From 1890 to 1970: women’s retrenching roles

The year 1890 is considered a watershed year: after a momentous, decades-long battle with the federal government, church leaders were compelled to halt polygamous marriages. The actual discontinuation of “plural marriage” took many more years and caused rifts in the church. But as Mormons moved into the twentieth century and adapted to the overall American society, church leaders channeled developments which also affected gender roles. One can roughly distinguish three phases.

- From 1890 to 1920 transitions lead to distinct definitions of masculinity and femininity (3.3.1).

- In a second phase, lasting till 1940, shifting emphases laid the basis for gendered distinctions that would become standard Mormon rhetoric (3.3.2).

- Finally, between 1940 and 1970, a third phase is characterized by a further compelling retrenchment imposed on women’s roles (3.3.3).

The year 1970 marked another major change in church policies that is used as a separator for the end of an era and the start of the next half century, until today.

3.3.1. From 1890 to 1920: distinct masculinity and diverse femininity 3.3.1.1. Transition to monogamy

After the abolishment of polygamy in 1890, the church had to recover from a major legal defeat. It had to abandon the implementation of a core doctrine on gender relations without denying its veracity. As a reward, Utah gained full Statehood in 1896. Mormons

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moved into mainstream America as they softened their isolationist patterns and attitudes and adapted to the social, economic, and political standards of the nation. This transition did not come easily as various authors have analyzed (see, for example, Alexander 1986;

Hoyt and Patterson 2011; Quinn 1985). The polygamous system with its peculiar gender roles and relations sat ingrained in the culture. The thousands of existing polygamous families with their intricate networks continued to function more or less and would have to slowly crumble and die out. Because new polygamous unions lingered underground for a number of years, in 1904 the church president had to take a firm public stand that polygamy was terminated. The role models of the older patriarch and the “sister wives,”

pioneer symbols of half a century of independent theocracy, had to be replaced by new ones. The upcoming generation of young adults, many of whom had grown up within polygamous households, had to adopt narrow gender roles in the nuclear family.

3.3.1.2. Mormon masculinity in priesthood, mission, career, and fatherhood

Times were changing in this fin de siècle and Belle Époque which intruded in the traditionally closeted Mormon sphere. One major concern, also in other parts of the United States, became the delinquent conduct of boys—truancy, larceny, intoxication, tabagism, and sexual permissiveness, in short a lack of moral fortitude. The matter was tackled in church magazines.¹ Originating in the Anglican church in Britain, initiatives of reform were developed to remedy the indolence and alleged effeminacy of wayward adolescents and young men. As part of the so-called Progressive Movement, Christian churches across the United States started programs to preserve or regain the males within the fold, with an emphasis on physical strength as mirror of moral and spiritual determination (Gorrell 1988; Stromquist 2010). This “muscular Christianity” is exemplified in the development of Christian sports associations and in the founding of the Boy Scouts movement (Putney 2009). Hoyt and Patterson (2011) analyzed how Mormon church leaders adopted this trend: “When Mormons were forced to discontinue their plural sexual practices and embrace the monogamous heterosexuality that was normative within wider (primarily Protestant) society, they were also forced to reconstruct their notions of masculinity” (p. 73). The foundations for a renewed Mormon manhood were based on at least four factors: priesthood, mission, career, and fatherhood.

Priesthood. The first factor played out in a new emphasis: the boys’ and men’s systematic progression and commitment in the priesthood, which became known as “the Priesthood Reform Movement” (Hartley 1973). In 1908 a “General Priesthood Committee on Outlines” developed new directives to invigorate boys’ involvement and dedication.

Each boy would now move systematically through the Aaronic priesthood offices

1 For example, Gowans, E. G. “The Boy Problem,” Improvement Era (January 1908): 194–198; Gowans, E. G.,

“The Tobacco Curse,” Improvement Era (April 1915): 547.

83 according to fixed age groupings. The groups themselves, called quorums, received specific assignments to enhance their religious and social cohesion and responsibilities.

