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More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 1St Edition Edition
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As a non-Mormon historian and long-time member of the Mormon History Association who has devoted much of his scholarly life to trying to understand the development of 19th-century Mormon polygamy, I am very pleased to provide an assessment of Kathryn M. Daynes's remarkable new book, MORE WIVES THAN ONE: TRANSFORMATION OF THE MORMON MARRIAGE SYSTEM, 1840-1910. This extraordinary study clearly deserves the "best book of the year" award it has just received from this 1,000 member historical association.
For several decades now, first-rate scholarship has proliferated about Mormonism's most controversial 19th century social practice, plural marriage. Virtually every aspect of Mormon polygamy has been analyzed, discussed, and dissected from a variety of perspectives. Historians have explored the intellectual and social origins of the practice; how it worked in Utah during the second half of the 19th century; the crusade against Mormon polygamy that led to Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto ending public Latter-day Saint support for the practice; the post-Manifesto expressions of polygamy in splinter off-shoots from the Latter-day Saint movement; while comparative studies have analyzed Mormon polygamy within its larger American and world context.
These books have added immeasurably to our understanding of the remarkable complexity of Mormon plural marriage. No other study, however, can match Kathy Daynes's achievement in MORE WIVES THAN ONE.
Every time a new book about Mormon polygamy appears, I can't help wondering whether it will actually add anything new to what we already know.Read more ›
Following the obligatory, and rather unsatisfactory, opening chapter on the origins of Mormon plural marriage in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, Daynes begins a sustained analysis of polygamy in Manti. She shows that plural marriage followed no monolithic pattern there, but that each approach had its own rights and responsibilities. Using biographical and demographic data she also demonstrates the factors shaping the practice, analyses the ingredients of plural marriage, and explores how it evolved over time. She discusses how Mormon marriage practices solidified a patriarchal model of society, one that diverged sharply from the "companionate" model of marriage and egalitarian social ideas then taking hold in mainstream America. This divergence prompted resistance from elsewhere in the United States, eventually forcing ending of the practice by the church. This is a well down work that provides important insights into the Mormon's "peculiar institution."