No Man Knows My History (Arkosh History)

by Fawn M. Brodie

Such a wife must not be divorced, he said, for “a divorced man is not known in the whole canon of scriptures.” But for her to continue performing the rituals of the marriage bed without any love for her husband — which he labeled “fornication in the wife” — was a gross sin. “In ancient times under the law of God,” he concluded, “the permission of a plurality of wives had a direct tendency to prevent the possibility of fornication in the wife.” Whether Jacob was describing his own married state, or Joseph’s, or simply that of any poor bedeviled male, one cannot know. But there is no doubt that Jacob looked upon woman as the inferior species. “The idea of a woman taking a man to be her husband is not found in the Word of God. But the man marries the woman; and the woman is given in marriage. But the husband is not the property of the wife in any sense of the word. . . . There is no positive law of God against a man’s marrying Leah and Rachel both. ... To God only are men accountable in this matter, and not to their wives.” * This pamphlet was published in 1842 in Nauvoo under the prophet’s auspices (the title-page lists J. Smith as printer), although he was quickly forced to denounce it. But it must be considered a mere fragment of his elaborate framework of justification for plural marriage.