The First Fifty Years of Relief Society

Mormon women have remained widely associated with plural marriage since social campaigns of the later 1800s led to antipolygamy legislation and the subsequent curtailing of the practice. When travel writers of the time promulgated tales of Mormon harems filled with gullible wives, the women themselves found their authentic experiences lost on outside observers. When these women campaigned through their own organization, the Relief Society, they again found an unsympathetic audience scandalized by their defense of polygamy and women's suffrage. This episode, so pivotal to Utah Mormonism, has dominated historical work on the Relief Society and Mormon women of the nineteenth century, tempting observers to filter accounts primarily through a hermeneutic of marriage and family. The First Fifty Years of Relief Society presents a collection of documents so rich with detail that interpreters must entertain alternatives to the dominant narrative. The volume gives evidence of women's agency swaying theology, mobilizing industry, institutionalizing volunteer service, advancing medical treatment, developing art, and domesticating culture, to name a few accomplishments

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