A House Full of Females, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
A House Full of Females, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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A House Full of Females
Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870

Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Narrator: Susan Ericksen

Unabridged: 19 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/10/2017

Synopsis

A stunning and sure-to-be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never-before-told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon "plural marriage," whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, fifty years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress, and who became political actors in spite of, or because of, their marital arrangements. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, writing of this small group of Mormon women who've previously been seen as mere names and dates, has brilliantly reconstructed these textured, complex lives to give us a fulsome portrait of who these women were and of their "sex radicalism"—the idea that a woman should choose when and with whom to bear children.

About Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was born in Sugar City, Idaho. She holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire, University of Utah, and Simmons College. She is 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University and past president of the American Historical Association. As a MacArthur Fellow, Laurel worked on the PBS documentary based on A Midwife's Tale. Her work is also featured on an award-winning website called dohistory.org. She is immediate past president of the Mormon History Association. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on March 30, 2017

At last. A book on Mormon history that not only includes women, but focuses on women, treating them as complete subjects who led rich and varied lives full of loss, pain, and stalwart faith. I especially loved reading about the many accounts of women administering healing blessings to their fellow s......more

Goodreads review by ♥Milica♥ on April 14, 2023

This is the second audiobook I picked up that was narrated by Susan Ericksen and both have been good so far. I have a third one lined up as well, will it be 3/3? We'll see. A House Full of Females was fascinating. I find early Mormonism very interesting, and especially the womens' side of it, which t......more

Goodreads review by Moonkiszt on December 10, 2020

This is a book I will read again. It is full to the brim with my people. All the lines from which my father descended were these, many-wived men and one-husband-at-a-time-women. Their convictions were deep and their commitment to being a peculiar people even deeper. Until it wasn't. There are so man......more

Goodreads review by Blair Hodges on March 21, 2017

This book is about much more than polygamy and women's rights, although you'll learn much about those things here. A House Full of Females is a compulsively readable cultural history of the first forty years of the Latter-day Saint experience told from the ground up. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich expertly......more

Goodreads review by Sharon on June 17, 2017

This is a very scholarly work minutely detailing the lives of some of the Mormons who, due to religious persecution, left the eastern United States for Utah. After 387 pages of reading I am left with no clear idea of why people found Mormonism so appealing, leaving home family, friends and sometimes......more

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