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I don’t know if anyone has followed the story but I know it has hit some nerves. Partly because of the topic, part because of the presentation, part because of polygamy and history. If you have followed it – the author of the piece gives her answers here. I found it insightful.
P.S. It’s a long read, I will throw the polygamy quote in here just for speed, but it isn’t all about polygamy.
Quote:The origins and practice of Mormon polygamy, as introduced by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, are complex, multi-faceted, and difficult to pin down with uniformity or consistency. Before I had seen the Horne source, I had often wondered at the connections between the traumas that women experienced in Missouri and the origins of polygamy, in that Mormon male leadership had felt incapable of protecting women from mob assaults. The vulnerability that women felt perhaps fostered a climate whereby celestial marriage offered solace, protection, or some kind of spiritual connectivity that kept the community cemented together in the face of danger. The Horne document presented me with evidence of the possibility that Joseph offered, and Eliza accepted, a polygamous marriage as a way of providing spiritual comfort in the absence of earthly justice. I am interested in exploring this question, but I also invite readers not to project their issues with Joseph Smith onto a topic which I have intended to bring historical attention to very real and violent crimes committed against Mormon women. I am merely trying to understand how Eliza viewed her polygamous marriage to Joseph Smith as a response to her own personal circumstances, and that is a fair historical question to ask.
Could you add more information? Perhaps a link? Quote:News about the rape — discussed Thursday by Radke-Moss for the first time in an academic forum — comes from the autobiography of Alice Merrill Horne, the granddaughter of Bathsheba W. Smith, one of Snow’s closest friends.
As a child, Horne would spend time at her grandmother’s home, listening to the elderly women of Mormondom reminisce about the early days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Radke-Moss said. “She then wrote about those visits 50 years later in the 1930s, where she recalled hearing those women discuss the rape of Eliza.”
If I am reading this correctly, it doesn’t exactly come off as a smoking gun. I imagine that trained historians like Richard Bushman would have to put narratives of this nature to the side until more corroborating evidence could be discovered.
As a sort of an aside, I was fascinated by the story of a pregnant Eliza being pushed down a flight of stairs (resulting in miscarriage) and ejected from the house by an enraged Emma. The analysis of evidence for and against the account was fascinating – ultimately concluding that this story did not likely happen in this way. Even when we find that stories like this might not have happened, the evolution of such stories is in itself an interesting study of the history. The stories that we tell ourselves reveal things about who we are.
It wouldn’t be to hard to understand how a story like this might take hold. Justly or unjustly the church was treated very poorly in Missouri. Stories of the barbarities perpetuated by the Missourians would fit in well with several “us vs. them” and “safety in Zion” vs. “danger and destruction in the world” narratives of the time. As I recall there was also a false story circulated that the wagon train that was attacked at mountain meadows was populated by some of these same Missouri ruffians that had driven out the saints in years past. Did that story help incite the massacre or was it just a false justification used by some after the fact? I do not know but even as just a rumor it helps the illustrate the very hard feelings that Mormons of this time felt towards Missouri.
Once again I am not sure how true this latest is but find it interesting either way.
Roy here is the link to the article I quoted from. It was posted this morning on Juvenile Instructor. Thanks for catching my miss. Thanks Mom, The Author (Andrea R-M) does discuss some of the shortcomings of her source. I find the discussion educational. The thoughts about the shame of rape causing a culture of silence is something to be considered.
This is a horrible story about Eliza R. Snow, and might explain quite a bit about why she was so accepting. She also said that polygamy was “necessary in the elevation and salvation of the human family – redeeming women from the curse, and the world from corruption.” Even without this trauma, she may have been of a mind to accept polygamy as God’s will. What I liked so much about In Sacred Loneliness was that he tried to sketch each woman’s whole life, and now we know even more about Eliza’s; it definitely gives one pause.
Quote:The origins and practice of Mormon polygamy, as introduced by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, are complex, multi-faceted, and difficult to pin down with uniformity or consistency. Before I had seen the Horne source, I had often wondered at the connections between the traumas that women experienced in Missouri and the origins of polygamy, in that Mormon male leadership had felt incapable of protecting women from mob assaults. The vulnerability that women felt perhaps fostered a climate whereby celestial marriage offered solace, protection, or some kind of spiritual connectivity that kept the community cemented together in the face of danger. The Horne document presented me with evidence of the possibility that Joseph offered, and Eliza accepted, a polygamous marriage as a way of providing spiritual comfort in the absence of earthly justice. I am interested in exploring this question, but I also invite readers not to project their issues with Joseph Smith onto a topic which I have intended to bring historical attention to very real and violent crimes committed against Mormon women.
I don’t think the
originsare so complex. I’ve never been one to describe Joseph Smith as calculating (edit: I initially said , “as a predator,” but then I realized that that was inflammatory), but my point is: isn’t it pretty clear that polygamy was on his mind way back? Musing with other men about the propriety of marrying “Lamanite” women, taking up with Fanny Alger, etc. There are no women in distress in the very beginning, unless we count Emma – no women in danger. Even much later, the language of Section 132 doesn’t come across as anything like protective. Quote:I am merely trying to understand how Eliza viewed her polygamous marriage to Joseph Smith as a response to her own personal circumstances, and that is a fair historical question to ask.
But by speculating that polygamy grew out of a desire to protect women, she is opening up the discussion to more than Eliza’s response to the violence done to her. I don’t think it’s so much people projecting their “issues with Joseph Smith” onto the topic of sexual violence, as it is people not wanting the topic of sexual violence to be used to excuse or distract from all the bad behaviors – short of violence, but still coercive and heartbreaking for women – that we know were in play in Mormon polygamy.
I wish the church would just acknowledge the bad behavior and free people up to be very appropriately empathetic in reaction to a story like this, instead of suspicious that it will be put to apologetic use. I think some people felt it was a little too soon to use the first reporting of a rape to draw even initial conclusions about the motivations of men in the years-long development of a modern polygamy practice. I haven’t read lots of comments, but that’s the drift I’m getting from some.
Another reason this story hits a nerve for me is that it jibes with my mother’s attitude towards polygamy. She was raised with very low expectations for what to expect from her alcoholic father, men in general, and marriage. She also instilled in me – somewhat unwittingly – a sort of resignation: women can be disregarded, neglected and violated in the worst way, or in the polygamy way. Which do you choose? This article touches on that sort of take-it-or-leave-it choice that so many women have been presented in life.
(Edited on March 9)
Just so wrong… 😯
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