Sarah M.S. Pearsall’s argument in Polygamy: An Early American History is succinct: Polygamy “is a form of marriage and therefore, like monogamy, a matter of public concern structuring societies, cultures, and lineages” (7). She repeatedly, and helpfully, drives this home as she documents and analyzes arguments for and against plural marriage/polygyny/polygamy over three centuries, from early Spanish colonization in New Spain, New France, King Phillip’s War, and among the enslaved in eighteenth-century British colonies before moving on toward the Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage in antebellum America. She proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that, “Contrary to popular opinion, American polygamy did not start with the Mormons” (1).

As Juvenile Instructor is a Mormon history blog, I have the most to say about Pearsall’s chapter exclusively on plural marriage in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pearsall chose to follow the story of the first tract writer defending the Mormon practice of plural marriage, Belinda Hilton Pratt. Pratt, a plural wife of Parley Pratt, escaped an abusive marriage at the hands of her first husband in New England. Pearsall recounts Belinda Hilton’s conversion to Mormonism with her husband, her divorce, and her move west to Nauvoo where she was sealed to Parley Pratt in 1844, placing her in the gendered and familial contexts of the 1840s United States. In doing so, she explains why a woman like Hilton (middle-class, Victorian, Protestant) might have chosen to practice Mormon polygamy. For instance, Belinda had not had a good experience with monogamy; in her pamphlet (A Defence of Polygamy by a Lady), she certainly makes that argument plain. Her husband had been abusive and Parley Pratt, as seen in the historical record, treated his wives reasonably well, showering them with attention and flirtation. She also argued that having multiple wives meant that a single wife did not have to fear continual pregnancy, a taxing toll on any woman in any period. Fascinatingly, Pearsall recounts how much Belinda loved the other women sealed to Parley Pratt—that she viewed her relationship with her husband as a way of increasing her “family circle” or kinship network.

In short, there were many reasons why a woman (white, Protestant, Yankee, middle-class) might be attracted to polygamy.[i] Her logic was female-centric and family-centric. She made her choices as an empowered woman, not because she was a dupe who had been tricked into a white woman’s slavery .As Pearsall writes, Pratt “has never received a great deal of analysis, drawing limited attention even in Mormon history and none at all in any general intellectual histories of polygamy” (251). She laments the absence of Pratt’s writing because it provides an opportunity to write a women-centered history of Mormon polygamy. The chapter on Latter-day Saint polygamy is the crescendo of several previous chapters that have revealed how and why women and men chose to become polygamists, or at least, make justifications for its practice. Religion is a reflection of “public concern,” or, politics, that reflects gendered, raced, and imperial visions. Mormons had their own theological reasons for practicing plural marriage, but they followed centuries-long patterns of exercising gendered, racial, and political power through their practice.

Pearsall’s call for a woman-centered history of Mormon polygamy struck a chord with me. I try to keep up to date with Mormon historiography, particularly around race, gender, and sexuality. As such, my first major research project was on the 1890 Woodruff Manifesto. There are only a handful of books that make women’s lives and agency the skeleton and sinew of the book, rather than a supplicant to men’s thoughts, actions, preaching, and pontificating. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s House Full of Females does this as well as any; other books like Carmon Hardy’s Solemn Covenant and Kathryn Daynes’ More Wives than One capture the voices of women, but they are not the fulcrum of his analysis. There is a significant difference between including women’s voices (still good!) and centering women’s lives. Pearsall has shown how and why these types of histories must be written.

At the same time, Pearsall’s chapter will not satisfy all Mormon historians. She insinuates that Belinda left for Nauvoo in part because of polygamy, though that seems highly unlikely, given its relative secret nature in 1843 Mormonism. This would have allowed Pearsall to show that while Belinda converted for different reasons, polygamy gave her different reasons to continue being a Latter-day Saint. Mormon historians might argue that she could have spent more time unpacking the mechanics of Mormon temple rites and practices, which would have strengthened her argument on kinship and family ties. These are minor, though, in the grand scheme of historical things, and it is difficult to write about Mormon religious practice and cosmological mechanics, even for those who work primarily in Mormon Studies or ritual studies.

My review has heretofore focused on Pearsall’s engagement with Latter-day Saint plural marriage. Still, there are at least two points about her interventions in broader historiographies that are worth time here. First, Pearsall demands that Mormon historians see their stories of polygamy in broader context. She places anti-polygamy arguments to Spanish America, in both Spanish and French contexts. Spanish friars had different (but related) reasons for opposing polygamy in New Spain than did British evangelicals in New England. But, as Pearsall shows, polygamy threatened authority and concepts of gender and sexuality across empires. Mormon Studies scholars must be as well-grounded as Pearsall as they study Mormonism outside the United States and the British Empire. Historians must examine the long-lasting influence of empire and colonialism in their different forms, and in conversation with different logics. For instance, how might different ideas about law, family, democracy (shout out to Ben Park!), and race shape the ways in which polygamy is defined, deployed, and derided in a myriad of context? There are always broader context than the frames of Mormon life described in Mormon history.

Second, historians have dominated Mormon Studies. In particular, those who study branches of Joseph Smith’s religious tree have specialized in social history, or the study of “average” people. This is understandable, given the thousands of sources left behind by everyday Mormons. However, it’s time to reckon with the lack of methodological and theoretical training (in general) Mormon Studies scholars. Religious studies, gender studies, the study of colonialism, cultural history, and more, for instance, are ways of illuminating Mormonism and the Mormon past in fresh and exciting ways. As Mormon Studies matures, it is imperative that scholars who desire to reach outside of Latter-day Saint academic circles employ and deploy new methodological frameworks. And while some may not need that in their studies, those engaged in making Mormon Studies a respected and respectable subfield for young scholars to participate in must pay attention to books like Pearsall’s because it offers a blueprint for how to study Mormonism in a way that non-Mormons appreciate. That doesn’t have to be the goal for everyone. But it is a worthy goal for many.

I don’t mean to set up a strawman. There are many smart people doing innovative things in the study of Mormonism. As more and more are (hopefully) employed in research positions, they will shape Mormon Studies in exciting ways. BUT, those who have been publishing in Mormon Studies for a long time must be sure to embrace methodological change and not charge intellectual heresy for those who move outside of the New Mormon History. Or, perhaps especially, those who are not Latter-day Saints, who often face barriers to entry to the field beyond the difficulties of picking up a committed, engaged, and excited subfield.

Polygamy: An Early American History can and should shape the historiography of not only Mormon polygamy but Mormonism writ large, for years to come.

[i] Pearsall also shows this in previous chapters while discussing white New Englanders advocating for plural marriage.