Plural Marriage, Singular Lives

184 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought journalists of the exodus would have reading and relishing this work. One strengthened this work. can only hope that the remaining offer- These are, however, quibbles and ings in this series of original documents should not distract or dissuade the will measure up to the standard set here scholar, student, or history buff from by Bagley. Plural Marriage, Singular Lives In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of breaking, 788-page study In Sacred Lone- Joseph Smith. By Todd Compton (Salt liness provides the most comprehensive Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1997), assessment yet available of the lives 824 pp. of thirty-three women whom he consid- ers "well-documented wives of Joseph Reviewed by Lawrence Foster, Pro- Smith" (1). Compton begins with a fessor of American History, Georgia In- twenty-three page introduction that dis- stitute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. cusses some of the complex issues that must be addressed if Joseph Smith's JOSEPH SMITH'S POLYGAMOUS RELA- plural marriages are to be understood, TIONSHIPS have been a topic of great in- and then he briefly summarizes the evi- terest and controversy among Mormons dence on each of the wives in chart and non-Mormons alike. The reactions form. The 596-page core of the book of the women whom Joseph Smith took consists of thirty well-written and thor- as plural wives and the way in which oughly documented chapters that sym- their relationships with the Mormon pathetically reconstruct, using detailed prophet were part of their own larger quotations from a wide range of pri- life experiences, however, have seldom mary sources, the lives of the thirty- been studied systematically. Most writ- three women he has identified as plural ers have contented themselves with wives. These include two sets of sisters making head counts of Smith's alleged and one mother-daughter pair whose plural wives. The Mormon church his- stories are combined in three of the torian Andrew Jenson listed twenty- chapters. Instead of in-text source cita- seven probable plural wives, Fawn tions, 148 pages of bibliographic and Brodie identified forty-eight, and more chapter references are provided. A fif- recent Mormon historians such as Danel teen page index concludes the study. Bachman, D. Michael Quinn, and Although scholars may take issue George D. Smith have identified thirty- with some of Compton's assumptions one, forty-six, and forty-three plural and arguments, his study is a major step wives, respectively. These lists often do forward in understanding early Mor- not adequately distinguish between dif- mon plural marriage. First and most im- ferent types of plural wives, particularly pressively, Compton is concerned about between those who probably sustained treating each of the women whom he full connubial relations with Joseph studies as a real person in her own right Smith and those who were only posthu- and reconstructing the entire life stories mously sealed to him "for eternity." from birth to death of these often quite Todd Compton's massive and path- remarkable women, many of whom be- Reviews 185 came among the most respected and in- terms with some of the most knotty and fluential female leaders in pioneer Utah. controversial aspects of early Mormon For many of these women, their rela- polygamy, including the evidence that tionship with Joseph Smith was only a Joseph Smith took as plural wives in a brief interlude in a much larger and full physical sense women who were al- more complex life; for others, the issues ready married to other men. Compton of their polygamous relationships with argues, for example, that "fully one- Joseph Smith and, subsequently, with third of his [Joseph Smith's] plural other Mormon leaders such as Brigham wives, eleven of them, were married Young and Heber C. Kimball were a civilly to other men when he married focus of recurrent concern and tension. them. Polyandry might be easier to Compton masterfully reconstructs the understand if one viewed these mar- often poignant stories of these women riages to Smith as a sort of de facto di- without reducing them to stereotypical vorce with the first husband. However, heroines or victims, as so many earlier none of these women divorced their accounts have done. 'first husbands' while Smith was alive Equally if not more important, and all of them continued to live with Compton has provided in this study the their civil spouses while married to massive primary documentation from Smith" (15-16). Compton further points widely scattered sources that will allow out that "there is evidence that he did both scholars and the general public have [sexual] relations with at least alike to form their own opinions about some of these women, including one just what was going on in Joseph polyandrous wife, Sylvia Sessions Lyon, Smith's polygamous relationships and who bore the only polygamous off- how those relationships affected the spring of Smith for whom we have affi- women who participated in them. As a davit evidence" (21). non-Mormon scholar, I had the excep- While Compton deserves much tional opportunity of spending more credit for tackling squarely and sensi- than four months reading primary di- tively the thorny issue of these unusual aries, journals, records, and affidavits relationships with Joseph Smith, I am held in the Church Archives in Salt extremely dubious about his characteri- Lake City while working on a study of zation of them as "polyandrous." As I the early development of Mormon have pointed out in Religion and Sexual- polygamy that eventually would be ity, 159-166, and in "Sex and Prophetic published as Religion and Sexuality. Only Power" (Dialogue 31, no. 4, Winter 1998), someone who has worked closely with I see no evidence that the behavior in these documents can comprehend which Joseph Smith apparently en- Compton's full achievement in identify- gaged was viewed, either by the Mor- ing and providing detailed quotations mon prophet himself or by his close fol- (with exact original spelling and punc- lowers who knew about it, as a form of tuation) from virtually all of the most "polyandry." Rather, it seems far more relevant portions of this substantial cor- likely, given the intensely patriarchal pus of primary materials relating to emphasis in early Mormon plural mar- Joseph Smith's polygamous relation- riage, that such relationships were inter- ships and the larger life experiences of preted as a complex millenarian version these women. of patriarchal levirate polygamy. Even Finally, Compton is to be com- this interpretation, which cannot be de- mended for candidly trying to come to tailed here, may not be sufficient to ex- 186 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought plain all instances of this kind, however. have sustained with women other than For example, the most tangled such re- his first wife Emma prior to the first for- lationship, that of Zina Diantha Hunt- mally documented plural marriage cer- ington, skillfully analyzed in pages emony with Louisa Beaman in Nauvoo, 71-113 of In Sacred Loneliness, suggests Illinois, on April 5,1841, was necessarily the possibility that the demand for total viewed at the time as a "marriage." loyalty to the leadership of the prophet Such earlier sexual relationships may and to his will may ultimately be the have been considered marriages, but we only way in which some of these rela- lack convincing contemporary evidence tionships can be understood. supporting such an interpretation. Later Another reservation that I have Mormon writers simply have assumed about this study is Compton's tendency that if there was a sexual relationship in- to state as matters of fact what are, at volving Joseph Smith, then it must have best, only his own suppositions. This is involved a "marriage." For this debate most apparent in the first paragraph of as it applies to Compton's interpretation his chapter on Fanny Alger, the first of of Fanny Alger, which first appeared in the thirty core chapters on Joseph an article in the Journal of Mormon His- Smith's plural wives. Compton asserts, tory 23 (Spring 1996): 174-207, see Janet without initial qualification in the chap- Ellington's letter in the Journal of Mor- ter, that she "was one of Joseph Smith's mon History 23 (Spring 1997): vi-vii, and earliest plural wives" (25). This is only Compton's response in the Journal of Compton's debatable supposition, not Mormon History 23 (Fall 1997): xvii-xix. an established fact. While contemporary From a larger perspective, this and evidence strongly suggests that Smith other scholarly reservations that one sustained sexual relations with Fanny might have about In Sacred Loneliness Alger, it does not indicate that this was are far less significant than the remark- viewed either by Smith himself or by his able achievement of this study. Just as associates at the time as a "marriage." the superb biography Mormon Enigma: The most substantial contemporary de- Emma Hale Smith by Linda K. Newell scription of the relationship comes from and Valeen Tippetts Avery for the first a letter written by Oliver Cowdery on time presented a full, sympathetic, and January 21, 1838, in which he declares well-rounded scholarly analysis of the that "in every instance I did not fail to life of Joseph Smith's dynamic but affirm that what I said was strictly true. much misunderstood first wife, In Sa- A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and cred Loneliness provides a thorough, Fanny Alger's was talked over in which sympathetic, and well-rounded schol- I strictly declared that I never deviated arly analysis of thirty-three other from the truth" (38).

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