Plural Marriage: Two Pamphlets

Helen Mar Whitney wrote both pamphlets in the first person and reads them here in her own voice; every person she quotes has a voice of their own, and her own replies, letters and recollections stay with her.

Why We Practice Plural Marriage (1884) opens with her correspondence with an Alabama gentleman, whose letters to her are read in his voice. It goes on to scenes with visitors to Salt Lake City, to the criticism of Utah by clergy, senators and newspapers and to passages she copies from other writers, and its last chapter takes up the experience of her own parents, including her father Heber C. Kimball’s discourse to his children.

Plural Marriage, as Taught by the Prophet Joseph (1882) is her reply to Joseph Smith, editor of the Lamoni (Iowa) Herald, who had answered an article of hers in the Woman’s Exponent of June 1, 1882. She argues that the Prophet Joseph Smith taught plural marriage, citing her father’s journal of 1842–44 and the Prophet’s sermons and letters, and answers the editor’s statements about Brigham Young and about her own article.

The 1882 title page reads “Plural Marriage, as Taught by the Prophet Joseph. A Reply to Joseph Smith, Editor of the Lamoni (Iowa) ‘Herald.’ By Helen Mar Whitney. Printed at the Juvenile Instructor Office, Salt Lake City, Utah. 1882.” The 1884 title page reads “Why We Practice Plural Marriage. By a ‘Mormon’ Wife and Mother—Helen Mar Whitney. Salt Lake City, Utah. Published at the Juvenile Instructor Office. 1884.” Her 1884 pamphlet speaks of “another pamphlet on the subject of plural marriage” and of readers who had written for her “former pamphlet.”

Neither pamphlet has chapter titles, and the 1882 reply is one unbroken essay in print: the short titles on the page, and the division of the reply into seven parts at the places where it turns to a new subject, are ours. The printed Introductory is read as its own piece. An essay by Orson F. Whitney, “The Women of the Everlasting Covenant,” is printed at the end of the 1884 pamphlet; it is not Helen Mar Whitney’s and is not read. Words the print leaves out are marked “* * *” and read as a pause. The one footnote appears as a small number you can tap. Two misspellings that would be read wrongly were corrected (“Eaigrated” for “Emigrated,” “Gerer” for the King James “Gerar”).

Text: the page-by-page transcriptions on Wikisource, made from the scans of the two pamphlets on Wikimedia Commons; every page of both is marked proofread or validated there.