Mormon Teen Lit: Jacqueline Antonovich on Temple Marriage, Feminism, and Non-Traditional Marriage in Tamra Norton’s “Molly Mormon?”

Jacqueline is a PhD student at the University of Michigan, where she studies gender, medicine, and politics during the Progressive Era.  She also earned an MA from the University of Wyoming and a BA from Mesa State College where she graduated summa cum laude.  I am happy to have her contribute to this series.  Since she arrived at Michigan, she has demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the American West and a commitment to feminist politics.  She is also a ton of fun.  Both of these characteristics are on show at her group blog Nursing Clio.

Note: You will find Molly Mormon published by both Tamra Torero and Tamra Norton.  They are one and the same.  Tamra Torero is the married name of the author.

Like many young, gawky preteens growing up in the 1980s, I had a very intimate relationship with teen literature. Because I didn?t exactly have an open line of communication with my parents, I often sought out these books to help answer my most pressing teenage-angsty questions. Of course, my favorite author was Judy Blume.  I still look back fondly at my trips to the local library, searching longingly for any dog-eared copy of a Blume book I might have missed. Some of her novels ? Are you there God, It?s me Margaret, Then Again Maybe I Won?t, and It?s Not the End of the World ? I must have read at least three times each (I never did get my hands on the coveted, yet controversial, Forever).

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Dear Lord, Why Did I Decide to Go to Graduate School?

At a meeting with my advisor today, she told me that I was one of the easiest graduate students that she had ever had.  I did my work on schedule.  I don?t tend have to breakdowns.  And, I have a fairly good record at winning fellowships.  What she doesn?t know is that I am a mess inside.  Every time I send out a fellowship application, I am certain that I am going to fail.  Before every meeting I have with her or another committee member, I spend hours putting together an outfit and trying on different combinations of clothes.

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Guest Post: Natalie R., “Mormon Female Adolescence, Diaries, and Religiosity

When I started my research project on adolescent Mormon women from the late 1860s to the 1920s, I was met with questions from a few people asking me something along the lines of ?Do those sources exist?? Despite the growth of scholarship on the lived experiences of adolescents and children in the last few decades, there is, unfortunately, still some uncertainty about finding these ?elusive? sources created by children and adolescents. Thankfully for my research, I embraced this doubt as a challenge that has proven to be successful.  There are a number of diaries written by young women  in the archives, and there have already been quite a few scholarly articles centered on these diaries.

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“Either a misogynist or proto-feminist”: Women and Polygamy in John Turner’s “Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet”

[Another installment in the roundtable on John Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet.]

Amanda's Aunt Ann Eliza, also known as Wife No. 19 and now a star of a major Lifetime Movie

I should mention at the outset of this review that I am not a dispassionate, objective observer when it comes to the subject of Brigham Young and polygamy.  In other words, I have a dog in the fight.  As a child, my grandmother regaled me of stories of my Uncle Ed?s great grandmother who had divorced Brigham Young and then went on a lecture tour revealing his hypocrisy and tyrannical abuse of his wives.  When I was older, I realized that the woman that my grandmother had taken such pride was none other than Ann Eliza Young, the famous nineteenth wife of Brigham Young.  The fact that my great uncle?s last name was Webb confirmed the ancestral tie.  My adulthood, however, also tempered my feelings about Brigham Young, which had ranged from bemusement at his ideas about Adam-God to disgust at the number of his wives.  Although I still joked about what I would like to say to the Mormon prophet if we ever met in the afterlife, I also began realized that he was a man who had loved his children deeply and had experienced a great deal of pain and suffering during his time as a missionary and as a man in Nauvoo.  I still remember reading about the aid that he rendered to his daughter Susa after she found herself unable to support herself after divorcing her alcoholic first husband.

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Mormon Teen Lit: Kara French on Shannon Hale’s “The Princess Academy”

Kara French is a PhD Candiate in the Joint Program in Women’s Studies and History at the University of Michigan where she studies the politics of sexual restraint in the early republic.  In addition to being an expert on early Shaker religious experiences, the politics of Catholic convents in nineteenth-century America, and the vegetarianism of Sylvester Graham, she is an avid reader whose interests include the comic romance novels of Lauren Willig as well as classics like those of Jane Austen and George Eliot.  

