A Love Song and an Exploration

Joseph Smith was a prolific money-digger in his youth? Who cares? What teenaged boy wouldn't be enamored of finding buried treasure?

Joseph Smith eloped with his wife? Ho-hum. I've had in-laws; I understand.

Joseph Smith actually made a prophecy early in his career and it didn't come true? What, mastering the skills of Prophet doesn't take time and practice like anything else in life?

Most of Joseph's early church leaders apostatized? Even Christ, the King of Kings, the Creator of all things, had one of his chosen twelve apostatize and betray him.

Joseph Smith's bank in Kirtland failed? Since when is shrewd business acumen a requirement for the position of Prophet?

The list goes on and on, spewing from the mouths of Joseph's critics with a vehemence that almost sounds like there's substance behind it. But I listen with eyes glazed over, like the jaded television executive who says, "Okay, but what else do you have for me?"

But there's one thing that does bother me, that I still haven't come to grips with, that I struggle to understand. Why did Joseph Smith deny the practice of polygamy -- to the world, to his fellow church members, even to his wife? Does his approach fall within the range of behavior we'd expect from a prophet?

Would Nauvoo, the church, and Joseph Smith have been better off if, as Fawn Brodie suggests, he'd just strode to the pulpit and declared the doctrine of polygamy with power and confidence? Or would that have truly destroyed the church, as Joseph apparently believed? Would the enemies of the Saints have been provoked beyond restraint at such a doctrine? Would the Saints themselves have balked at it, and a wholesale apostasy taken place that would have made Kirtland look like a warm-up scenario? Would Joseph Smith have been killed anyway -- and too soon for the developing church to survive the shock?

This thorny issue is tackled in Orson Scott Card's Saints, a book which goes a long way toward depicting the early beginnings of polygamous life realistically. Dinah Kirkham is an English convert who must choose between her children and her obligation to God when she crosses the Atlantic to join the Saints in Nauvoo. Before long Joseph Smith approaches her, explains the doctrine of plural wives, and declares that God has given her to him as a wife. After personal struggle, she accepts. Then begins the arduous challenge of living as husband and wife in a community that knows nothing about the doctrine, and with a sister wife, Emma Smith, whom Dinah loves as a friend, but who also is ignorant of her husband's practicing of the doctrine. Emma is suspicious, however, and Dinah feels as much a traitor to her as if she were having an illicit affair with her husband.

Saints explores this issue, but does not reach a satisfactory conclusion -- in other words, a pat and easy conclusion. Card presents his interpretation on how he thinks they must have lived, and leaves it to the reader to sort out the answers. The reader is left with as many questions as when he started, but with a little more information to throw into the processor as he struggles with them.

If this were all Saints was about, that would be plenty. But the Nauvoo/polygamy portion takes up only about a third of the book. When Card signed my copy of Saints, he inscribed, "My love song to my people." Card follows Dinah and her family from long before Heber C. Kimball enters their lives, to well past Brigham Young's death, telling the story of Mormons in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way long before God's Army was a gleam in Richard Dutcher's eye. But where Dutcher is telling a Mormon story to Mormons, Card -- his assertion that this is a love song to his people notwithstanding -- is also telling the story to non-Mormons. Card gives us a period piece, and is much more coy about the spiritual side than Dutcher. Card's characters enjoy spiritual experiences, but their descriptions are disguised, leaving interpretation open to the reader. Alone in her bedroom and gazing out of her window, after listening to Heber Kimball preach the Gospel to her . . .

 &nbps;   Dinah stood on the brink of creation; below her God was first putting form to the world, and she was watching. She was part of it. She herself could reach down and touch the tree and it would spring green under her hand, and from her fingers would come sunlight. It was a giddy feeling, that in all this darkness the sun still shone within her, held in place only by her flesh. Her body was a curtain that concealed her glory, and if she could once open it completely, all the world could look to her for warmth and vision and be satisfied.
 &nbps;   She felt herself being watched. She stepped back from the window, but not in alarm. She wanted to be seen, but not by some neighbor going to the privy. She wanted to be seen by the very Man who listened to the words that still came eloquently to her lips. The room was already so full of him that it would burst, and as she spoke silently she reached out her hand to touch him, not knowing who it was she wanted to find under her hand. Her fingers closed on emptiness; the light within her could find no release; she would surely burst if he did not come and see her shine like a star, hear her speak like scripture.

The tragic events endured by the Kirkham family in Manchester, England, remind the reader of Hugh Nibley's Approaching Zion. Nibley decries the cold-hearted exploitation of the working class, especially children, of those days, equating them to Cain's Master Mahan principle of turning life into money. Card seems to transform Nibley's essays into vivid fictional images, although the publication dates demand that Nibley would have to be influenced by Card, if anything.

Several prominent church members appear as characters in Card's book, among them Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Porter Rockwell, Hyrum Smith, Don Carlos Smith, John C. Bennett, Vilate Kimball, Emma Smith, and of course Joseph Smith. They are represented as real people, complete with personalities and foibles. Joseph Smith in particular gets away with nothing; Card draws him with the pen of mortality as much as any other character. It's virtually a given that many LDS readers will not like Card's Joseph, but they will have a weak leg to stand on: his Joseph seems a faithful invocation according to the historical records we have available to us. Dinah's first view of Joseph can seem disrespectful for those who like their prophets non-human:

 &nbps;   As always, Emma's advice was excellent but unpalatable; Joseph left the house immediately, but feeling more disgruntled than before. The mud made it slippery going. He almost fell getting out of the dooryard. He was ready for a fight.
 &nbps;   And a fight was not hard to find . . .
 &nbps;   "Beg your pardon, Sister," Joseph said. "I'd be grateful if you'd hold my coat for me."
 &nbps;   Without a smile, just those deep eyes looking into his face, she nodded. Her expression was almost insolent and her silence felt like an accusation. So you don't approve of wrestling, is that it, ma'am? Dignity first, is that it? Joseph was in no mood to be conciliatory. Instead, he stripped off his waistcoat and his shirt, too, and laid them both in the woman's arms. Then, like Rigley, he peeled his underwear down to his waist and stood there bare-chested like a prize fighter. Her expression did not change. She said nothing; nor was she embarrassed, for she frankly looked over his chest and arms as if she were evaluating the merits of a horse. But she was beautiful, and suddenly Joseph was glad to have her see his body, and something inside said, She is yours.
 &nbps;   I know something about your future, Joseph said silently to her. You will marry Joseph Smith.
 &nbps;   As if his thought showed in his face, her expression hardened. She looked at him in the eye challengingly, and he could almost hear her say, I'll see you in hell first.
 &nbps;   He grinned at her and then turned around to face the river rat.

The entire book is cast as a biographical novel of a genuine historical person, complete with biographer O. Kirkham who is a descendant of Dinah's brother. (Any guesses on where the O. may have come from?) The biographer writes his own reflections at the beginning of each book, describes various sources he used to write the biography, and even lists acknowledgments at the end. In some cases, fascinating parts of Dinah's "history" are disappointingly glossed over in biographer comments, and the end kind of fizzles out in a biographer-style wrap-up. This storytelling device is fun enough, but doesn't add a great deal to the story itself, and on occasion distracts, as described above.

But this book itself is historic: a prominent LDS science fiction author writes his first completely Mormon book, where he once vowed never to write anything blatantly Mormon to his mainstream audience; a book to boot that is neither science fiction nor fantasy -- his pigeon-holed genres -- but historical fiction. And he did so before becoming a science fiction god with Ender's Game, when he would have more leeway to dictate what projects he worked on. This is as much a tribute to Card's publisher as to Card's own daring. There's no telling what other blatantly Mormon books he may write in the future (he's already added Folk of the Fringe), but this one is indeed a "love song" to his people: a massive, epic story of early English converts, polygamy, Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith, all topics that can't help but entice members of Card's cherished LDS community. And all told in a fascinating, captivating, challenging story, as one would expect from Orson Scott Card.

-- 
D. Michael Martindale
dmichael@wwno.com
Worlds Without Number
http://www.wwno.com