An excellent book about women's contribution to and experience in the early Mormon religion. ( )

I always love reading history, but I haven't really delved into much of Mormon history because most of the time I'm too busy reading YA or WWII books. As I read this book, I fell in love with all the messiness of my faith. I felt comforted by the history that women and Mormonism have always had complicated feelings--what I've been feeling the past 15 years isn't anything new. I felt inspired by what the women of the 19th century did...truly awestruck, if I'm being honest. I don't know that I would've made the same choices. This book made me realize that despite not fitting the "Mormon mold," I still belong, politics and marital status included. I just loved this book. ( )

Normally I would not pick up a nonfiction work with this title. I have little interest in Mormonism, but I love [[Laurel Thatcher Ulrich]]'s work and I gravitate towards books about women so I thought I'd give it a try. Ulrich sticks to her normal brand of scholarship, using diaries, meeting minutes, letters, and textiles to explore the lives of the first generation of Mormon women. These women joined a religious movement and after a full commitment, leaving families and communities behind, later experience their leader's revelation about plural marriage. Some accepted it seemingly willingly, some rejected it, and some agreed to it admitting fear and sadness.

Ulrich explores plural marriage - noting the economic benefits and drawbacks, the marriage of very young girls, the setting aside of older wives, the ability for men to have many, many children (a key tenet of the Mormon philosophy), and the confusion over who was "sealed" for eternity vs. who had a temporal marriage. She explores all this through the women's own writings but she draws few conclusions which sort of disappointed me. In the end I was still pretty confused about what the average Mormon woman experienced with plural marriage.

Another aspect she explores is Mormon women's political role. This was more impressive to me. Though they weren't considered true leaders within the church, they ran active Relief Societies that did give them a voice. These women ended up with full voting rights in Utah well before the rest of the nation received those rights. There were even women on the committee that drew up the territorial/state constitution. I believe Mormon male leaders agreed to their contributions in order to show that plural marriage was accepted by the women in their community. While insisting on their right to vote, women also voted to uphold the right to polygamy.

In the end, I was left with a good sense of what life was like for these women, which I think was the point. What I didn't get was any sort of explanation that attempted to justify plural marriage, which left me feeling sort of unimpressed with these women even considering their adventurous and political lives. It was hard to let go of my skepticism about plural marriage being a way for men to have all of their desires met while being sanctioned by the church. In the end, I still see it that way, though I guess I understand why so many women accepted it. ( )

Impeccably researched, but at its core, it's basically apologetics. ( )