This post is the conclusion of Comparing the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Nightmare of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Part 1
The feature image today is an imagined portrait of Joseph and some of his plural wives. While some of them liked the idea of having him as a partner, there was plenty of jealousy, loneliness, and confusion to go around. There was never such a portrait. Joseph was not public about his lifestyle. He swore adherents to secrecy and required they burn any documents about plural marriages (Mormon Enigma 95-115).
We shall continue our tales of gifted leaders experimenting on others for misguided reasons.
Both Jack Skellington’s and Joseph Smith’s plans are incompatible with the people they require carry them out, yet both act oblivious to this. They each move forward with enthusiasm despite their lack of understanding. Jack acts manic as he announces his plans to steal Christmas and delegates assignments to the inhabitants of Halloween Town. He happily sends fiendish trick or treaters to kidnap Santa without considering how Santa will feel (he self-deceives by saying it will be a nice break for Santa). In a comparable series of events, when Joseph gave the news to the Twelve Apostles they’d be required to change their marital lifestyles, he “clapped his hands and danced like a child” out of relief he wouldn’t be the only one taking the lead on plural marriage anymore. He was strangely aloof to the pain his friends felt as they tried to accept his mandate to betray their spouses. He refused to heed pleas to lift the requirement (Mormon Enigma 98).
Despite Jack’s efforts at training, the people and creatures of Halloween Town never get out of the mindset that holiday making is about invoking fright, horror, and disgust. They are simply not suited to become Christmas creators. Neither were early Mormons compatible with polyandry or polygamy. Plural marriage was offensive to the values, beliefs, and desires of Joseph’s highly moral followers, not to mention the law. Ultimately, incompatibility is a major reason why both plans backfire. The horrific and dangerous gifts made by Jack’s followers lead parents to set the military on Jack. Enraged Nauvoo men denounced Joseph as a “base scoundrel” practicing “whoredoms and abominations” in the paper they published that set off a domino effect of unrest and retribution that would lead to Joseph’s death (Mormon Enigma 181-2)
Both Jack and Joseph are warned by the women who love them, but fail to take them seriously. Both women fight against their plans. Jacks’ would-be lover, Sally, sees a vision of a Christmas tree that catches fire, an omen of disaster for Jack’s Christmas Eve takeover. Jack is willfully deaf and chooses to misinterpret what she says in effort to pressure her to sew him a Santa suit. Sally ends up reluctantly completing the project. Yet her willingness to cooperate fades. Hoping it will make Jack’s scheduled sleigh ride impossible, she creates artificial fog out of ghoulish kitchen ingredients on Christmas Eve.
A similar pattern of interactions happened between Emma and Joseph. At a couple points, Joseph coerced Emma into getting on board with his plural marriages by withholding priesthood ordinances unless she consented. Emma’s submission never lasted long. Anger, jealous rage, and convictions plural marriage was immoral returned (Mormon Enigma 140-71). Emma threatened divorce (158). She also initiated the publication of “The Voice of Innocence,” a treatise that denounced plural marriage practices authored by the Relief Society. She urged women to only heed Joseph’s public teachings about marriage (monogamy) rather than what he shared in private (174).
Just as the gifts that Jack leaves cause sadness and confusion, Joseph dispersed botched blessings of disappointed hopes, loneliness and thwarted agency. On Christmas Eve, Jack leaves toys that can move and attack in the homes of unsuspecting children, such as vampire dolls, shrunken heads, ducks from hell, and giant snakes. He cackles like a witch as he flies through the sky pulled by his skeleton reindeer team, seemingly oblivious to the fact he is ruining Christmas.
Joseph’s teachings were packaged as blessings of joy, worthiness, and assured heavenly exaltation, but were largely experienced as curses. They led to depression, confusion, broken relationships, resentment, and lost faith. Joseph caused people who hoped for happy, exclusive marriages to have their dreams dashed. Women faced lonely situations laced with disempowerment and bitterness (see In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton). Sometimes Joseph’s exploits led happy couples to be separated, such as Zina Diantha Huntingdon and Henry Bailey Jacobs (The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy 92-94). Like Jack, Joseph seemed insensible to the devastation and suffering in his wake as he initiated yet more and more illegal unions during the final years of his life.
While Joseph’s spiritual gifts brought delight to Emma, his plural marriages were unwanted, traumatic surprises. His habitual pattern was to keep Emma in the dark as much as possible. He was fully aware that she disapproved of such behaviors and that his infidelity caused her great suffering. The pattern was that Emma would stumble unexpectedly on his liaisons and hear rumors from others. “Emma came to it piecemeal over a number of years through circumstances that hurt and shocked her” (Mormon Enigma 100). She discovered he was married to some of her closest friends, some of whom had been living in their house. He did not discuss his plural marriages directly with her until he could no longer avoid it. His actions harmed important relationships for Emma and alienated her from the community (95-100, 112-120, 132-51). Often being the last to know her own husband was in intimate relationships with the people around her was humiliating and abusive. Memories of Joseph’s acts of betrayal remained deeply painful and almost impossible for Emma to talk about in later years (Mormon Enigma 303).
Jack and Joseph both hit low points when they recognize their mistakes. When shot down out of the sky by the military for being a “Santa imposter,” Jack falls into the arms of an angel memorial in a graveyard and comes to acknowledge his mistakes for what they are, asking “what have I done?”
Hugh Herringshaw claimed Joseph Smith told the Twelve at a meeting that he had made a mistake in instigating polygamy and wanted their help to reverse it. William Marks wrote that Joseph told him personally he came to the realization he was deceived and had caused ruin for his people (Mormon Enigma 179-80, see also this article by Laurence Foster). This might indicate that Joseph hit a kind of rock bottom when the negative consequences of his dysregulated habits and self-justifications came to far outweigh the seeming advantages, leading him to get more in touch with reality concerning plural marriage.
Christmas is saved because Sally takes action, but polygamy stands uncorrected because Emma and other women have been disempowered. Santa and Sally team up to free themselves from a sadistic monster, Oogie Boogie, so that Santa can clean up Jack’s disaster. Jack returns from the human world and humbly joins their cause. Before he leaves to save Christmas, Santa remarks that Jack should consult Sally should he get any more creative ideas. Her independent thinking and actions prove essential in setting things right.
Brigham Young managed to keep some saints unified after the chaos of Joseph’s death, but he was also determined to continue polygamy. While he had “desired the grave” when Joseph first required that he take plural wives (Mormon Enigma 98), Brigham had come to enjoy his polygamous lifestyle. Once good friends with Emma, Brigham became her critic and antagonist across the rocky mountains (Mormon Enigma 205, 283-6). Brigham defended Joseph in past instances in which he had condemned Emma in public (284). Heber C. Kimball denounced Emma as a damned soul who could only be released from hell by her upstanding, honest husband (270). You could cut through bias and misogyny with a knife. The narrative about polygamy we have inherited in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was passed down by Brigham and other self-justifying, powerful male polygamist leaders. To this day, the Church continues to ignore women’s critical feedback and pain about polygamy.
Jack and Sally move toward a partnership in which they see eye to eye, something Joseph did not live long enough to possibly fulfill. In the Church, we have yet to treat Emma’s perspective of polygamy with the respect it deserves. In the closing scene, Jack calls Sally “my dearest friend” and asks if he can join Sally at her side to gaze into the stars together. His gestures acknowledge he overlooked her efforts to get close to him and to warn him of his previous self-absorption. Now he sees that warmth, joy, and love he seemed to be searching for in Christmas can be fostered in a relationship with Sally.
Joseph died without setting things right with polygamy or fully repairing his relationship with Emma. Emma’s final position was that while her husband was an authentic prophet, polygamy did not stem from God (Mormon Enigma 272). Neither the D&C 132 text nor the practice brought any spiritual light. Plural marriage was a dud revelation. Joseph himself acknowledged he had false “revelations” from time to time that came from humans or devils (30). If Emma could handle this level of nuance in the 1840’s, I don’t see why we couldn’t today. As the closest witness to Joseph’s life, a key founder of our faith, and someone forced to live the practice herself, we ought to let her perspective carry much more weight. Misogyny and male dominance have been major obstacles to her perspective making an impact on the Church or women’s lives.
The nightmare ends for Jack’s people, but has not truly ended for us. Jack’s people get a happy ending. Jack has grown and learned from his mistakes and returns to his role with newfound gratitude. Christmas snow falls on Halloween Town thanks to an act of grace from Santa.
Yet The Nightmare After Polygamy continues on for us after over 180 years. The emotional detachment, hubris, and abuses of power that Joseph Smith modeled foster the same vices in our leaders’ approaches and policies today. The fallout of polygamy goes far beyond plural marriage proper, which lives on in our scriptural canon and sealing policies. Its legacy has made our Church rigid, biased, overconfident and anxious about sex, marriage, and gender roles, wielding priesthood authority over members, and the treatment of those who are sexually different.
