“More the Companion and Much Less the Subordinate”

This chapter examines one of the paradoxes that has vexed the historiography of Mormon women since its inception: activist Mormon polygamous women who claimed access to citizenship in the name of women's rights. It then studies how and why a community rooted in ecclesiastic patriarchy was among the first to enfranchise women. While polygamy marked woman's ecclesiastical subordination to men, it enabled her civic equality. By undermining the concept of marital unity, plural marriage facilitated women's political equality. Moreover, Mormons, women especially, claimed that plural marriage was compatible with American citizenship and facilitated woman's citizenship because it made her “more the companion and much less the subordinate” of man.