Comments on: His Father’s Son — Chapter 6

By: Carol

Carol — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:19:49 +0000

. . .Then Richard III will sell the Stradivarius to pay for the two plastic surgeries and save the farm from foreclosure.

By: SilverRain

SilverRain — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:13:51 +0000

Probably seeds for cobless corn.

But they never opened the trunk, so now we’ll never have it.

By: Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 07:14:34 +0000

I gotta hand it to Ivy — for all the goofiness and variable deficits unearthed by our collective scrutiny, I’m hooked. I have to know what happens to everybody, and what’s in that trunk.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 13:09:20 +0000

So, is Kareen going to do something totally ridiculous/life threatening/deadly to get a Strataverious violin, only to find out that there is one in the trunk? That’s my call.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:42:40 +0000

Clark, since the family all expected Esther to marry Oliver, I doubt they considered her their *daughter* else she would have been marrying her own brother.

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:13:30 +0000

#13: are we to understand that Esther wasn’t sealed to the Havens? Most of the Mormon families I’m familiar with seal their adopted children to them.

And #1 and #3 hit the nail on the head. Among the tragedies of this story is that everyone is forcing their vision of a “successful life” onto those around them.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:18:29 +0000

What? He didn’t want to invent a tomato with the flavor of cardboard and the texture of a turnip? Where’s his sense of adventure?

And that lawyer Sleed? Where’d he get that name–from Dickens? And what a draftsman! “I want my boy should . . . ” That alone should be grounds for disbarring him.

And, for all the thriving music stores in Utah (I won’t dispute Researcher’s assertion–a great music store around the corner from Carnegie Hall just closed, for crying out loud!), I’m afraid that the general attitude is the same as the Haven family–it ain’t quite proper. Real boys play football.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:58:21 +0000

About the marriage in the bedroom:

Some of you may recall the story of Eulah Marie Jewett, the young woman who had been kidnapped from Salt Lake City as a baby. She joined the church in the 1950s, and her report said she was especially anxious to find her real family because she couldn’t receive her endowment without knowing her parents’ names. I didn’t know then — still don’t — whether that was really church policy then, or whether she misunderstood what she was told. As odd as it seems, it’s possible that that was policy — for many years, single women or women married to non-members couldn’t receive their endowments because they couldn’t be sealed to husbands; perhaps the same rule was in effect if you couldn’t be sealed to your parents.

I started today trying to find out whether that really was policy after all, after reading this installment of this wonderfully dreadful story written in the ’30s.

Eulah Marie didn’t know her parents because she had been kidnapped. Esther (although fictional) doesn’t know her parents because she was a foundling. If that really was church policy, Esther couldn’t have been married in the temple, explaining why she was married at home. If that’s the case Ivy Stone wouldn’t have needed to explain that — most of her readers at the time would have known that and taken it for granted.

I don’t know how soon I’ll have the answer. I’ll let you know either way — will probably write a separate post about it, if it proves to be true. In that case, this silly serial will have resulted in our learning something new. If false, I’ll be able to add a note to Eulah Marie’s story correcting her report.

By: Mina

Mina — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:14:58 +0000

oops, either don’t know how to post links here or forgot they were maybe not allowed? Anywho you can find the Burbank essay at archive.org.

[I edited your link to make it work, Mina. Thanks for the link.--AEP]

By: Mina

Mina — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:14:14 +0000

Let me also add my two bits to how fascinating the life and work of Luther Burbank are. However, as per his eugenics in "The Training of the Human Plant," I doubt he would approve of any of the couplings in this story. If you're interested the entire text of that essay can be found here.