Elder Northfield's Home : or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, a story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy

The Resource Elder Northfield's Home : or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, a story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy

Label

Elder Northfield's Home : or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, a story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy

Title remainder

or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, a story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy

Statement of responsibility

A. Jennie Bartlett ; edited and with an introduction by Nicole Tonkovich

Language

eng

Summary

"The practice of plural marriage, commonly known as polygamy, stirred intense controversy in postbellum America until 1890, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first officially abolished the practice. Elder Northfield's Home, published by A. Jennie Bartlett in 1882, is both a staunchly antipolygamy novel and a call for the sentimental repatriation of polygamy's victims. Her book traces the fate of a virtuous and educated English immigrant woman, Marion Wescott, who marries a Mormon elder, Henry Northfield. Shocked when her husband violates his promise not to take a second wife, Marion attempts to flee during the night, toddler son in her arms, pulling her worldly possessions in his toy wagon. She returns to her husband, however, and the balance of the novel traces the effects of polygamy on Marion, Henry, and their children; their eventual rejection of plural marriage; and their return to a normal and healthy family structure. Nicole Tonkovich's critical introduction includes both historical contextualization and comments on selected primary documents, providing a broader look at the general public's reception of the practice of polygamy in the nineteenth century."--
"Nineteenth-century novel that advocates the abolition of plural marriage in the Mormon religion and the repatriation of former practitioners by tracing the marital misfortunes of a Mormon convert"--

Assigning source

Cataloging source

N$T

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

Literary form

fiction

Nature of contents

Series statement

Legacies of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers

Context

Context of Elder Northfield's Home : or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar, a story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy

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Context