Part 2, Chapters 12 - 13 Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 12, Krakauer gives his reader insight into Emma's feelings about Joseph's plural marriages. Emma, who was Joseph's first wife, even went to the point of threatening to take another husband in order to discourage her husband's polygamy. It is actually believed that Joseph may have penned Section 132 in an attempt to make his wife stop harassing him about his numerous wives. It is interesting to note that in this revelation Joseph writes that God has approved a man having many wives, but not a woman having many husbands. Included in this revelation is also a veiled threat to Joseph's first wife that if she is does not cooperate with Joseph's desire to have numerous wives, she will be doomed to hell. This threat of damnation seems to be a repeated threat to Mormon women in order...