Comments on: Girls at Home and Abroad: The View from 1903

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:47:06 +0000

This reminds me of an experience my grandparents had just a few years after Elder Taylor wrote this. Newly married and attempting to scrape together enough money for my grandfather to continue his schooling, they found work one summer–in different places. My grandfather worked as a miner (either in Mammoth or Lark, Utah) and my grandmother worked as cook on a ranch. My dad told once of a conversation he had with his father about that experience–wasn’t he worried about his new bride down among all those “wolves” at the ranch? Grandpa just chuckled and said it was those wolves that had to worry–a word or a look out of place from one of them and she would have put them in their place–and kept them there the rest of the summer. It may have been, he suggested, the best behaved mess hall on any ranch ever.

(On another matter, I think my daughters have inherited some of that fire from their great-grandmother.)

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:37:39 +0000

This is the phrase that I think I find most egregious here:

…they have brought a lifelong sorrow upon father, mother, brothers and sisters.

Whatever happens to them in that mining camp, the worst thing is the shame that their family feels. Really7 I guess that repentance, compassion, and family support are all evidences of weakness on the part of the saints, in John W. Taylor’s eyes.

Sorry, a bit harsher response than I normally would express. Interesting article, though, and very much a product of its time.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:47:11 +0000

Wow. I’m currently reading the excellent biography Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife, and it is a case study of these points, with the oldest daughters needing to work to help keep the family from starvation.

As far as polygamy goes, the Udall family was influenced by Matthias F. Cowley, who arranged and performed two post-Manifesto plural marriages in the family. One of them is my tie to the family and a reason why I’m finding the book such fascinating reading, and the other marriage was Rudger Clawson to Pearl Udall in 1904.

This article is making me irate, thinking about the difficulties created for the women by these post-Manifesto marriages, not to mention the difficulties created by earlier church-recognized plural marriages. How can he talk about protecting women when he and Cowley were subjecting the women to such high levels of legal and ethical and religious risk?

On the other hand, I do recognize that in certain cases plural marriage had been able to solve problems of a woman finding herself alone, without support, as will be illustrated in the next Eminent Women post, the story of Anna Charlotte Eldridge Hinkle Chidester.

By: Grant

Grant — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:56:01 +0000

But it’s hard not to consider Taylor without reference to what he is “unfortunately best remembered for.” While these sentiments towards guarding the virtue of young women were probably fairly generally held within the church and the dominant American society coming out of Victorianism, how much of this was influenced by his apostate views on what he is best remembered for? (I guess I’m thinking “patriarchal oppression of women”).

I mean, every choice is either to follow the Lord or the adversary. It’s just that this life is often so convoluted that those choices are difficult to separate out individually from our cultural and personal prejudices and contexts. The important thing for me is the direction we are moving.

Taylor, moving towards apostasy for refusing the give up the “principle” may have been choosing unrighteous dominion over women over their personal development and full potential.

Of course I have my own personal and cultural biases. While happy to have my 20-year-old daughter out of the home at that church school down south, I’m glad she’s not working in a mining camp.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:20:06 +0000

1927.

By: HokieKate

HokieKate — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:11:26 +0000

Wow, those are pretty strong words. What year was the lovely series on employment options for women published?