BRODIE: the a Personal Look at Mormonisrn’S Best-Known Rebel

BRODIE: the A personal look at Mormonisrn’s best-known rebel RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER LMOST as much as we love to love our folk unseen influences which shape our destinies, I took my heroes, we Mormons love to hate our heretics. stand with the ’heretics’; and, as it happened, my own AWe lick our chops at the thought of John C. was the first woman’s name enrolled in their cause. Bennett spending his autumn years raising chickens in The most recent name enrolled on the list of women Polk City, Iowa--so far a fall for the once-proud heretics is Sonia Johnson. Trading barbs with Utah’s Brigadier General in the Invincible Light Dragoons of Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch, Johnson quickly rose to Illinois and member of Joseph Smith’s First Presidency. prominence as a fervent spokeswoman for "Mormons We remember with delight millionaire Sam Brannan of for ERA." Her outspoken opposition to Church political California gold rush fame, once high and mighty enough activism over the Equal Rights Amendment resulted in to refuse to give up Church tithes until Brigham Young national press attention, loss of her Church sent a "receipt signed by the Lord," dying of a bowel membership, and delicious hissings from Church infection, wifeless and penniless. We retell with relish members in general. the sad tale of stroke-ravaged Thomas B. Marsh, the man who might have been Church president upon The best-known Mormon rebel of all time, however, Joseph Smith’s death, returning to the Church in 1856 "a neither led a protest movement against polygamy nor poor decrepid [sic], broken down old man . one of his chained herself to the gates of the Seattle Temple. Fawn arms hangs down." M. Brodie wrote a book. No Man Knows My History is a Mormon women have given us few rebels. Fanny psychobiographical study of the life of the founding Stenhouse, said to be the only woman Brigham Young father of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. Mrs. Brodie, feared, took on the Church hierarchy because of her irreverently exposing the Mormon Prophet’s feet of hatred of polygamy. Well-educated and a gifted writer, clay, committed the cardinal sin of Mormonism. Devout she penned what most Mormon women of the day dared Mormons quickly relegated Fawn M. Brodie to outer not even think: "To doubt one doctrine was to doubt all, darkness with other such purveyors of godlessness as and I soon felt that my religion was rapidly crumbling Attila the Hun and Madeline Murray. away before my eyes, and that I was losing confidence in Looking at her life, it’s hard to understand quite why. everything and everybody. I was like a ship at sea Fawn grew up Mormon in the small Utah hamlet of without a compass, not knowing where to go or what to Huntsville. Her father, Thomas E. McKay, was a brother do." Resolving to "walk into the jaws of death" through to future Church President David O. McKay, and her disobedience, Mrs. Stenhouse and her polygamist mother, Fawn Brimhall, was the daughter of Brigham husband Thomas joined the spiritualist "New Young University President George H. Brimhall. After Movement" of Mormon heresy. Fanny later authored graduating from Ogden’s Weber High School, Fawn two scandalous books, A Lady’s Life Among the Mormons--A earned a degree in English at the University of Utah at Record of Personal Experience as One of the Wives of a Mormon the precocious age of eighteen. The years at the "U" Elder and Tell it All--The Story of A Life’s Experience in proved pivotal in her religious life; it was at the Mormonism, both of which delivered scathing attacks on university that the threads binding her faith in Mormonism in general and polygamy in particular. Mormonism began to unravel. In a 1975 interview with Retrospectively analyzing her actions, she mused: Shirley E. Stephenson of the Cal-Fullerton State Little did I imagine at that period that any such mission University History Program, Fawn remembered: as that which I have since realized as mine, was in the providence of Time awaiting me, or that | should ever I was devout until I went to the University of Utah. Then have the boldness, either with tongue or pen, to plead is when I first began to learn important things . my the cause of the Women of Utah. But, impelled by those field was English literature.. ~and] one began to move... 32/Sunstone woman and her history out of the parochialism of the Mormon community. At weeks." As she had said before, "It was like taking off a least I did by being exposed to the great literature of the hot coat in the summertime." past. This was a very quiet kind of liberation; there was To support her graduate studies, Fawn worked in the nothing very spectacular about it. There was no active trauma. It was a quiet kind of moving out into, what you Hutchinson Commons student cafeteria. There she met might call, the larger society and learning that the center her husband-to-be, Bernard Brodie:."Because I was tall of the universe was not Salt Lake City as I had been [5’ 10"] and could be easily seen .... I carried a big coffee taught as a child. pot and poured second cups of coffee. When I poured an extra cup for Bernie, he gave me two red carnations. He Miss McKay decided to pursue a master’s degree at the brought me flowers every day for the next six weeks, University of Chicago, where the English department when we were married." stressed historical methods of study as opposed to The marriage of a Mormon girl from rural Utah and a strictly literary criticism. Here she began to understand sophisticated Jew from Chicago was bound to be "how much of a liberation the university experience in complicated--a Jew marrying a gentile; a gentile Salt Lake City had been, because then the confining marrying a Mormon. Friends relate that theirs was aspects of the Mormon religion dropped off within a few "never a placid marriage." Maimon Leavitt called them a July-August/33 "complementary pair, very different, sometimes even New York. They awarded her their 1943 Fellowship in conflicting. They reinforced one another in their likes Biography--a $2500 grant. Prior to the announcement and differences, sometimes striking illuminating sparks, of the award, Fawn sought to cushion her parents from more often harmonious music, or rather prose, because the publicity she knew her book would excite in Utah: of course their writing was one of their strongest bonds. It is only fair to you both that I tell you quite frankly and There were other bonds, intellectual, people, art, joie de honestly in advance that the book is likely to get a good vivre, but most particularly their children." bit of hostile criticism from the authorities of the Bernard knew very little of Mormonism but he Church. Certain things which I feel should be included to wanted to know more. His intense interest in the tell the whole story of the man, you will feel should foundation beliefs of his new wife’s people probed the better have been left buried. You will probably be very core of Mormonism. Fawn, never satisfied with criticized for having raised a wayward daughter. For this reason I must caution you not to advertise to anyone the fact that I have received the fellowship. It will be announced in the papers anyway, but it is better to have the news get out that way than to have you announce it yourself,, since parts of the book are certain Mormons relegated to be disapproved of by many in Utah. When someone mentions it, you’d better say, "Well, I don’t know what Fawn M. Brodie to outer darkness the girl is up to. It’s all her own doing you know, and she’s always been inclined to be a little headstrong," or with Attila the Hun and something like that. Madeline Murray. Her predictions proved to be entirely correct. No Man Knows My History became the most controversial work ever written about Mormonism. The work proved to be unsettling to many Mormons because she adapted psychobiographical techniques which analyzed Joseph Smith’s experiences and motivations through psychological interpretation. She used the same techniques in all her biographical works but came under the greatest criticism for her books on Joseph Smith and Thomas Jefferson. It is significant that both the Church president and the United States president are "sacred cows" easy answers, began a systematic search not only for within their circle of adherents. In both books, by answers to Bernard’s questions but also to resolve deep refusing to omit, minimize, or gloss over incidents which concerns in her own mind: Could Joseph Smith have some consider embarrassing or controversial, she written the Book of Mormon by utilizing local New York evoked the wrath of faithful her worshipers. This sources and his own creative genius? "If the Book of hackle-raising was not deliberate on her part but rather Mormon came out of his own background in Western reflected her pursuit of the man behind the image. New York, which he insisted came from golden plates, Though she often approached her biographical projects then what kind of man was this? The whole problem of with a preconceived notion, she was not naive about the his credibility, I thought, was crying out for some pitfalls of her profession. In a 1970 lecture, "Can We ~exp_lanation." Manipulate the Past," she remarked that "even the most Employed in the University of Chicago library, she dispassionate historian, trying to select fairly with initially intended to write a short critique about the intelligence and discretion, manipulates in spite of Mormon prophet.

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