"I often wonder if there is a child in Mormondom, born under the blight of polygamy, who knows what it is to have a happy, joyous childhood, rendered more happy and more joyous by the smiling, calm content of the mother in whose arms its tiny infant form lies cradled. I fear the cases are as rare as happy women are. True, childhood always has a certain careless happiness of its own, that even the saddest surroundings cannot wholly repress; but even this happiness is embittered by the tearful eyes that gaze into trustful baby ones, and the lips that quiver with pain, as they try to smile back into laughing baby faces. . . . I was consecrated to sorrow by the baptism of my mother’s tears upon my baby brow. I never remember on her face one such look as I see daily upon mothers’ faces now. My baby hands wiped away tears, my baby fingers stroked a cheek furrowed by them, and my baby eyes never saw beyond the mist in hers. I came to her when the greatest misery of her life was about to fall upon her; and that misery came to her, as it came to all the women then, under the guise of religion – something that must be endured “for Christ’s sake.” And as her religion had brought her nothing but persecution and sacrifice, she submitted to this new trial as to everything that had preceded it, and received polygamy as a cross laid upon her, but which strength would be given her to bear. . . . Hitherto, although her sufferings had been severe, and her privations many, yet through them all she had been sustained by her husband’s love. That was hers, and together they had shared poverty and tasted plenty. Their sufferings had brought them closer together, and whether in plenty or poverty, they had been happy in each other and in their children, and had made a home, and a cheerful one, wherever they had been, one in which the spirit of love ruled supreme. Now, her religion told her that she was selfish and wicked to try and keep this home and husband. The one must be broken and desolated, the other shared with some one else. “The Lord commanded it.” What a blasphemy and satire on Him who is the God of Love, that He should make His children unhappy, and wreck all hopes of peace and content, for His glory! . . . At first, the thought of taking a second wife to share his [her father] home with the one whom he had first loved, who had been the object of his youthful dreams and of his manhood’s devotion; who had stood by him, through every reverse, with the courage, and consideration, and love which only a strong-natured, tender-hearted, earnest-souled woman could show under such circumstances; who was, in every sense, a helpmeet, and, above all, the mother of his children, – was hateful to him. It took a long time, too, to overcome his aversion to the new system. He and my mother had many a long, tearful talk over it; and although they received the doctrine, believing that it must be right, they could not for some time make up their minds to put it in practice. . . . My mother has often said that the “Revelation” was the most hateful thing in the world to her, and she dreaded and abhorred it, but she was afraid to oppose it, lest she should be found “fighting against the Lord.” The thought that she might be obliged to live in a polygamous relation with another woman filled her with horror and fear; but she was assured by her religious leader, that the feeling was merely the effect of her early training, which she would soon outgrow under the benign influences of the gospel. For several months she struggled with herself over this subject, before she could think patiently of it for even a minute. . . . A short time after my birth, a Miss Elizabeth Taft came, with a younger sister, to live in our house. She was a very pleasant, cheery, affectionate person, and all the family became very much attached to her. Father, mother, children, all quoted “Elizabeth,” and she became almost a part of our very selves. She was thoughtful of my mother, and tender to us little ones, petting us and indulging us in our childish whims, and we, in return, loved her very dearly. She was a good woman in its highest interpretation, and devotedly religious. Naturally enough, seeing her so constantly, both my parents thought of her as the new wife. If they must enter polygamy, they knew they could do no better than to take her into the family, if she could be induced to consider the subject in the same light. My father made proposals to her, and my mother seconded them. The thought of living in a polygamic relation with any one was very unpleasant to her, as indeed it is to every true woman; but she desired to live her religion, and believing this to be a part of it, accepted my father’s proposal, and became his first plural wife when I was about a year old. . . . One midwinter day, in the beginning of the year 1846, my mother was sealed to my father for “time and for all eternity,” after which she gave him Elizabeth as his wife according to the Mormon marriage formula. It was with a steady voice and calm composure that she pronounced the words that gave another woman a share in her husband’s love; but it was none the less with a heavy, breaking heart. Think of it, wives, who are happy in undivided homes, and in your husbands’ unshared love! What if your religion commanded you to give another woman to your husband as a wife; who was to have an equal right with you to his attention and his love; who should bear his name, and be a mother to his children: that all this should be done “in the name of the Lord,” and without shrinking or complaint on your part. Take this home to yourself, and you will be able to appreciate as never before the horrors of Mormonism. . . . The new wife lived in the family, and to outward appearance everything was unchanged. Only a few of the “very faithful” knew of the new arrangement; it was deemed best to keep it a secret from the majority of the people, to whom polygamy was not a fixed fact, and who were wavering slightly in the faith on account of it. The time had not yet come to promulgate the doctrine freely, and many left Nauvoo for the West quite ignorant that the system really existed in their midst. I think many of them never would have crossed those endless plains, and sought shelter under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, had they known what unhappiness awaited them. But unchanged as our family circle was to those outside it, within was unhappiness and bitterness of spirit. It was much harder to endure, even, than my mother had anticipated. Terrible as was the thought, the reality was much more horrible. She thought she had counted the cost; she found she had, in her ignorance, been unable to estimate it. Every hour of her life her heart was torn by some new agony. She was compelled to see many of the tender, wifely little offices, trifles in themselves, that she had been accustomed to perform, done by other hands, and she herself always turned off with the excuse, “You see, dear, you have the children to attend to, and I did not wish to give you trouble.” Trouble! as though anything done for him, with a heart full of love, could be accounted as such! That hurt her almost as much as to see another doing what it had always been her delight to do. As is the custom of men in polygamy, my father fell more easily into the new arrangement, and even found a certain comfort and content in it, and he wondered very much that my mother could not be happy as well. Indeed, he was a little impatient, after a while, that she would not say she was content and satisfied in the new relation. “I don’t understand it,” he would say; “you were willing at first. What is the difficulty now? Don’t you think Elizabeth a good, true girl?” “Yes, indeed,” was always the reply; for my mother was too just a woman to do even a rival a wrong. “Don’t you believe in polygamy, then?” he would ask, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. “Yes, I suppose so. I wish to live my religion,” was the dreary reply. “Well, what is to be done about it?” was the next anxious question. “O, I don’t know,” my mother would say, in bitter despair; “but I can’t endure this life.” “And yet you entered it voluntarily. I don’t understand you; you are strangely inconsistent.” Her remonstrance and his comfort never went beyond this point. There was nothing more to be said. She had protested with unutterable anguish against the life that she felt was false and in direct contradiction to every law of moral right, although she was told to look upon it as “divine;” and the only answer she could get was, “You are inconsistent; you entered the relation voluntarily.” The very truth of this reply silenced her, but it did not make her burdens any lighter or easier to bear." -- "Wife No. 19: The Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy" by Ann Eliza Young
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 21:52:40 +0000
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