Antipolygamy Narratives after 9/11: Writing and Rewriting the Abduction of Elizabeth Smart

The 2001 abduction and nine-month captivity of Elizabeth Smart was one of the most publicized kidnappings in American history (E. and L. Smart 2003, 54). After her return home, Smart's parents published a memoir, Bringing Elizabeth Home (2003), her uncle, Tom Smart, released In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation in 2005, and Elizabeth published My Story in 2009. These memoirs are part of an emerging genre that follows a young woman's abduction and captivity, concluding with her escape and return home. The only scholarly discussion of this trend is Elaine Showalter's 2013 essay in the New York Times. This paper addresses the gap in literary analysis and maps the reasons for the popularity of memoirs about Smart's case. This paper situates these texts as a resurgence of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century antipolygamy novel, and maps the ways they reaffirm dominant post-9/11 anxieties, including the trope of the "damsel in distress," the orientalist fear of the Mormon polygamist, and the logic that "unveiling" women is essential to their safety. These memoirs reaffirm dominant stereotypes about religiously motivated polygamy and the orientalist tropes of the "barbaric" Muslim Other.