Rejecting polygamy from the roots is more congruent with Latter-day Saint scripture than continuing to give it an honored seat at the table. The Book of Mormon warns that it is all too easy for men to come to believe the Bible gives them permission to have plural wives or concubines like David and Solomon (Jacob 2). Thoughtful writers have pointed out that even the supposed “exception clause” in Jacob 2:30 proves to be misinterpreted when you look carefully at the word choice, phrasing, and sentence structure. It’s just another statement that affirms that what God commands is monogamy. One of the overarching messages of the Book of Mormon is to repent and turn away from the wicked traditions of our fathers. The book also cautions us to beware of religiously-based justifications for sin and arrogance. Our Church fails to hear and respond to our own scriptures’ calls to repentance.
Jack’s mistakes are resolved through him choosing accountability for his errors and switching from leader dominance to a partnership with Sally. Likewise, the Church will only make polygamy right when it steps up to take full responsibility for the wrongs it has inflicted, and transitions to a partnership model in which women’s authentic voices are truly heeded and come to impact Church narratives, teachings, and policies just as much as men’s do.
When will our leaders’ bubble of apathy and arrogance toward the suffering of women, marginalized groups, and lay members burst? When will women and men, and leaders and members come to sit side by side as equals, having moved past the fantasies and threats of polygamy toward partnership and reciprocity? Will it take unignorable, relentless outcry against human rights violations and psychological and spiritual abuse done by the Church over the past 180 years? I’m noticing many voices assert that it’s impossible for us to really start healing or making any real spiritual progress as a people until we weed out polygamy from its roots from our theology, scriptures, thinking, and policies.
10 Responses
This two part piece is spot on and perfectly on point for the season. Fall is a beautiful time, but we’re not meant to get stuck in any one season. When will the Church choose to move through the cycle fully…feel and own up to the death and desolation that polygamy has wrought, spend a season mourning in the bitter cold shadow with the countless women and men who have been harmed by this amboniation, then be born again into the light of restoration?
Thank you for taking the time to craft this piece. We need to keep speaking these things and refuse to be silenced until this terrible wrong is made right.
“If Emma could handle this level of nuance in the 1840’s, I don’t see why we couldn’t today. As the closest witness to Joseph’s life, a key founder of our faith, and someone forced to live the practice herself, we ought to let her perspective carry much more weight. Misogyny and male dominance have been major obstacles to her perspective making an impact on the Church or women’s lives.”
👆 💯 Because too many men are still secretly enamored by the idea of polygamy and their own power.🤷♀️
“It’s just another statement that affirms that what God commands is monogamy. One of the overarching messages of the Book of Mormon is to repent and turn away from the wicked traditions of our fathers. The book also cautions us to beware of religiously-based justifications for sin and arrogance. Our Church fails to hear and respond to our own scriptures’ calls to repentance.”
👆🎯
“When will our leaders’ bubble of apathy and arrogance toward the suffering of women, marginalized groups, and lay members burst? When will women and men, and leaders and members come to sit side by side as equals, having moved past the fantasies and threats of polygamy toward partnership and reciprocity? Will it take unignorable, relentless outcry against human rights violations and psychological and spiritual abuse done by the Church over the past 180 years? I’m noticing many voices assert that it’s impossible for us to really start healing or making any real spiritual progress as a people until we weed out polygamy from its roots from our theology, scriptures, thinking, and policies.”
AMEN and AMEN.🙏🏻 🙏🏻
Thank you so much for your response, Tracy! It means a lot. I love this sentence: “When will the Church choose to move through the cycle fully…feel and own up to the death and desolation that polygamy has wrought, spend a season mourning in the bitter cold shadow with the countless women and men who have been harmed by this abomination, then be born again into the light of restoration?” I like the idea that the restoration didn’t get a proper launch because of polygamy. I love the insight the Church needs to let polygamy die fully instead of holding on and go through an actual grieving process for all its wrong, mourning with all those stung by it. I see Canadians going through this as they unbury indigenous children at the schools Canada sent them to. They weep over what was done by their own people and for the victims. I’m planning on being a thorn in the Church’s side on this issue as long as the oppression continues!
Some men have told me that polygamy used to be a fantasy for them. I think you’re spot on, and I’ve seen that in action. It is just a fantasy. Our predecessors talked about how the structure killed love and romance.
These posts are excellent. Thank you for writing them.
Men seem to be enamored with the idea of being gods. But they have created a model of godhood that embraces the natural man and “sanctifies” his abominations with rituals and cherry picked scripture. It’s not fun or glamorous to be a God who elevates everyone and whose primary concern is the spiritual health and happiness of all.
If men have to do good deeds to become gods, they want it to be worth it. If they have to practice unending restraint in this life, they want an eternal life where they can have unending sex with more and more women. If they are humble in this life, they want an afterlife where they have power and glory. Basically they want an afterlife that caters to their base instincts and divine laws that call these base instincts holy.
The principles of Christianity have been so warped by men’s limited and self-serving perspectives. While I believe in eternal progression and the divinity of each soul, I don’t envision a godhood or goddesshood that mirrors in any way the fallen forms of government we see around us. I don’t envision councils of men debating righteousness and wickedness for hours. Then after the meeting, they pick which of their young beautiful wives they’ll grace with their presence. I don’t envision that they can choose a different wife every night and revel in their ability to populate worlds without end.
I firmly believe church leaders are so entrenched in patriarchy, that they honestly struggle, really struggle, to imagine a just world filled with partnership. They convince themselves this is what they already preach, but the desires of the natural man are embedded into the foundation of the church. The church cannot fully embrace or practice the gospel without addressing these shadowy desires.
Mary, I love your well-articulated thoughts here about what is theologically wrong and why, wonderful!
When I was about 9 I started interrogating adults about Mormon polygamy and this idea I was already being indoctrinated with that someday I would need to accept being a polygamous wife in heaven. One trusted adults told me that men just want and need to sexually be with a bunch of women, but women are not like that. They can only be in love with one person. I thought that was the most disappointing thing imaginable. And it stoked resentment against men for me.
As a grownup, I read about Sue Johnson’s research. She debunks myths that men are naturally polyamorous and have fundamentally different needs from women. Her studies suggest that monogamy and fidelity provide optimal fulfillment emotionally and sexually for both women and men. Mature and healthy men are usually attuned to this. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife’s work has shed so much light on the potency of women’s sexuality. We’re just as sexual as men, we have some unique qualities, one of them is that we are typically pickier. Neither of us is more prone to extramarital lust, having affairs, etc. It’s pretty equal.
It has been very healing for me to move from believing I wasn’t enough for anyone, and bound for a dismal unqual heaven, to uncover greater truths about these things! Polygamy used to harm my reliationship with God, but now I know that was never what God would want for me.
One of the best things abt this has been uncover that God can be fully trusted and loved. They don’t have sexism, numbness or indifference to our feelings, bizarre exceptions to their own rules, and they don’t violate human agency!
What do we say about some of the people in those time period who sincerely said they have received spiritual confirmation or revelations that it is from God? Like they actually believe it?
I’m just wondering if it truly not sanction by God, then why God have not directly told them that it is wrong? Are there records of people who have received revelation that it is not ok?
Thanks for bringing this up, J. Joseph Smith’s namesake Joseph Smith III received revelation that polygamy was not of God (you’ll find this in Mormon Enigma). Emma likely did too, it was her belief it was not divine, but she she likely burnt her journals, we don’t have them, and I haven’t read anything about about a specific instance of revelation. Some women rejected Joseph. Some friends parted ways over this issue because of their convictions is was not of God, including William Law and his family, and many who formed the RLDS Church. In terms of the revelations of people who lived it, personally, I have come to believe early saints’ testimonies of polygamy should be treated with great scrutiny. Psychologist Valerie Hamaker discusses how experiences individuals had that they interpreted to be the spirit affirming the divinity of polygamy could easily have actually been instances of psychological self-justification and self-deception in the face of cognitive dissonance. See: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/valerie-hamaker/episodes/Episode-109-The-Slippery-Slope-of-Self-Justification-e21joa6/a-a9jqbt2 The mind finds a way to regain equanimity when our collective and individual actions are at odds with our values and beliefs. Self-justification of abusive societal structures is common and is evident, for example, in histories of slavery and of residential schools. Devout individuals felt justified before God in upholding immoral, dehumanizing and violent lifestyles and relationships. With their salvation, standing in the Mormon community, and often basic physical needs at stake and little or no authority in their relationships with leaders, many early saints didn’t have a true, fair choice whether to enter a polygamous lifestyle. It makes sense they could unconsciously create reasons to feel better about their circumstances. In light of the abusive circumstances and cognitive dissonance they faced, these old testimonies should not bear much weight today. In addition to the distortion-prone context they were received in, they are also not authoritative revelations for the church, just personal accounts that are not for the whole church.
