Audacious Women: Early British Mormon Immigrants Rating :
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent data
By History Lover
This is an ambitious work. The author attempted both detailed studies and a statistical overview of 100 pioneer emigrants from Great Britain to Utah. It must have been difficult finding accurate records on that many women. She organized the study by phase -- family roots, conversion to Mormonism, emigration, first impressions of Zion, settling experience -- using all 100 women's stories to create a composite pioneering experience. Despite some minor errors and typos, this approach gives a fascinating, in-depth understanding of who, why, and how about 50,000 British women succumbed to Mormon proselyting and opted to reinvent themselves in the desert of the American West.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting subject-matter-gaps in research.
By A Customer
An interesting account of British women's role in the Mormon settlement of Utah was somewhat spoiled for me, as a British reader, by the author's lack of knowledge regarding the basic geography of England. We are confidently informed, for example, that Birmingham is a city in Lancashire, close to Liverpool. Unfortunately it isn't-the author has evidently confused Birmingham (England's second-largest city) with Manchester (third-largest). Didn't the author look at a map during her research?
Product Description
Victorians loved to hear stories about the secret lives of Mormon women. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, A. Conan Doyle, and others fed the public's curiosity with tale after tale. Naive Manchester shopgirls seduced by lecherous missionaries, illiterate Liverpudlian fishwives shanghaied into domestic slavery in Utah--these were the stories that shaped public opinion. What was the truth behind such stereotypes? In fact, most female immigrants to Utah were former shopgirls, factory workers, and home pieceworkers in London and Manchester, and many were illiterate. Were they also naive adventuresses? Bartholomew fleshes out real-life profiles of these pioneering women through available letters, diaries, and public documents. They were by-and-large devout, and most of them approached their uncertain future with their eyes wide open. At minimum, they were least vaguely aware of what their religious commitment would entail. So if they did not fulfill Victorian fantasies of young concubines who had been abducted into desert harems, what about the romanticized icons of Mormon inspirational literature? Writes Rebecca Bartholomew: "These women made mistakes. But if they were not angels, neither were they fools. They are likable. Their lives had meaning. They demonstrated that virtue has unlikely habitats and could even sprout in that spiritual chamber of horrors, that Eden betrayed, that whited sepulchre, Mormondom."
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2760520 in Books
- Published on: 1995-05-15
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
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