Parting the Mormon Veil

Phyllis Barber's Writing

Ángel Chaparro Sanz

• Publisher: Publicacions de la Universitat de València
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9788491341468
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Este libro supone una invitación para descubrir la cultura y la literatura mormonas desde una perspectiva muy personal, así como un viaje fascinante al territorio literario de Phyllis Barber, una vasta extensión de un terreno físico y emocional donde los límites se entrecruzan y el tiempo teje nidos que trascienden la narrativa. Ángel Chaparro analiza el proyecto social y cultural de la ficción y las autobiografías de Phyllis Barber; examina la influencia de la cultura mormona, del paisaje del Oeste americano y de los acontecimientos históricos en su escritura; y trata de anticipar el espacio que sus libros ocupan en el desarrollo en curso de la literatura mormona y de la cultura del Oeste americano. Este original análisis va precedido de una historia de La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días.

Gender:
On Motherhood and Womanhood

Women are the sacrifice area of Mormonism.
Wallace Stegner

The Mormon Woman as a Writer (and Character)

In “Border Crossings,” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich seems to take a breath to speak for the last time about why she understands Mormonism and Feminism to rhyme in both prosody and essence. She concludes by saying that “Feminism may be larger than they imagined and Mormonism more flexible” (Ulrich, Border 5). In what resembles a strenuous but necessary exercise, Ulrich confesses to an awareness that these two terms sound antithetical to many persons, but asserts that both are in her and that, in fact, both share the same heart: “that each person be free to think, speak, and act for herself is both a feminist and a Mormon dream” (Border 5).

Mormon culture has a long story of feminist discourse. Maxine Hanks expounds this fact in her introduction to the anthology Women and Authority: “Feminism has always existed in Mormonism. It makes sense that Mormon women would be feminists: within male-centred religion and discourse, feminism and feminist theology are necessary” (Hanks, Women xi). In fact, in this introduction, Hanks examines Mormon and American feminist history to propose a general overview of Mormon feminist movements in all its complexity. She begins with 18^th century liberal and cultural Mormon feminism, which she pronounces “resulted from their own response to Mormonism rather than a direct influence by American feminism” (Hanks, Women xiii), and continues through to the postmodern feminism of the 20^th century, listing a series of names—some of which are already mentioned in Mormon historical and literary introductions, but for different reasons. Thus, from Eliza R. Snow, Emma Smith and Emmeline B. Wells to Sonia Johnson, Hanks revisits the history of women within a Mormon cultural frame, paying attention to key aspects such as the suffragist movement, the doctrine of the Heavenly Mother, and the imbalance of authority between priesthood and motherhood. Her recollection, in sum, shows, as Hanks herself states, that “Mormon women are still engaged in a feminist battle that is over one hundred years old” (Women xix).

Mormon feminist discourse is mainly twofold. On the one hand, Mormon feminism fights to denounce the imbalance of authority within the Church, mainly focusing on the hierarchies of priesthood but also on theological matters. Priesthood disparities are one of the most important issues for present day feminists and it has been so almost from the beginning: “during the opening years of the twentieth century, a changing definition of priesthood emerged, bringing with it a redefinition of the role of women”¹ (Newell, Historical 35). Besides, some Mormon feminist scholars ask for certain revisions of theological matters; as Hanks says, “feminist theology is a revisionist theology” (Women xxv). Specifically, Mormon feminists talk about the figure of the Heavenly Mother² as an object of reverence which still survives in a blurring definition, as Carol Lynn Pearson specifies with her poetic talent: “the motherless house” (Healing 231). Linda P. Wilcox explains how Mormon feminists still pay attention to this panorama of Mormon theology: “at present the nineteenth-century image of a female counterpart to a literal male father-god is receiving attention and expansion and is becoming more personalized and individualized”³ (Mormon 17). Theology, thus, is part of Mormon feminist struggle and, as Hanks states:

The ideal situation would be that formal, informal, and personal authority combine perspectives to articulate a Mormon feminist doctrine, revelation and ritual. Mormon theology stipulates an anthropomorphic female god of equal power and glory to the father, yet she remains officially unknown and unwritten. (Hanks, Women xxvi)

