The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy by Terryl L. Givens (review)

406 Western American Literature At the heart of R eynolds’s analysis is his belief that Cather’s fiction portrays “early twentieth-century progressivism ” in its treatment o f “race, immigration, and multiculturalism.” He discusses O Pioneers! in the context of imperial his­ tory, My Antonia in light of the Americanization debate, One of Ours as a reflec­ tion of the strain war placed on American progressivism and idealism, The Professor’ s House as a com plex attempt not only to portray a progressive utopia but also to reconcile primitivism and modern science, and Death Comes for the Archbishop as a portrayal of Cather’s Catholic progressivism. Willa Cather in Context is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work, making new connections among Cather and the thinkers of her time and prodding the reader to continue the process. A n n M o s e l e y T e x a s A&M U n iv e r s it y - C o m m e r c e \Jthe Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. By Terryl L. Givens. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 205 pages, $35.00.) This book is about the nineteenth-century (mis)representation of Mormons. At a time and place of inchoate genre boundaries, anti-Mormon rhetoric partook of the gothic, the captivity narrative, the historical novel, polem ic, propaganda, and the memoir to register themes of bondage and white slavery. For producers and consumers o f anti-Mormon representations, American womanhood was threatened with kidnapping and mind control not only by savage Indians, vil­ lainous priests, and Mohammedan white slavers, but also by Mormons, all of whom were to be foiled by chivalric heroes from the dominant culture. Givens historicizes these representations by retracing the persecution of the Mormons. It w asn’t just that the forces of the state murdered Joseph Smith in jail (as they would do later to Crazy Horse and George Jackson) or banished the Mormons (as they had done from Anne Hutchinson to the Cherokees). In 1838 the governor of M issouri ordered not only the M ormons’ expulsion, but their extermination. At the resulting Haun’s M ill Massacre, eighteen men, women, and children were murdered and many more wounded. Of all the unusual reli­ gious groups to com e out o f the Second Great Awakening (Arians, Sublapsarians, Supralapsarians, Rappites, Paedobaptists, Come-Outers), the Mormons were persecuted out of all proportion to their subversiveness. This study’s thesis is that the Otherizing o f Mormonism was paradoxical: on the surface, the dominant culture perceived the Mormons as anti-American, but its anxiety arose from the fact that Mormonism was im plicitly similar to main­ stream Christianity. The attack on peripheral tenets and practices, such as ongo­ ing revelation, additional scripture, polygamy, and aggressive m issionizing, obscured the true subject: a group ethnically indistinguishable from the domi­ Reviews 407 nant culture but with a vision o f itself as covenanted new saints developing the new Jerusalem. The dominant culture Orientalized Mormons by refashioning them from a religious group into an ethnic group. It could thereby discriminate against a religious group by projecting its own ignorance and intolerance. W idely researched, theoretically informed, and gracefully written, this work is a model of significant interdisciplinary study. G ender and Genre: An Introduction to Women Writers o f Formula Westerns, 1900-1950. By Norris Yates. (Albuquerque: University of New M exico Press, 1995. 181 pages, $35.00.) Betw een 1906 and 1941, B. M. Bower wrote over 68 books and over 150 novelettes and short stories on western themes. W hile her estimated audience of over 2 m illion readers pales in comparison to Zane Grey’s 40 m illion and Louis L’Am our’s 190 m illion, it still suggests the huge popularity Westerns commanded among general readers in the early decades o f this century. B ow er’s first novel, Chip o f the Flying U, is the initial book in a series of fif­ teen that features the Happy Family of the Flying U ranch. Set in 1886, when the northern Plains cattle range was being fenced, the novel dramatizes the ini­ tiation...