| Description |
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a rapidly-growing religious organization whose presence and political influence is increasing throughout the world. This study investigates the image of the ideal woman in that church to understand her stated nature and her roles. The data were authoritative published discourses selected from the period 1830 to 1984. Such materials were largely located in the general Church papers, magazines and journals and were intended for Church-wide consumption. In addition, a large body of discourse produced specifically for Mormon women, and a smaller body addressed specifically to men, were also considered. Analytical procedures derived from structuralism, hermeneutics and phenomenology were employed to manage the larger interpretive efforts. Smaller units of the discourse were managed by procedures drawn from content analysis and argumentation analysis, combined with a close rhetorical reading of the texts. The woman's image, itself, was loosely classified into the ecclesiastical, secular and domestic aspects of her role and the dimensions of her purported nature. Analysis disclosed the following patterns: Woman's image was most pluralistic during a brief period in the early 1840s, and from 1872 to the mid-1930s when the Church itself had a negative image in the larger American culture and when the female members managed their own auxiliaries, published their own magazines, interfaced more closely with women outside the Church, and held frequent, large conferences of their own. It has grown relatively constricted since World War II as the image of the Church has become attractive, as the women have lost their publications and control of their auxiliaries, and as men's priesthood and discourse have become predominant. |