Manuals, newsletters, and programs detailed the expected engagement. Certificates and awards formalized achieved individual progression. “It took a generation of labor for the priesthood reforms to be widely accepted and in reasonable working order” (Hartley 1996, 120–121), but the results of the massive formalization were unmistaken in the statistics of continuously improving church attendance in the twelve to eighteen age group. A similar structural reinforcement was applied to the adult men in their Melchizedek priesthood quorums, for the offices of elders, seventies, and high priests.

Mission. A second factor was the institution of missionary service by all young single men. In the nineteenth century a relatively small number of mature and married men were called on missions, which was feasible because the agrarian communities with large families could support wife and children during their absence. With urbanization, nuclear families, and mortgages to be paid off, married men could not easily be taken out. The system changed to calling single men in their early twenties to spend a few years on missions in other parts of the country or abroad. The experience was projected as a test of male fortitude and extended into the anticipation that each should go. The “returned missionary,” with his stories of persecution, endurance, and success, became a male role model for the younger.

Career. A third factor was a consequence of the Americanization of Mormon society:

individual career success—at least for men. Nineteenth-century Mormonism was characterized by the preponderance of the agrarian community. Communal interests such as irrigation and crop diversification took precedence over individual ambitions. In the 1870s the church even experimented with collectivist communities, called the United Order, as the ideal realization of Zion (Arrington 2005). Now, with Utah part of the Union and capitalism inescapable, and the agrarian communities becoming more industrialized, church leaders joined in the Protestant pursuit of individual success (Bryson 1999).

Articles in The Improvement Era, the official church magazine for young men, hailed vocational preparation and talent development. Through its “Young Men Mutual Improvement Association,” present in every congregation, the church set up vocational training and employment services. It became part of ethics. “Choosing a vocation, a calling in the economic world, was choosing the role that would build character and shape the man in this life” (Hoyt and Patterson 2011, 79).

Fatherhood. Finally came fatherhood, the obligation to enter into a monogamous heterosexual marriage and raise a family. Remaining single was no option for the “real man” who should now apply his talents and leadership to marriage. To a certain extent that ideal aligned itself with the Protestant model, but Mormonism supplemented it with the notion of priesthood in the home: “No man holding the Priesthood who is worthy and of age should remain unmarried,” church president Joseph F. Smith declared in 1902. As

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to the relation between husband and wife, he added, with reference to the biblical creation story: “While it is said that the desires of the woman shall be to her husband, and he shall rule over her, it is intended that that rule shall be in love and not in tyranny.”¹

Those four factors have remained cornerstones in defining Mormon masculinity up to today, though the rhetoric concerning the father softened under feminist pressures (see 5.3.3 on familial patriarchy).

3.3.1.3. Diverse femininity

In that upsurge of male ideals, it seemed Mormon womanhood would be defined by negation: no priesthood, no missionary service, no career path, hence, a life constrained to domestic duties. Some analysts tend to present this view as a religious/secular dichotomy: “Thus, Mormon men were encouraged to expand their horizons in the secular world while Mormon women were encouraged to turn away from the secular world and retreat to the home, where they could become both mothers and professional domestic engineers, equipped with the latest technology and information” (Hoyt and Patterson 2011, 80). That is indeed the message, as in this 1915 editorial of the Relief Society Magazine, accompanied by a picture of the modern woman in the “compact conveniences” of a “model home kitchen”:

So much of prose and poetry has been written about the home that one wonders what is left to say. Very little. Yet there is much for women to do daily and hourly in order to create, maintain, and develop the home. Today, more than at any other period in the world's history, there is a determined effort to break down the barriers of the home . . . These are all but manifestations of a disintegrating force within the body social. However this may be, our Relief Society sisters are the keepers of the keys of home life and home traditions among this people, and eventually in the world; so that it behooves them to, exert themselves to do all possible in this matter of bettering home conditions, and keeping the fires bright on the home altars.²

The almost exact same wording can be found in Mormon rhetoric up to today. But the shift to this new ideal did not materialize at once. During this transition period the new emphasis did not imply a spurning of the outside, secular world, on the contrary.

Women’s activism. First, the wave of women’s activism continued. Mormon feminists wanted their civil voting rights back, which the American Congress had taken from them in 1887. In the developments toward full Statehood for Utah, the Utah Woman Suffrage Association was particularly active to have the women re-enfranchised, which it was able to secure when Utah became a State in 1896. Next Mormon women fought for female

1 Joseph F. Smith, “Marriage God-ordained and Sanctioned,” Improvement Era 5, no. 10 (July 1902): 717.

2 “The Relief Society Woman and Her Home,” Relief Society Magazine 2, no. 11 (November 1915): 477.

85 voter turnout through publications and conventions, teaming up with the national suffrage movement, registering woman voters, and making them aware of gendered political issues relevant to “the New Woman”—the one who “increasingly received extensive education, worked outside the home, entered professional careers, had fewer children, divorced, and became involved in various charitable and political activities”

(McCammon et al. 2001, 53). These Mormon women’s contributions until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment generalized women’s suffrage for all American States, were summarized by Geis (2015, xii):

For Mormon women, femininity – like the land they inhabited – was a contested space, subject to the ebb and flow of the evolving society that surrounded them.

They did not, however, simply adapt to those changes – they also created them, and continually reconciled and renegotiated their religious, gendered, and civic identities in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utah.

Female organizations and periodicals. A second element that valorized Mormon women were their own female organizations and periodicals, confirming their public female space. The Relief Society, with its chapter in every congregation, was energized by the strong leadership and its messages in the independent The Woman’s Exponent, which would last till 1914 (see supra). Until the 1920s the organization had its own local congregational buildings, the so-called “Relief Society halls,” used for intellectual, cultural, social, and caritative activities. They were havens for an own empowering feminine sphere (Butler-Palmer 2013; Lamb 2013). Also the young women, ages twelve to eighteen, had their own organization. It was started in 1869, and, after a few name changes, became best known as the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association. It too had its own monthly periodical, The Young Woman's Journal. It was published until 1929, when it was combined with the equivalent periodical for male adolescents, The Improvement Era. In her analysis of the aims and tone of The Young Woman’s Journal, Tait (2012) drew attention to the deliberate choice of the singular woman in the periodical’s title: it “essentialized female nature and animated discussions about the supposedly universal needs, desires, and rights of “Woman.” The journal encouraged girls “to think of themselves as part of this collective movement” (p. 61). Though the magazine had a fair share of traditional female topics—domestic matters, health and hygiene, and fashion—it also ran articles with intellectual content and it encouraged women’s education and professional opportunities. But the most striking part of the journal was the literary section, which took up most of the space. The many fictional stories, written by Mormon women, “expressed the tension Mormon women felt in a culture that encouraged independent womanhood and sexual equality at the same time it idealized traditional dependent roles” (De Schweinitz 2000, 53).

Women’s clubs and libraries. Other elements made Mormon women continue to enjoy or to discover life outside closed domestic roles. Next to the more religiously inspired

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Relief Society, a profusion of local women’s clubs helped to reinforce the secular component in Utah’s society. Clubs discussing literary and political topics became popular as more and more non-Mormons settled in Utah, and Mormon women joined them without reservations. These clubs “extended women's sphere into the public realm through socially acceptable public activities such as the temperance cause, civic improvements, political reform movements, and child welfare” (Stauffer 2011, 135). In Salt Lake City the women’s clubs formed a correlating organization, The Salt Lake Council of Women, to “act on questions of importance concerning libraries, parks, girl scouts, public health, city beautification, smoke pollution, women’s legislation, and social welfare” (Alexander 1995, 10). The broadening effect came particularly from the establishment of free public libraries to even the smallest towns, often at the instigation of women, since for them it meant to become “well-informed on what women of the state, nation and world at large are doing” (quoted in Stauffer 2011, 148).

Employment. Finally, though for married women with a large family external employment was difficult to combine with domestic duties, female employment as such was not discouraged. In fact the Relief Society worked in close collaboration with the Church’s Employment Bureau and encouraged mothers, women and girls “who desire to work out” to turn to the bureau.¹ The Improvement Era, though being the organ for the young men’s association, occasionally published articles by leading women. In a two-part article entitled “From a Woman of the Latter-Day Saints to the Women in All the World,”

Susa Young Gates, daughter of church president Brigham Young and founder of The Young Woman’s Journal, condemns the wrong ideas the outside world still has of Mormon women and acclaims their participation in paid employment as proof of their independence.² In 1917, the entrance of the United States in the First World War triggered a surge of women’s employment which also affected Utah (Murphy 1990).

