Document Type
Essay
Publication Date
2009
Abstract
My perception of the Mormon practice of polygamy has been evolutionary. My desire to comprehend it comes from a need to understand not only the faith I espouse, but also my very being. Polygamy is in my DNA. My maternal, third-great grandfather, Willard Richards, was one of Mormonism’s earliest polygamists, and my fraternal, third-great grandfather one of its most prolific—Christopher Layton had ten wives and sixty-five children. When I was a child my dad sometimes told me about our polygamous ancestors. Somehow polygamy did not seem that surprising or strange to me then. “Just a different, old-fashioned way of marriage,” I thought in the simplicity of my young mind. When I matured, either because I understood more or because I was then entrenched in twentieth-century American society, polygamy became bizarre and even repulsive to me. How could anyone— particularly women—want to live such a lifestyle? Though “plural marriage” is an indelible part of my church and family history, as a modern, monogamous woman I look at it as an outsider.
Recommended Citation
Brown, Barbara Jones, "“They Do Things Differently There”: Understanding a Polygamous, "Foreign Country"" (2009). Arrington Student Writing Award Winners. Paper 1.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/arrington_stwriting/1
Comments
Arrington Student Writing Award Winner for First Place.