Nineteenth-century polygamy provoked a decades-long national shouting match over the evils and virtues of the practice. It also prompted a fascinating contemplation by Elizabeth Kane of women\u2019s rights and marital sexuality. <\/p>\n
Elizabeth abhorred polygamy. While her husband also opposed plural marriage, he steadfastly defended the Mormons’ constitutional right to practice it. In 1869, her thoughts on plural marriage led Elizabeth to write a broader “Theory” of women’s rights and marital relationships in her diary. Both Thomas and Elizabeth firmly supported women’s rights; as a young wife, Elizabeth attended medical school at the pioneering Female Medical College in Philadelphia, where Thomas served on the governing board. <\/p>\n
Elizabeth began her “Theory” by asserting that most people accepted a sexual double standard, believing that \u201cmen are not made to be as chaste as women.\u201d As \u201ca Christian\u201d and the \u201csingle wife of a faithful husband,\u201d Elizabeth rejected this conclusion, and she set out to \u201cprove to [her] own satisfaction that God did not make man less chaste than woman.\u201d She theorized that while man originally was naturally monogamous, \u201cages of sinful indulgence on his part increased his polygamous propensities.\u201d In response, woman gradually \u201cunderwent a physical change\u201d and became \u201cless chaste than other female animals . . . and so fostered the unnatural passions of man.\u201d As a result, both genders grew up receiving an \u201cunconscious education . . . from their elders to look upon their intercourse simply from a sexual point of view,” which warped relationships between men and women. <\/p>\n
Elizabeth placed women\u2019s lack of control over their sexuality and child-bearing at the center of her critique of gender norms. She criticized Christians who \u201cconsider monogamy right, without ceasing to act as they did when polygamy had become the rule.\u201d Once a chaste man married, she lamented, he \u201cthinks he is right in putting no restraint upon his passions, and his wife is so glad to be sole possessor of his love that she encourages him.\u201d Since they generally refused to prevent conception, religious men \u201ckill their wives or ruin their health by excessive childbearing.\u201d Elizabeth queried, \u201cIs there no remedy? Must we die or drag on lives of pain–or submit to have our husband\u2019s love cease for us, or he become unfaithful?\u201d <\/p>\n
The \u201cMarriage Vow,\u201d Elizabeth asserted, should not be \u201cfelt by the best women to bind upon them the absolute giving up of their bodies to their husbands\u2019 control.\u201d Couples should prevent frequent conception through abstention (\u201clive together like brother and sister\u201d). She advised women to \u201cretain their husband\u2019s love without kindling their lust\u201d by not \u201cdressing to provoke them.\u201d A young woman often experienced married sexuality as a \u201cfearful shock,\u201d and struggled \u201cto reassert to herself that she is as pure and honorable in her matronhood as in her virgin innocence.\u201d Under Elizabeth\u2019s vision, women would enter the professions and receive the vote. More radically, she called for the castration of syphilitic men, the separation of prostitutes from the world, and the \u201cright of divorce free to every woman whose husband broke his marriage vow, but I would allow neither to marry again.\u201d <\/p>\n
Her plan, Elizabeth believed, would preserve women\u2019s health, allow them to see pregnancy as a blessing rather than a burden, and even improve sex: “as they will look forward to the birth of each child as a day to be preceded by a honeymoon of love and happiness even sexual love will last longer.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Elizabeth put her theory on paper in 1869, the Kanes had practiced it for over a decade. After giving birth to a daughter, Harriet, in 1855, Elizabeth had tried \u201cto dress in colors and a style that pleased\u201d Thomas, wanting to be \u201ccharming in his eyes.\u201d Following the birth of a son, Elisha, in 1856, Thomas and Elizabeth decided \u201cfor many reasons to have no children for some years.\u201d To quell her husband\u2019s sexual desire, she \u201cwanted to avoid anything like coquetry to abjure l\u2019amour for l\u2019amiti\u00e9 [give up love for friendship].\u201d She thus wore clothes of \u201cnunlike plainness.\u201d The decision was not without its tensions: “Though Tom thinks he loves me as intensely as ever, I never see . . . his eyes fixed on me with the old loverlike intensity. I wanted to be his sister, yet I don\u2019t like it now.”<\/p>\n
Thomas\u2019s sense of gentlemanly propriety revolted against his wife\u2019s plain dress, and tension simmered below the surface of their relationship. In 1860, the Kanes decided they could \u201crighteously be united again,\u201d and Thomas wanted Elizabeth \u201cto go to some expense to adorn myself as a bride.\u201d He deflated Elizabeth\u2019s attempt to wear \u201cheliotrope powder\u201d (a perfume), when he told her the scent reminded him \u201cof some lady he was fond of in his earlier day.\u201d Jealous, Elizabeth sniffed, \u201cNo scent for me but the dissecting room.\u201d Nevertheless, her three new \u201cprint dresses\u201d seem to have sufficiently pleased Thomas, as they soon conceived their third son, Evan. <\/p>\n
Two and a half years later, after being “so prudish and good” since the birth of their third child and as Thomas served in the Civil War, Elizabeth wrote to Thomas in a signal they were considering another child, \u201cI am already turning over in my head what I shall wear this spring to fascinate you!\u201d Following her visit to her husband at an army camp, she reflected on their initial discomfort. \u201cPrepared for a cool and respectable kiss\u201d upon greeting, Elizabeth did not even receive a handshake. Rather, when they entered his tent, he caught her \u201cunawares,\u201d she wrote, \u201cin that precious clasp that left me so confused when Aunt Mary came in there was no use in my trying to pretend I hadn\u2019t been kissing you.\u201d Soon after, Elizabeth informed her “passionate paramour” that she was pregnant again with their fourth and final child.<\/p>\n
While the Kanes privately practiced Elizabeth\u2019s plan to space their children, they never publicly agitated for the reform of marriage along the lines she suggested. A few years after her theory, Elizabeth visited Utah with her husband and was impressed by Mormon women. Ironically, her only published writing during Thomas\u2019s life–an 1874 book on the Latter-day Saints, Twelve Mormon Homes<\/em>–defended polygamous women (though not polygamy), the very system which once prompted her \u201cTheory.\u201d <\/p>\n