As a grad student who occasionally likes to take a vacation from high theory and nineteenth century manuscripts by reading young adult (YA) fiction, when my colleague Amanda solicited reviewers for YA literature by LDS authors, I jumped at the opportunity. This was part of a larger conversation we were having about how the books we had read as young men and women shaped our thinking about gender and sexuality during those all-important formative years. We thought it would be interesting to see if the YA lit written by LDS authors reflected any particularly Mormon thinking about gender. I should also note that I am a historian of 19^th century American religion and women?s studies, not specifically Mormon Studies. So, I really appreciate the chance to come play in your sandbox here at Juvenile Instructor.

I chose Shannon Hale?s Princess Academy,

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Reminder: Abstracts for Mormon History Association Conference Due Monday, October 1st

Susa Young Gates, Juanita Brooks, and Plural Marriage: Situating the Legacy of Polygamy in the 1920s and 1930s

Natalie Rose is a doctoral candidate in America history at Michigan State University. She also holds a M.A. degree in women?s history from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently researching and writing her dissertation on how adolescent Mormon women reacted to larger changes in the religion and culture from the 1870s to 1920s. ”  Her dissertation adds a lot to discussions of women in Mormon history and the transition from polygamy to monogamy.  We are excited to have her guest at JI.

In an interview from the World War One era with Emma Lucy Gates, daughter of Susa Young Gates and an acclaimed opera singer born in 1882, she commented that polygamy could help women in the ?war-drained? European nations. She claimed: ?Many girls in the old world have told me that they would much prefer being a plural mate of a man who could give them a pleasant home, where they could live a useful life, to being an old maid.? When asked about eugenics and Mormonism, Emma Lucy Gates stated that the current ?Mormon standard of purity? rendered the practice of Eugenics unnecessary amongst Mormon men and women. Emma Lucy Gates? commentary was not uncommon but actually part of a developing discourse that aimed to situate the legacy of polygamy within the early twentieth century.

Last summer while I was conducting research at the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City,

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Rape and Marriage in Mormon History

Note: In response to the complaints in response to Saskia?s blog post and its use of a few curse words, I feel obligated to warn readers that this post and its responses may contain some light vulgarity and adult topics.  Anyone not mature enough to handle such language or topics should not read the post.

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference on Mormon women held at the University of Utah.  The room was filled with elderly feminists who had advocated for a more liberal Mormon view of women in the 1980s, middle-aged women who had commandeered their husbands into watching the kids for a few hours, and graduate students dressed in jeans and t-shirts.  The panels were varied but held together by a common focus on Mormon women and a desire to make some sort-of change in the way that women are treated in a church that privileges male experience and male members.  One of the presentations that was particularly poignant was Jennifer Finlayson-Fife?s presentation on the sexuality of Mormon women.  She described the difficulty created by expectations that young women be sexually attractive and chaste at the same.  When unwanted sexual intimacy occurs, Mormon girls are stuck between allowing him to continue, risking their purity and standing before God, and saying ?no? and losing his interest.  As a result, many Mormon women feel guilty for sexual contact they neither wanted nor consented to.

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Goodbye to Jared T.

Recently, we here at Juvenile Instructor learned something that brings us great sorrow: Jared T., one of the blog?s original founders and most frequent contributors, had decided that the time had come for him to pursue other projects.  Jared was present at the conversation at J-Dawg?s when someone proposed a blog focusing on Mormon history. 

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“Will God and my Good, True, Loving Husband Be Merciful?” The Secret Love Letters of Joseph F. Smith and Susa Young Gates

A few days ago, I requested the Scott Kenney Papers at the University of Utah?s special collections.  Inside Box 3 were some letters between Joseph F. Smith and Susa Young Gates written in 1906.  I assumed that they would be about the manifesto or Susa?s recent trip to Germany.  I opened the box and began to read one of the letters.

 It began with a paean to Joseph F. Smith as one of the world?s great religious leaders:

Thou art a poet, an artist, a musician.  A musician because the best and highest expression of the great masters finds an echo in thy soul.  The great paintings are alive to you; and your words, written and spoken, often betray the very soul of poetry.  The precious note I have of yours breathes poetry in every line.  It is too precious to me for other eyes than mine, even to rest upon.

 At first, I thought that Susa had simply developed a deep and lasting friendship with Joseph, but the next line caught me off guard.

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