A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (review)

An 1835 start date works well for a book committed to the excavation of early Mormon primary sources. Wilford Woodruff, one of the country's great diarists, began a journal in 1835, two years after he joined the nascent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He wrote daily until 1896, two years before his death. Crucial to understanding nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint experience, his journals provide the backbone for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's fine book. In Ulrich's hand, Woodruff's diaries also converse with additional sources, most notably those generated by women.

Accordingly, 1870 makes a fitting end point by underscoring the book's exemplary inclusion of women's records and history. A House Full of Females brings women actors to the fore, although it is about male experience as well as female. Readers see how women established the female-led Relief Society, led outreach to members of Paiute, Pahvant, and other Native American tribes, and built the church, often in the absence of their missionary husbands. True to the history itself, Ulrich portrays female contributions as cooperative with, but not derivative of, male ones. For example, in recounting the origin story of a beloved church hymn, Ulrich leads not with the usual second-hand reports about Joseph Smith's teachings, but with the theological analysis of Eliza R. Snow, the hymn's author (133).

Why is 1870 significant for LDS women? That year they proved themselves able on a grand scale to organize, to lobby, and to mobilize the press. On 13 January, female church members held a Great Indignation Meeting to register their protest against what they saw as unconstitutional federal anti-polygamy legislation, anti-Mormon bigotry, false newspaper reports, and a violation of their religious freedom. By March, fifty-eight towns purportedly had held mass meetings in related protest, involving up to twenty-five thousand attendees (378–82). Furthermore, Utah women cast their ballots on 14 February 1870—the first women in the nation to vote.

While the book covers a broad range of subjects, it provides particularly rich insights into female and male encounters with plural marriage. Readers see first-hand how it could foster jealousy, heartache, and unfulfilled expectations of romantic partnership. They also learn how participation in polygamy was a choice founded in religious devotion, how it often bound women together in love and common cause, and how it encouraged their exercise of radical reproductive agency to choose with whom they wanted to have children. Eleanor McLean, for instance, declared she would rather share a virtuous man like her second husband (Parley P. Pratt) than have her alcoholic, difficult first husband all to herself (352).

Of the many contributions A House Full of Females makes to the fields of American history, religious history, and Mormon studies, the most significant is its treatment of sources. The book is a source study in narrative form, examining diaries, letters, and material objects to tell a poignant story of Mormon activity and inner life. Affidavits about marriage to Joseph Smith are one of the few but necessary exceptions to Ulrich's rule that source materials in the book be created as their authors were in the middle of—not looking back on—significant experiences.

A House Full of Females includes bibliographical references (pages 400–63) and an index. The writing is engaging and the quality of the research superb. The book is required reading for scholars of American religious history and an effective resource for students to learn both the limitations and potential of different kinds of sources. The compelling subject matter—the human drama inherent to polygamy, persecution, and sacrifice—and beautiful prose will also attract general readers.