25963

Journal Article

English

Petersen, Boyd

"Redeemed from the Curse Placed upon Her" : Dialogic Discourse on Eve in the Woman's
Exponent

Journal of Mormon History

Winter 2014

40

1

Salt Lake City, UT

Mormon History Association

2014

135-174

In this article, the author reflects on a 1929 essay by Virginia Woolf titled A Room of One's Own, where Woolf contends that women cannot achieve literary greatness unless they possess sufficient freedom - financial, educational, social, and domestic - to allow them their creativity. Searching for this expansive, emancipated, literary woman, one would not think to find her in late 19th century Mormonism. Within the pages of the Woman's Exponent, an independent Mormon periodical published between 1872 and 1914, Mormon women engaged in a spirited defense of two seemingly contradictory issues: women's suffrage and polygamy. Yet for these early Mormon suffragists, polygamy was a key to their liberation; and Eve, seen as the prototypical woman, was a central symbol in this debate. [From the article]

http://www.jstor.org/stable/24243874

Bible, use and influence
Doctrinal history, Eve
Plural marriage, woman suffrage
Publications (Mormon), Woman's Exponent
Women, literary arts

3

10

Mormon Women's History : Beyond Biography
Out of Obscurity : Mormonism Since 1945
The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Theology

An Advocate for Women : the Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, 1870-1920
Eliza R. Snow : The Complete Poetry
Mormon Sisters : Women in Early Utah
Scenes in Nauvoo, and Incidents from H. C. Kimball's Journal
Sermons and Writings of the Prophet Joseph Smith : Biographical
Sister-Wives and Suffragists : Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage, 1870-1896
The Woman's Exponent : Forty-Two years of Speaking for Women
The Women of Mormondom
The Words of Joseph Smith : The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph
White Roses on the Floor of Heaven : Mormon Women's Popular Theology