On the other hand, Mormon feminist scholars and writers denounce the promotion of the gender roles that help to perpetuate those imbalances. Mormon society works as a complex scenery in this regard. Many women are satisfied with what many others qualify as an unequal circumstance,⁴ maybe instigated by the strong spiritual bonds that the Church has managed to build between their roles and their belonging to the Church: “Any gender inequities are to them but the unintended consequences of benign Church doctrine and policies that require men to provide for families and to protect women, children, and weaker members in their charge from economic, physical, moral, and spiritual harm” (Toscano, Are 25). As far as 1957, Thomas O’Dea wrote that “women are dependent upon men and upon marriage for exaltation in the afterlife and are subordinate to men on this earth within the family” (100). This establishes a pattern in which women’s status is not only based on men for social and economic dimensions in earthly life, but also for their salvation and promotion into the hereafter that their religion displays.

Phyllis Barber’s feminist approach focuses mainly on the second historical concern of Mormon feminism: that of gender roles. Before I begin my analysis of Barber’s fiction from this feminist perspective, it is necessary to define what I mean by role. By “roles” I understand the historical products that condense the expectations and demands placed upon women in a male-centered community. Those roles, apart from determining a set of activities and responsibilities for a group of people, also determine those they cannot aspire to, and so, in a way, as Toscano puts it: “create different concepts of self-worth for men and women” (Are 24). Apart from an inequity in self-worthiness, this role distinction also operates as the source of a “matriarchal substructure” (Toscano, Are 27) that emerges from beneath the patriarchal system. In the foreword to my introduction to Mormon Literature, I explained how Michael Austin states that “to a very large degree, texts by Mormon women are the Mormon literary canon, and when we discuss important, influential, and critically acclaimed books by Mormons, we will find our conversations nearly dominated by women author’s works” (Some 23). Austin wonders why, if Mormon society is considered to be unequal and patriarchal, such a large number of women have managed to gain visibility in the world of writing. Maybe the answer lies in Toscano’s explanation: after being relegated to a subordinate position, women had to react by creating a matriarchal substructure. Maybe one of the most important ways of giving voice to this structure is through the art of words. It is an efficient way to subvert those roles that, in Mormonism, circle around the idea of motherhood and wifehood, as can be easily seen by taking a look at the proclamation that the Church published in 1995:

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.⁵

This is not a sudden apparition. These ideas have been present in the Church since Parley P. Pratt wrote his “Duties of Women” in the Latter-day Saints Millennial Star in 1840, and throughout the second half of the century with essays published in Relief Society, and speeches at conferences by authorities such as Harold B. Lee, Hugh B. Brown and Joseph Fielding Smith (Arrington, Persons 16). Such statements, according to Toscano, help to enlighten role marking: “If one partner always presides, even in love and righteousness, the other is still subordinate, at least in rule, if not also in rank” (Are 21). This idea is based on the distinction between two different sets of responsibilities for women and men so characteristic in Mormon culture: women taking the role of motherhood, and men the role of priesthood. An apparently equal balance based on gender essentials that do not take into account choice and personal agency. Motherhood is thus placed at the level of a calling that opens women to the possibility of exercising their shared instrumental agency within the Church and justifies that priesthood is the equal grade of responsibility, but bestowed to men. This division helps to define spaces, reproducing the distinction between the private and the public sphere which, at the same time, reciprocally helps to enlarge differentiations regarding gender roles. In any case, they both, man and woman, seem to be bound to get married. As Howard W. Hunter says, “it is no good for man nor for woman to be alone” (49). Marriage is understood as a basis for the family and families are central to the Church⁶: “Mormon history suggests that the combination of the doctrine of eternal marriage and the law of eternal progression requires equal emphasis on the development of the individual and on the strength of the family and community” (Persons 17), says Arrington.

In any case, there is no better way to explain what I mean by role in my analysis than by paying attention to what Barber herself stated about gender roles in Mormon culture:

Both the Mormon male and female are raised on ethic of service, but I believe that woman is the more publicly obligated social servant when the Latter-day Saints cultural ideal is operative (the female being married and staying at home to raise children). (Barber, Mormon, 115)

Barber talks here about the fact that the main object and purpose in life for Mormon women, not just in a practical sense but also in a spiritual sense, should be that of being a mother. All throughout the history of the Church, official authorities have read scriptures in the proper way to determine that motherhood is the divine role assigned to women,⁷ as I have already shown. The effort increased in the 20^th century when the authorities worked to reinforce the idea that motherhood was holy and it was equal to men’s priesthood in the sense that it was the way through which women were able to achieve exaltation. Wilcox gives an accurate reference to this fact: “In the 1920s and 1930s there seemed to be an emphasis on the idea of ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’ motherhood. It seemed important to emphasize that motherhood was as ongoing and eternal as godhood” (Mormon 9). If motherhood is “eternal” and “everlasting” then, as Aaltje Baumgart summarizes, the roles that the Church promotes limiting women’s spheres to the home and the family, are “eternal patterns and not secularly influenced” (Baumgart 2). Consequently, for Mormons, the idea that motherhood is a woman’s only true task in life is something that belongs to the theological realm, and ought not to be understood in terms of cultural constructs. Miles underlines how motherhood appears to be mandatory for attaining membership: “to join the Church today, the potential member, especially a woman, has to obtain not just a testimony of the truthfulness of the Church, she must also develop a testimony of the eternal and earthly importance of motherhood” (LDS 36-37). The truth is that this negotiation has been perceived by David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal as a central element in many religious compositions:

These symbolic relations were all centered and reinforced in the domestic architecture, discourses, and practices of the home. Giving the “cult of domesticity” an explicitly religious content, conservative Christians in the late twentieth century have worked hard to construct a domestic sacred place set a part from the larger space of America. An examination of this particular type of domestic space in the worlds of conservative Christians reveals how the home has operated as a specific sacred site, not only idealized and promoted, but also constructed, negotiated, and even sometimes resisted in practice as a nexus of religious meaning and power. (Chidester 22)

Today, this stress is still at work even though it is being criticized by many writers and scholars, among them—obviously—Barber. To perceive the endurance of these circumstances in contemporary days, it is illustrative how Holly Welker’s peculiar analysis of Stephenie Meyer’s character Bella is framed in her ideological and moral dimension through the methodological comparison to Helen Andelin’s set of values in Fascinating Womanhood. Welker concludes that “Helen Andelin and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer are both devout Mormons who graduated from Brigham Young University, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the two women are prone to glorifying female submission and male strength” (Welker, Forever 1).

New theories of feminism have helped to make more acceptable and possible for Mormon women their participation in professional and creative worlds. Still, Lavina Fielding Anderson⁸ warns that this is relative in Mormonism: “Mormon male leadership has poured increasing efforts into empedestaling Mormon motherhood, warning women away from workplace lest they fail in their primary mission of motherhood” (Masks 1). In Anderson’s opinion, this pre-eminence of motherhood as the prescriptive role for women has three important consequences: firstly, it is presented in an authoritative mode, resulting in a suppression of choice. Secondly, when the stress is placed on the importance of motherhood, it makes it the only task for women. Thirdly, being a mother is so time-consuming that women do not have any time to involve themselves in professional or artistic activities.

The implications of these three consequences are developed in Barber’s writing. She applies her fiction to the denouncement of the results and deviances of these roles. Obviously, in her autobiographies she also elaborates on gender issues, but it is there done with a personal stress that raises singular overtones. In her memoir How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir, she presents her own coming-of-age, giving importance to her familiar relationships while growing up as a woman and as a Mormon. Barber talks about motherhood, both as an institution and as a source for the production of roles that limit the scope of freedom for women. One of the best examples to illustrate this topic is the character of her mother, and especially the description of her relationship with her daughter, Barber herself. In Raw Edges: A Memoir, Barber gives an unconcealed and personal chronicle of her own marriage’s failure and she shows how hard it is to accept failure when “a good marriage, I’ve been taught, was the responsibility of the good woman who endured to the end” (Raw 140).

Also significant are her two collections of short stories. In The School of Love, practically all the female characters are women on the edge, facing extreme situations in unavoidable circumstances in which they lack the confidence to know that they are strong enough to overcome them. These women are probably reacting to the “asymmetrical heterosexual relationships” (Chodorow 208), but they are also reacting to themselves, turning their energies from one centered goal that seemed appropriate to a passionate and desperate chaotic center where they look for a balance. Apparently, they feel imbalanced due to what Hanks implies when she talks about how struggling with our circumstances (upbringing, culture, training, relationships or faith) determines our identities. Hanks concludes that “the challenge is to keep these as personal decisions or authorship rather than surrender our voice to the strategy of others, no matter how prevailing that discourse may be” (Women xxviii). These women lack confidence and the ability to use their hidden virtues to operate in circumstances when, thanks to their rebellion against the status quo, they happen to be out of their place in society. None of Barber’s heroines seem to surpass the tragic nature of their heroism. In fact, they are fighting to recover their individuation in a society that defined them in solely relational terms: as mothers or wives. In 1979, Leonard J. Arrington describes how, after discussing the question with Mormon female writers and critics such as Maureen Beecher, Jill C. Mulvay and Carol Lynn Pearson, he came to the conclusion that Mormon women have perceived their identity (when concerning Mormonism) in a fluctuating triple way: sometimes they are validated as daughters, sometimes they are authenticated as mothers and, on other occasions, they deliver their contribution to society within or through the role of sisters (Arrington, Persons 39-59). Glen Lambert says that Mormon “theology emphasizes free choice, direct inspiration, choosing our path” (26), but Mormon society is, in truth, highly hierarchical and limiting. Barber, however, stresses on individual consequences, thus highlighting the reality of individual responsibility at the same time as perfectly describing how the impossibility to take such responsibility can be explained by an induced psychological and cultural role definition.

Adrienne Rich denounces that “women have always been seen as waiting: waiting to be asked, waiting four our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause” (Rich 39). In Barber’s collection, they no longer wait, but stand and move, drive, look, search, seek. In their strife, they appear to feel an invisible incapacity, probably rooted in the source of their motivations—in the goal—maybe in the fact that the unsuccessful achievements of these women occur because they are moving forward but in search of relations again, rather than in search of their own selves. Or maybe that connectedness is feminine and necessary and they are looking for the right portion of their identity, even though it is always related to someone else. In any case, the unfruitful end draws a set of significant conclusions that help to understand the beginning of the end more than the in-between of these stories. This book is written in a style reminiscent of Raymond Carver, not meaning that she uses a minimalist technique—even though she does make slight changes in her normally baroque or elaborate style—but rather in the sense of her spacious perspective or involvement. Like Carver in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1989), Barber approaches her stories from a seemingly monotonous, insignificant point of view, in a steady line that mimics the flat, simple lives of the characters who finally undergo a significant moment—a significant point in that steady line of dots—and that is where the reader becomes involved in the story.

The other collection, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination, deals mostly with these gender themes from a Mormon point of view since this book is rooted in the Mormon tradition. Barber again deals with the themes of gender and motherhood, but this time they are interwoven with the history of Mormonism and the actual context of Mormon society. In short stories such as “Wild Sage” and “Spirit Babies,” motherhood and the conflicts that it causes in the characters is the main focus of Barber’s writing. She also develops all these ideas in her only novel, And the Desert Shall Blossom, where Esther Jensen stands as a symbol of the roles promoted by the Church for women and how these constrain and dismantle their lives, provoking painful consequences.

Another element in Barber’s literary production that I view as compulsory when exploring how she deals with gender issues is the body. The body as physical materiality and as a metonymy of sex. Barber writes about the restricted conception of sex and the idea of the human body as a temple of purity and loyalty. But body for Barber is also a centre of emotional energy. The physical potency of the body and the mysteries of biological heritage channeled through the body become, for her, the mirror of an emotional interior. In “Body Blue: Excerpts...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• FOREWORD by Phyllis
• INTRODUCTION: BEYOND THE EDGES
• The Mormon Context (History and Literature):
• PHYLLIS BARBER’S WRITING: Biographical and Cultural Background
• Religion: On Faith and Identity
• Gender: On Motherhood and Womanhood
• Place: On Being Raised in the West
• Art: On Music and Freedom
• CONCLUSION: Parting the Veils
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans