![]() Spirituality was more important than friendship and romance. (She even provides floor plans.) Mormon culture prized “gathering” (or coming together) over isolation. From 19th-century diaries, fragments, scrapbooks, letters, albums, meeting minutes and even textiles, she teases out a rich account of their struggles and triumphs.Īlthough Ulrich discusses the complications and emotional costs of polygamy, she focuses on the way that many women embraced its communal living arrangements. Instead of using retrospective autobiographies whose writers knew the outcome of events, Ulrich depends on the immediacy of daily records of first-generation Mormons. ![]() Ulrich, however, relies on – even as she contributes to – the relatively new field of Mormon women’s history, which is calling attention to women’s first-hand accounts and testimonies. ![]() Until recently, most studies of the uniquely American Mormon Church, established in 1830, have emphasised its male founders and prophets, especially Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Her focus is on the movement’s many forgotten women, who had become little more than names and dates. This work uses the documents and artefacts of ordinary people to provide a social history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). ![]() If Pulitzer-prizewinning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich shot the moon with A Midwife’s Tale (1990), which reconstructs the life of Martha Ballard from a single diary, she may have achieved an equally impressive feat here. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |