This Archive Sunday post was contributed by Todd Compton and originally published on March 12th, 2007. You can view the original post and discussion here.
It seems that some men think because we are women that they are justified in kicking us right and left
– Emily Dow Partridge
I’m honored to be invited to guest blog here in woman’s history month. I’d like to focus briefly on the life and writings of Emily Dow Partridge (Smith Young), because she wrote so vividly about her life, and very eloquently about the difficulties of being a woman in Mormonism, and of simply being a woman. For sources and a fuller recounting of Emily Dow’s life, see my chapter on her in In Sacred Loneliness.
I should mention that there are lots of complexities in her life and attitudes toward the church and her husbands, and I couldn’t get them all into my essay in In Sacred Loneliness, let alone in this post. If you’re interested, read more of her writings, especially her private writings. Some are available at LDS Church Archives, and some are available at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. Emily also published a “public” version of her life in the Woman’s Exponent in 1884 and 1885. Oh, and for what it’s worth, we all know Steve Young, the 49ers quarterback, was a descendant of Brigham Young, but how many knew he was a descendant of this great woman, Emily Dow Partridge?
Emily Dow Partridge was born on February 28, 1824, in Painesville, Ohio, the third child of Lydia Clisbee and a hatter named Edward Partridge, later to become the church’s first bishop. Emily grew up near Kirtland, where the family converted to Mormonism, and then amid the mobbings in Missouri—she left a memorable description of how her father was tarred and feathered there. His health broke and he died on May 27, 1840 in Nauvoo. Emily and her older sister Eliza moved into the Joseph Smith home to work as live-in maids.
Joseph proposed to Emily about two years later, when she was eighteen, but she was initially reluctant to enter into a plural marriage, in part because she loved and respected Emma Smith so much. However, she finally gave in to Joseph’s persistent preaching and married him on March 4, 1843, when she nineteen. She was Joseph’s nineteenth wife. Four days later Joseph married Eliza, but at first neither sister knew of the other’s marriage to the prophet. Neither did Emma Smith. When Emma finally consented to allow Joseph plural wives, she chose Emily and Eliza. So Joseph Smith performed the two marriages again, for Emma’s benefit.
Emily later wrote that even though Emma had sanctioned the marriages to the Partridges, she could not tolerate the practical realities of polygamy, and she quickly became their bitter enemies—to the extent of threatening their lives. After Joseph and Emma had many heated arguments, he came to Emily and Eliza and told them that he felt that his hands were tied; he had to ask them to leave his home. Emily later wrote: “Joseph asked her [Emma] if we made her the promises she required, if she would cease to trouble us, and not persist in our marrying some one else. She made the promise. Joseph came to us and shook hands with us, and the understanding was that all was ended between us.” Emily and Eliza left the Smith household about September or October 1843. Suddenly they had lost the security of a household, and were for practical purposes divorced, also. It must have been a devastating experience.
After Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, the apostles felt they had a duty to marry the widows of Joseph Smith for time. Eliza ended up with Amasa Lyman (as did another Partridge sister, Caroline); but Emily Dow married the leading apostle, Brigham Young, later church president.
Though Emily and Brigham had seven children, this was a difficult relationship, for Emily. Brigham was married to about 56 women, and had children by nineteen of those. (Some separated from him; others, like Eliza R. Snow, lived in his family without bearing children.) In Mormon polygamy, men often had a favored wife or wives, and Brigham Young seems to fit this pattern; unfortunately, Emily evidently was not a favored wife.
I’ll give one quote from Emily’s diary to show the problems she had with Brigham:
I have been sick in bed for two days. Am much better today. I feel rather dispirited and a good cry might do me good. I feel quite ashamed to be known as a wife of the richest man in the territory, and yet we are so poor. I do not know why he is so loth to provide for me. My children are his children. He provides sumptuously for some of his family. If he was a poor man it would be different . . . He manifests a desire to cast me off, and I cannot ask him for anything. What his hired men will let me have I get, but it is like pulling teeth to get that sometimes. I feel very loanly tonight. I hope I do not sin in my feelings.
Brigham died on July 29, 1877 (and in her diary, Emily speaks positively of him as a father and church leader). For the rest of her life, Emily lived on a farm in Salt Lake City; she loved being visited by her married children and doted on her grandchildren.
When I first read Emily’s diaries and autobiographical writings, I was struck by how strongly and consciously she had proto-feminist feelings. Take this for instance: on January 3, 1878, her diary gives us a lively account of male-female relations in a Mormon ward.
The ward bishop and his first counselor spoke in the women’s Relief Society “in behalf of the trustees of the school house.” The bishop said that the brethren would manage the school and he “would be glad if the sisters would please not interfere.” He repeated this offensive request “several times,” then said he was too mad to talk and sat down. Emily wrote, “Now I was not a bit pleased with his remarks.” I love that phrase! The women had “interfered,” Emily explained, because the bishop had thrown the job on the sisters.
Her heart rebelled, she wrote, and the other sisters felt as she did. “Why cannot our rulers be kind and considerate to the members of the Ward. It seems that some men think because we are women that they are justified in kicking us right and left. . . I came home from the meeting with a severe headache.” Emily generalized this experience with an intolerant bishop to make it a pattern of how many men treated women.
On July 29 and August 1, Emily wrote an entry that showed her looking back on her life and trying to make sense of it:
Sunday. Today I’ve been thinking, thinking, thinking. My mind goes back to days gone by. And what do I find, can I find anything so pleasant that I could wish to live it over again or even to dwell upon it in thought, with any degree of satisfaction. No I cannot. My life has been like a panorama of disagreeable pictures. As I scan them over one by one, they bring no joy, and I invariably wind up with tears. I have been heart hungry all my life, always hoping against hope, until the years are nearly spent, and hope is dead for this life but bright for the next.
Not exactly a ringing affirmation of life in polygamy, with the first two prophets in the LDS church. The phrase “heart hungry all my life” haunts me.
And then I aske myself what great or good thing have I done that I should hope for better things in the next world, or what great trial or exploit can I recount like many others perhaps, that will bring honor and greatness. I can only sum it up in one word, and that is I am a ‘woman’. . . .
The only thing that balances the “panorama of disagreeable pictures” that was her life is one word: her identity as a “woman.” That gives her hope for the next life.
She continues:
or if that is not enough I am a ‘mother’ and still more I am, as the world calls it, ‘spiritual wife’ of early days, when public opinion was like an avalanche burying all such beneath its oppressive weight. Some will understand what it is to be a woman, mother, or an unloved ‘spiritual wife.’
I should mention that the next day Emily was in a better mood.
In 1895, when she was seventy-one, Emily wrote a remarkable, impassioned feminist credo:
Woman has had to bear her own burdens, and also a great portion of mans curse. She is not only expected to bear children, but she must drudge from morning untill night; and her duties as wife and mother often follow her from night until morning; and her labors never cease as long as she can place one foot before the other. I do not think that God designed that man should enjoy all the sweets of Liberty; while woman is bowed down in shackles. Liberty is sweet. As sweet to woman as to man. . . . We do not wish to drag our brothers down, but we desire to raise ourselves up to his level We have born the galling chains a very long time.
I find it remarkable that Emily should write about women almost in slavery, in “shackles” and “chains.” This is obviously very different from the public face Mormon women presented, and plural wives presented, to the world. (And it is very different from the things Emily published publicly.) Yet she clearly saw a great inequity in the work situation of women and men. “[Woman’s] duties as wife and mother often follow her from night until morning; and her labors never cease as long as she can place one foot before the other.” (Is this a realistic view of motherhood, you out there with two or three young kids? My wife and I have one toddler, and that seems challenge enough!) While men, on the other hand, seem to “enjoy all the sweets of Liberty.” Clearly, Emily would have agreed that men also worked; but she saw men as having more liberty than women. (She is of course writing as an elite, polygamous Mormon woman, looking at elite, often polygamous Mormon men.)
I think that we have made great strides in giving women more equality in America (women voting, for one thing); but much remains to be done in Mormonism. We Mormon feminists must continue Emily’s struggle to “not wish to drag our brothers down, but we desire to raise ourselves up to his level”—for women to achieve complete equality in our church. We are far from that goal, but I think it is the most important challenge that our church faces today.