3.3.1.4. But also: slow erosion of female independence and emancipation

In this transition period between 1890 and 1920, some church leaders started to show concern over the long-standing involvement of women in priesthood ordinances, over women’s growing impact in public life, and over their autonomy within the church construct. It led to a number of restrictive developments.

Revocation of priesthood involvement. The issue of women holding the priesthood became a contentious issue and would remain so until now. Up to the end of the nineteenth century women had been involved in priesthood ordinances, such as anointing the sick and laying on of hands to give blessings, to anyone who requested it.

1 Relief Society Magazine 2, no. 3 (March 1915): 136; 2, no. 7 (July 1915): 310.

2 Susa Young Gates, “From a Woman of the Latter-Day Saints to the Women in All the World — I,” The Improvement Era 10, no. 5 (March 1907): 345–351; II, 10, no. 6 (April 1907): 447–452.

87 They also performed ritual washings and anointings of women about to give birth. An analysis of The Woman’s Exponent reveals how still in the 1890s women claimed ecclesiastical authority and continued the practice of priesthood ordinances such as blessings and anointings, with titles such as healer, prophetess, and priestess (Evans 1992, 53–54). But a pushback against these claims was in the making. Already in 1880 apostle John Taylor had stated that “women hold the Priesthood, only in connection with their husbands, they being one with their husbands” (Newell 1985, 25). That same year a letter of the First Presidency clarified that women “should not be ordained to any office in the Priesthood; but they may be appointed as Helps, and Assistants, and Presidents, among their own sex,” and could administer to the sick “in their respective families” (Newell, idem). The matter of “holding the priesthood or not” continued to be a source of discussion. In 1907 the question “Does a wife hold the priesthood in connection with her husband? and may she lay hands on the sick with him, with authority?” was asked in the Questions and Answers section of the church magazine The Improvement Era. The official answer retained a diplomatic ambiguity:

A wife does not hold the priesthood in connection with her husband, but she enjoys the benefits thereof with him; and if she is requested to lay hands on the sick with him, or with any other officer holding the Melchizedek priesthood, she may do so with perfect propriety. It is no uncommon thing for a man and wife unitedly to administer to their children, and the husband being mouth, he may properly say out of courtesy, “By authority of the holy priesthood in us vested.”¹

Disapproval of public involvement. Another area of contention was the women’s public impact. In the 1895 debates over voting rights to be included in the Utah Constitution or not, church leader B. H. Roberts, known for his intellectual prowess and flowery style, juxtaposed the political and the domestic as gendered realms:

Christian wives and mothers, I have said you are the queens of the domestic kingdom. If you would retain that empire, shun the political arena, avoid the rostrum, beware of unsexing yourselves. If you become embroiled in political agitation the queenly aureola that encircles your brow will fade away and the reverence that is paid you will disappear. If you have the vain ambition of reigning in public life, your domestic empire will be at an end. (quoted in White 1974, 358)

The strategy to put women on a pedestal is noteworthy—they are queens in their empire—which they risk losing by meddling in in the male world of public life. Though the women obtained voting rights in the new Utah constitution, the accomplishment did not meet with universal male approval (Beecher, Madsen, and Derr 1979).

1 “Questions and Answers,” The Improvement Era 10, no. 4 (February 1907): 308.

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Institutionalization of masculinity. A related, indirect way to limit women’s autonomy in the church structure was the institutionalization of masculinity in priesthood, mission, career, and fatherhood, which was part of the reform movement since 1906 (see above).

Scott (1986, 13–15) enumerated examples of further subtle erosion of women’s leadership in the church’s decision-making process. Projects women used to conduct and finance were fully or partially taken over by male leadership. In 1914 the independent The Woman’s Exponent was replaced by the church-controlled Relief Society Magazine, which then became the official voice of the Mormon women’s organization. Though at first it remained ran by women editors with strong personalities, it did not voice dissent as the Exponent sometimes did.

Historians have been intrigued by the Mormon women’s apparent submissive

Historians have been intrigued by the Mormon women’s apparent submissive