret Village for, ooh, about eight years or so. I had a great exposure to the history of Utah and the early LDS church, including some lovely rare documents and other bits of history one doesn't always get to read about. (For a while there, I was able to read--if just barely--books in the Deseret Alphabet and even had a few close encounters with some ghosts at the Brigham Young Forest Farmhouse. Couldn't read the DA now to save my life, and I doubt the ghosts would talk to me as I've "deserted" them.)

So enjoy this series of historical Uppity Mormon Women and learn an interesting bit of US History that not everyone gets to hear about in History class.

First Up: Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball