- Jack on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “I read Helen’s letter through–and it seems to me that when she transitions into the rhyming section she’s telling the story of her sacrifice. But interestingly it’s the angels who weep for her because she, as a tender youth, didn’t understand the difficulties she would have to pass through because of her sealing to Joseph. But when she transitions back into regular prose–then we get her clear and unequivocal witness that she had done the right thing by being sealed to Joseph and that she and thousands of others would continue to be blessed because of the sealing she had received. And so, let’s be careful not to misjudge what she had experienced — as some sort of horrific abuse — when she herself sees it as the very thing that would bless her and her loved ones with exaltation.” May 24, 23:04
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: ““They were people.” Right, people who are very capable of speaking for themselves, left their own accounts, and don’t need you to speak for them.” May 24, 21:31
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “Noting that a woman who refused a powerful man’s proposal had a son who rose to lead the institution that man founded is not complexity. It’s the system working as designed. And calling that observation a soundbite is the same move that has been made throughout this conversation treating clarity as a failure of sophistication. The women weren’t complex historical puzzles. They were people. You are importing elaborateness where the evidence is actually straightforward and glossing over the genuinely complex question of what meaningful consent looks like inside a total institution like 1840s Nauvoo.” May 24, 21:20
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: ““We know what happened to the women who refused.” Well, one of their sons became the President of the Church (Heber J. Grant)…So yes, your soundbites notwithstanding this was a complex thing going on at a complex time.” May 24, 21:04
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “A 14-year-old was sealed to a 37-year-old man who held total authority over her eternal salvation and her family’s standing. We know what happened to the women who refused. Nancy Rigdon refused. Her reputation was destroyed. This isn’t ancient history requiring careful contextualization. The framework that made this possible: that a religious authority can define the conditions of consent, that women who later defend the system are evidence it wasn’t harmful, that outside concern is unsophisticated or uninspired. That framework is intact and operational today. People are being harmed by it right now. You’ve told me you find temple marriage and eternal families meaningful. I don’t doubt that. But meaning purchased on these terms has a cost you didn’t pay. Helen Mar Kimball paid it at 14. The cost is paid by children and by the people with the least power to refuse and the most to lose by doing so. And the careful scholarship protecting that fact from plain description is not neutral. It is part of how the cost keeps getting paid by someone else.” May 24, 20:47
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “John, the signal that there is some ironic distance between Helen Mar Kimball the adult writer, and the teenage perspective of the poem, lies in the contrast between the gloom expressed in poetic diction and the sober prose statement of her happy adult life in the same document. Helen did not think her for-eternity sealing to Joseph Smith was horrific. Personally, I think Brigham Young had a better approach to organizing and supervising the principle of plural marriage than Joseph Smith did, and the approach of Wilford Woodruff (with the encouragement of the federal government) is even better. Since plural marriage was the historical path through which we arrive at the current teachings and ordinances around temple marriage and eternal families, which are highly meaningful to me and many others, I try to understand plural marriage in Nauvoo and Utah for what it was and accept the sacrifices made by others that I do not have to make myself. It’s part of the package deal.” May 24, 14:59
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “John C. Be careful when judging what you have not experiencedand yherefor cannot fully understand. The same goes for the rest of us. 1840s Nauvoo is an alien world to us. 1870s Utah is an alien world to us. We glean what we can from historical records and our commenaliyies, but we can never fully understand these people or the context they existed it” May 24, 13:52
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “Irony requires a signal to the reader. Where is it? And why does every interpretive option in this conversation require her distress to mean less than it says? This was a horrific practice. What happened to Helen Mar Kimball was indefensible. The historiography is interesting but it doesn’t change what it was.” May 24, 12:48
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “ji -Thanks for posting. I enjoyed the article.” May 24, 11:00
- on Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball: “I think we moderns sometimes don’t know what to make of irony. I’m not sure why that is–but a lot of meaning can be lost on us as we try to understand how a beam can fit in someone’s eye socket or how a camel could possibly fit through the eye of a needle. Surely the early saints were well aware of the sometimes rather brutal ironies of life–and my guess is that Helen captured the feelings of her youth (in writing) in order to juxtapose them with her views as a mature lady in the faith. That’s good irony.” May 24, 09:12