Many Latter-day Saints recount the spirit witnessing to them that Joseph had the encounters with God he claimed to have. I am someone who has experienced this many, many times. I feel it today. But virtually none today claim to have received a witness polygamy was God’s will. I have never heard such a testimony. My experience is that instead, like most of the early Saints experienced, we feel disgust and confusion and might go through a period of feeling off-kilter and ill at ease about the Church due to it, but then we just try to move on and ignore it.
Personally, I prayed requesting revelation that polygamy is of God for about 25 years. God never answered any of those many prayers, I never received a witness, and I was willing to receive it. God only answered me in my mid 30’s when for my own spiritual well-being, I told them I was closing the door on polygamy and would not believe it was heavenly or virtuous or a possibility for my eternal life anymore. I feel like I have received revelation for myself that differentiating on this issue to no longer believe in it was absolutely God’s will for me.
I hope these thoughts might be helpful. Psychology and spiritual experience are so complicated.
Thank you so much for these two articles about polygamy. From an early age I knew that my mom’s mother had grown up in a polygamous family, and, no matter how my mom and her sibs justified it, I KNEW at a young age that it was wrong if for no other reason than Jesus taught us that we should judge the goodness and truthfulness of an idea or teaching by the results that they produce. As I got older and heard the stories about Joseph Smith retranslating the Bible and asking God about polygamy in the OT I wondered if he and I had been reading the same Bible because every time polygamy is mentioned there are stories of favoritism, infighting, death, deceit, abandoned wives and children, fathers being too busy (or wanting) to love all of their wives and children, financial inequality and much, much more. None of these results are healthy, spiritually uplifting or positive.
Around 2000 my sister and I did a deep dive into our grandmother’s family because we had some questions about unhealthy beliefs and attitudes that appeared to have been passed down from polygamy. What we discovered was beyond our worst nightmares. I won’t go into details but will say that in light of our discoveries we realized that those unhealthy attitudes and behaviors that had been passed down were definitely a result of the entire mess that polygamy was in our family and still is in offshoots of the Mormon Church today. At a family reunion we presented our findings to our cousins, and as a result of the discussion afterwards, we as a group covenanted with each other to get counseling or other types of help/treatment to stop our terrible family legacy from affecting our children and their children. I’m happy to report that we’ve been successful and that polygamy’s evils will not badly affect another generation.
For anyone who has been fortunate enough to not have the scourge of polygamy in their family history I strongly suggest that you read Todd Compton’s books “In Sacred Loneliness” and “In Sacred Loneliness: the Documents” which deal with Joseph’s at least 33 known plural wives. In the second book that came out fairly recently letters and journal entries tell the truth about how Joseph’s and Brigham’s wives really felt about living “the principle”. I think that in the beginning Joseph made these women and girls, especially the teens, feel special and “chosen”. If you’ve read his infamous “Happiness Letter” you know that he was the master of situational ethics. He was also good looking and charismatic. Many of his wives didn’t realize until after they were married that he had other wives and that being married to him included sex. What a shock that must’ve been for them! Even if they knew it their hearts that they had made a huge mistake, to admit to doing something that 99.9% of the world said was illegal, immoral and socially unacceptable these ladies wouldn’t have wanted the world to think that they’d been duped or incapable of making good decisions and therefore often defended plural marriage.
There ought to be a long term study to deal with the generational fallout from the living and promoting of polygamy from 1840 (or before) to the Second Manifesto of 1904 and up to the present (eternal polygamy) as well as the fallout of offshoots of the church that continue to practice polygamy today. The idea that God instituted polygamy rather than it being a social construct from the very beginnings of humanity needs to be disproved and destroyed for once and for all.
Thank you so much for sharing this experience. How courageous of you and your sister to gather the family history stories and to invite the extended family to heal and reckon with the damage done by polygamy. I’m happy your family has found relief from it. When I was at BYU, I had a roommate who was born into a polygamous FLDS household. When she was a baby, her mother had grown unhappy and she fled the house. Her stories made polygamy feel so much closer. Thanks for all the points you bring up here. I love your statement, “The idea that God instituted polygamy rather than it being a social construct from the very beginnings of humanity needs to be disproved and destroyed for once and for all.” I agree. There are many older people in the church, esp. men, who believe it’s not a problem at all today. It’s long past and dead. They are out of touch with what women and others effected by the narrative and teachings continue to experience. I agree that it must be burned from the roots to be made right.
Candace, thanks for validating my thoughts and experiences dealing with polygamy. I have been reading “In Sacred Loneliness: the Documents” today and was struck by how many of Joseph’s wives, who were mostly married to the men in his inner circle after his death, described their experiences of polygamy. My heart bleeds for them!
For the first 17 or more years (if you consider Fanny Alger to have been his wife rather than an adulterous fling) of polygamy was practiced in secret. We know that Jesus expressly forbids “doing works of darkness” including anything that is done in secrecy to avoid appropriate public censure and breaking the law. Plural marriage ticks off both of these boxes. Reading about the anguish that Joseph’s plural wives and Emma suffered tells me that he was into polygamy only for himself. If he’d truly been commanded by God to practice it he would’ve been deeply concerned for the physical, emotional and financial welfare of these girls and women. Ditto for the attitudes of his inner circle of men. But they weren’t at all. Emma kicked the Partridge sisters, Emily and Eliza, out of the Smith home soon after their sham second marriage to her husband in her presence. Joseph put up no opposition to Emma’s demand, and these two young women had to go around Nauvoo begging for a family to allow them to live with them. When Emily was married to Brigham Young she was forced many times to write letters or to visit him in person in order to beg him to give her enough money to pay her bills, feed her children and clothe them. Meanwhile, she was literally wearing ragged clothes and shoes that were falling apart at the seams. BY sometimes answered her requests, but much of the time he just ignored her and his children by her. Most of his children, unless they were from his favorite wives, had to remind him of who they were when they met him, and most of them disliked him intensely. His disregard for many his wives and children also goes against the Savior’s teachings.
On my dad’s side of the family we also had polygamy. In this case my great-great-grandmother, who had recently joined the church in Denmark along with the rest of her family, was married fairly soon after their arrival to one of BY’s close friends who was also the mayor of a small town in the Salt Lake Valley. She didn’t know that he had another wife, and his first wife didn’t know about the new wife. When GGma had my great-grandfather she didn’t know that her midwife was the best friend of the first wife. The midwife went to wife #1 and told her about wife #2 and the birth. Two days later while her husband was out of town, wife #1 appeared at GGma’s door with the sheriff and an order kicking her and her newborn out of the house which her husband owned. My GGma and her baby had only the things that she and a kind neighbor who drove them to her parents’ home in Salt Lake City could fit in his carriage. When the husband returned he refused to give my GGma any financial assistance and cut her and her baby off completely. She became a cook at a silver mining camp up Little Cottonwood Canyon just east of the SL Valley. Although she pleaded her story to both the religious authorities and the civil courts nothing was ever done to help her and her child because Brigham Young protected her husband from any possible consequences of his egregious behavior.
For this and numerous other reasons I refuse to believe that polygamy was EVER instituted by God. As long as church leaders and members refuse to recognize that polygamy is a wicked, harmful and destructive practice the descendants of those who participated in it (especially the women and their children) will continue to suffer its many painful, long lasting consequences. I will do all that I can to speak out against polygamy until my dying day.
These stories are incredible, and so disturbing. Thanks for sharing them. I’m descended from Brigham Young’s first wife who died young of TB. As a young person, he seemed to be a decent husband. He cared for the kids and his sick wife. He got arrogant later on. Originally, he didn’t like the idea of polygamy, but he trusted Joseph too much, he gave all his trust. What a big mistake. He didn’t like challenging what Joseph wanted. I so wish he had been more of an independent and mature thinker. Later he became very accustomed to having many wives. I remember doing a project about Brigham Young and the pioneers at a school fair in WA when I was in third grade. An adult neighbor who wasn’t in the Church whom I knew approached me and told me Brigham Young was abusive to his children. That was a really inappropriate thing to say to an 8-year-old descendent doing family history research for the first time. At the time, my family said she was totally off. But now, I realized that someone cannot have 56 wives and 57 children and be a descent non-neglectful spouse. If he didn’t have funds for his wives, who did? What a financial unsupportive and broken system. As a kid, I used to look at the photo of his first wife, my ancestor Miriam Werks. She looked fairly modern and strong willed. I wondered what she would think about all the marriages that happened after she died.
I appreciate the story about the Partridge sisters. You can’t really love someone if you can’t see their needs or their suffering. Joseph seems to have gotten into a head space in which he stopped really seeing or empathizing with others. In Mormon Enigma, I read that he didn’t provide for his wives, and they often still lived with their parents, etc. They were expected to be loyal to him despite him not providing much of anything in return.