Item Detail
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28331
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12
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5
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English
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Emma and Eliza and the Stairs
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BYU Studies
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Winter 1982
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22
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1
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Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University
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87-96
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Several elements in various combinations comprise one of the most oft-told tales of Mormon biography history. The characters involved are Joseph Smith, his wife Emma Hale Smith, and a plural wife, usually Eliza Roxcy Snow. The place is invariably Nauvoo, the scene either the Homestead residence of the Smiths or the later roomier Mansion House. The time, if specified, is either very early morning, or night, in 1843, April or May, or in 1844. The action involves two women in or coming out of separate bedrooms. Emma discovers the other woman in the embrace of or being kissed by Joseph. A tussle follows in which Emma pulls the woman's hair, or hits her with a broom, or pushes her down stairs, causing either bruises, or a persistent limp, or, in the extreme versions, a miscarriage. There may or may not be a witness or witnesses.
The anecdote is told orally more often than it is written, with details of time, scene, costume (one account has Eliza in her nightclothes), action, motivation, and results being adjusted according to the attitudes of the teller. As generally related, it takes the form of a short story, with setting, plot, and characters; and it displays the characteristics of easily defined formula fiction: the characters are "good" or "bad", their motives oversimplified, the action predictable, the results inevitable. It is the stuff of legend, a folk tradition, perpetuated orally, and likely to continue.
For the student of Mormon culture, the prevailing questions about this story are: Why was it told and why is it still told? What does the telling say about the tellers? What "truths of the human heart," their own human hearts, do people reinforce through the telling? But for the biographers of Joseph Smith, or Emma Hale Smith, or Eliza Roxcy Snow, there is a more awkward problem: How did the story get its start, and which details, if any, are based on fact?
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Early Mormonism's Expansive Family and the Browett women
Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, and the Reported Incident on the Stairs
First : The Life and Faith of Emma Smith
From Mission to Madness : Last Son of the Mormon Prophet
Glorious in Persecution : Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844
Making the Acquaintance of Eliza R. Snow : An Interview with Her Biographer, Jill Mulvay Derr
Mormon Enigma : Emma Hale Smith
Mormon Women : A Bibliography in Process, 1977-1985
Mormon Women's History : Beyond Biography
The Emma Smith Lore Reconsidered
The “New Woman” and the Woman’s Exponent : An Editorial Perspective
The Significance of 'O My Father' in the Personal Journey of Eliza R. Snow -
Eliza R. Snow's Nauvoo Journal
History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I : History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself
Joseph Smith III : Pragmatic Prophet
Joseph Smith, the Prophet, His Family and His Friends
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet