ABSTRACT
Poetry was a significant medium of public expression for nineteenth-century Mormon women. Occupying a position between public and private spheres, poetry became an acceptable place for them to express their views on home, family, community, politics, and theology. Of particular interest are the more than four hundred poems published in the Woman’s Exponent between 1872 and 1900. In these poems we find elements that connect the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ theology of the afterlife to more mainstream nineteenth-century Christian theologies, as well as beliefs that estrange members of the Church of Jesus Christ from other nineteenth-century Christians. Perhaps of most interest are the theological ideas Mormon women express in these poems that are not emphasized in other male-dominated genres of the time. For instance, while Mormon men emphasize in their prose and poetry about the afterlife the opportunity to reign over heavenly kingdoms and create heavenly posterity, Mormon women focus most of their poems on the delight of reuniting with loved ones. While male Mormon leaders set forth a rigorous theology of the afterlife, the content of these poems indicate that while some of these ideas resonated with women of the Church, others did not. As such these poems become a place where we can see Mormon women’s lived religion and what motivated them to seek a place in God’s heavenly kingdom, as well as how women used poetry to create, validate, and promote their own religious experiences and their own visions of the afterlife.
