| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

More Wives than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910. By Kathryn M. Daynes. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. xii, 305 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-252-02681-0.)

Kathryn M. Daynes, associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, examines the interaction of law and religion in the lives of Mormon polygamists in Manti, Utah, in the mid- to late nineteenth century. The rationale of Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, for plural marriage was that God commanded it to restore the primitive church and gather the saints—Mormonism's millenarian theology of the elect. Daynes sees Smith's "tenacity" in instituting polygamy as evidence of his religious motivation. His wife, Emma, and her sons disagreed (see Valeen Tippetts Avery, From Mission to Madness, 1998). Entering a temple marriage covenant sealed a man to a woman, or several women, for time and eternity. But the church granted divorces for adultery, for the apostasy of a spouse, or simply to find a more suitable mate. 1

While Mormon polygamy was in effect, 1837–1890, the average age of brides decreased. More women could marry or remarry. As rich men married poor women (widowed, divorced, fatherless), the result was a better distribution of wealth. In fact, women who needed economic help disproportionately practiced polygamy. And illegitimacy decreased, if one accepts records of the time. . . .

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