Faithful Transgressions

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2004 Faithful Transgressions Laura L. Bush Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Bush, L. L. (2004). Faithful transgressions in the American West: Six twentieth-century Mormon women's autobiographical acts. Logan: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page i Faithful Transgressions in the American West Six Twentieth-Century Mormon Women’s Autobiographical Acts Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page ii Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page iii Faithful Transgressions in the American West Six Twentieth-Century Mormon Women’s Autobiographical Acts Laura L. Bush Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 2004 Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page iv Copyright © 2004 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press 7800 Old Main Hill Logan, Utah 84322-7800 Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bush, Laura L., 1963- Faithful transgressions in the American West : six twentieth-century Mormon women’s autobiographical acts / Laura L. Bush. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87421-551-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. American prose literature—Mormon authors—History and criticism. 2. American prose literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. American prose literature— West (U.S.)—History and criticism. 4. Women authors, American—Biography—History and criticism. 5. Women authors, American—Homes and haunts—West (U.S.) 6. Women pioneers—Biography—History and criticism. 7. Mormon women—Biography— History and criticism. 8. West (U.S.)—Biography—History and criticism. 9. Women— West (U.S.)—Intellectual life. 10. Women and literature—West (U.S.) 11. Autobiography—Mormon authors. 12. Autobiography—Women authors. I. Title. PS153.M66B87 2003 810.9’9287—dc22 2003026212 Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page v For all those who transgress in faith Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page vi To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover. In bodying forth I disclose. —Martin Buber, I and Thou Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface: Gender Trouble and My Hybrid Life xi Introduction: Autobiographical Constructions of the Mormon Self(s) 1 1: Narrating Optimism, Faith, and Divine Intervention 30 Mary Ann Hafen, Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier 2: Defending and Condemning a Polygamous Life 55 Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother 3: Truth Telling about a Temporal and a Spiritual Life 79 Juanita Brooks, Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier 4: Remedying Race and Religious Prejudice 109 Wynetta Willis Martin, Black Mormon Tells Her Story 5: A Home Windswept with Paradox 145 Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place 6: Training to Be a Good Mormon Girl While Longing for Fame 171 Phyllis Barber, How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir Conclusion 194 Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page viii Appendix A: The Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 200 Appendix B: Official Declaration 1 202 Appendix C: Official Declaration 2 204 Appendix D: The Family: A Proclamation to the World 206 Notes 208 Works Cited 228 Index 237 Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page ix Acknowledgments To begin, I would like to acknowledge Robert Stepto, Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and English at Yale University, who first introduced me in 1992 to the notion of studying autobiographical narratives as literary acts. During a summer class he taught on American autobiography at Bread Loaf School of English, his intelligence, humor, and enthusiastic support of my own life writing inspired me to begin serious study of Mormons’ prolific autobiographical writing tradition. I am indebted to Melody Graulich and Julia Watson for their careful reading of an earlier draft of this book. Their extensive recommenda- tions for improving it have been invaluable. As editors, John Alley and Rebecca Marsh have been wonderfully accommodating and professional throughout the process. Any weaknesses remaining in this final draft are mine. I would also like to thank the following people for their continuing support of my work: Kathleen Sands, Professor of English at Arizona State University, has been the guiding force behind the dissertation that led to this book. She always showed unwavering commitment to the project’s success and spent many hours untangling sentences and ideas that I needed to struggle through to develop my arguments. I owe her much. Eugenia DeLamotte, Associate Professor of English at ASU, and Katherine Kent, Assistant Professor of English at Williams College, offered insightful feedback and caring support as committee members who influenced my thinking at many stages of this project. Duane Roen, Professor of English and Director of ASU’s Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence, afforded me the professional time and backing that enabled me to finish this manuscript while also work- ing at the Center. Eric Bateman, a colleague from our former days teaching together in the English department at Ricks College, sent witty e-mail messages from his office in Nevada, offering “nitpicky” but invaluable and sup- portive feedback. He is one among several Mormon intellectual friends of mine who understand the conflicts and paradoxes that result from our common religious heritage. ix Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page x x Faithful Transgressions in the American West Eugene England, Professor of English, Mormon scholar, and author, read an early version of the introduction to this book. I regret that he did not live to see it reach publication, but he deserves my thanks for initiating an important and ongoing conversation about Mormon literature that I hope my work contributes to and carries forward in his honor. Kenneth Morrison, Professor of Religious Studies at ASU, has been the exceptional colleague, mentor, and friend I needed to help me continue sorting through personal and professional issues regarding Mormonism and religion in general. I am indebted to him for introduc- ing me to Martin Buber, for reading and commenting on many chapters of this book, and for helping me to refine my ideas. I am especially grate- ful for our long conversations over his fine cooking, just when I needed both food and perceptive insight to sustain me. He knows and practices what authentic community means. Friends I would like to thank for our past and present conversations about Mormonism include Karen Anderson, Cynthia Ashworth, Mary Bradford, Bob Bringhurst, Jeanne Clark, Kip Clark, Ted DiPadova, Laurie DiPadova-Stocks, Mark England, Cory Fehlberg, Kathee Godfrey, Mary Johnston, Angela Livesey, Elizabeth McNeil, Carol Pierce, Cyndi Pearson, Bill Silcock, Deb Thornton, Jolene Wolfley, and John Zardus. Thanks to many other friends, extended family, and neigh- bors, who patiently listened and cared about me, even as I complained about the struggle to find time to work on “my book.” Most of all, I would like to thank my immediate family, especially my identical twin sister, Sarah, and my dear mother, Clara. They have sup- ported me throughout a writing journey that has lasted many years. Without their love, this book would not be. Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page xi Preface Gender Trouble and My Hybrid Life The spectacle of a significant number of critics getting personal in their writing, while, not to be sure, on the order of a paradigm shift, is at least the sign of a turning point in the history of critical practices. —Nancy Miller, Getting Personal Nearly all who spoke to me expressed their surprise that intelli- gent men and women should be found in communion with the Mormon Church. How persons of education and refinement could ever have embraced a faith that prostrated them at the feet of the Mormon Prophet [Joseph Smith], and his successor Brigham Young, was to the enquiring mind a perfect mystery. —Fanny Stenhouse, Tell It All Since the official founding in 1830 of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the “Mormon Church,” Latter- day Saint (LDS) women have felt compelled on many occasions to explain and justify their religious beliefs. Throughout the late nine- teenth century in the United States, for example, Mormon women defended themselves at mass meetings and in writing against women social reformers who criticized or pitied Mormon women for practicing polygamy. Contemporary members of the mainstream LDS Church now contract only monogamous marriages, but many outsiders continue to criticize or patronize Latter-day Saint women for their allegiance to a patriarchal religion that valorizes motherhood and espouses strict religious codes. As a Mormon woman myself—but one without a husband and children—I have sometimes felt the sting of outsiders’ criticism. From childhood, Mormon doctrine offered me the most explicit script for determining the “ideal” roles that women and men should per- form to achieve “ideal” family life: men provide and women stay home xi Faithful Transgressions.qxd 2/3/04 1:14 PM Page xii xii Faithful Transgressions in the American West with children. My own family, like many others, did not fit this ideal.

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