Book Reviews! Finally!

This year I found myself drawn to two books written by former members of polygamist sects: Escape by Carolyn Jessop and Shattered Dreams: My Life As A Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer. The general idea of "polygamy is bad" is reinforced in both memoirs, but the women's stories are different in several ways.

1. Jessop was born in 1968, and Spencer was born in 1937. While both were born into polygamist families, Jessop seemed more resistant to the lifestyle even before she became her husband's third wife. Spencer did not exactly relish being in what is also called a "plural marriage," but she firmly believed that she would go to Hell if she did not obey the laws of her religion. In fact, Spencer willingly ended a relationship with a man she loved in order to marry one that she barely knew, and she did so against her parents' wishes.

2. Jessop's husband was mentally abusive and clearly exploited polygamy to meet his own needs. He did not care at all about his children, only about having as many as possible.

However, Spencer depicts her husband as someone who practiced polygamy purely for spiritual purposes and who truly tried to love all of his wives and children. He very often failed at this, and there were many moments of thoughtless, unintentional cruelty on his part. Despite that, he honestly comes across as a good man who is misguided by his faith. Spencer herself says it best: "I needed to validate his worth as a wonderful human being, but also suggest to him we'd both been victims caught up in the tangled web of a fanatical religion."

3. Jessop did not want to have sex with her husband. Ever. Spencer, on the other hand, wanted a sexual relationship so much that at times it was all she could think about. Her husband practiced the law of purity, which stated that sex was meant only for procreation. This meant that a man could not sleep with his wife if she was pregnant, menstruating, or no longer fertile (ie. going through or having completed menopause). To put it in the simplest terms, sex was absolutely not for pleasure. Spencer had to pretty much beg her husband to sleep with her more than once a month, and he often referred to her as "oversexed."

4. Spencer had issues with her "sister wives" because she did not want her husband to marry other women, but they all generally got along. She was even very good friends with some of them. However, one of the main points of Jessop's book is that sister wives don't always get along as well as they'd like the world to believe. In fact, Jessop recounts several instances of women abusing the children of their sister wives. She also writes about backstabbing, manipulation, and sabotage within polygamous families.

5. Finally, Spencer often wanted to leave her marriage and faith, but she was not in any real danger from her husband. He never threatens to kill her or anything like that, and he does not physically try to prevent her from leaving.

There is a very suspenseful atmosphere to Jessop's book, especially in the beginning and toward the end, because her husband's control over her is absolute. There is no doubt that he'll hunt her down if she tries to leave, and he absolutely will not give her the chance to take their children away from him. In fact, Jessop has the distinction of being the first woman granted full custody of children in a contested suit involving the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints.

Both of these books were fantastic! I would highly recommend them to anyone, but especially to those who are interested in learning about the FLDS, polygamy, and the complete subjugation of women's rights in the name of religion.