Legacies of a Mormon Family
Thomas Ramsey
This review was written based on the first published version of Legacies… The current edition has made some changes to the novel.
In “Legacies of a Mormon Family” James Farmer Cartwright describes how two generations of a family struggle with the emotional stresses of living within the Mormon “theocracy.” The main sources of stress come from the limited roles for women and the lack of any role for men who are gay. Poignant, at times cringe-worthy, are the family stresses caused by gay men “forced” into marriage with a woman and the cruelty this entails for the wife.
James Cartwright tells the story gently, with great love for all involved. This may be a secret strength of faithful Mormon practice: love triumphs (a wild conjecture on my part). I am not sure why, but the novel reminds me of Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Each chapter of Cather’s book could be a panel in a frescoed portrayal of the archbishop’s life.
To an outsider like me, raised Roman Catholic, the Mormon theocracy seems like others: a “totalitarian” grip on daily life, on every thought and feeling, on every social interaction, with a “closed loop” of intellectual resources. Peculiar to Mormonism, as portrayed by the author, is the lack of any role for single people. The author portrays the social ideal to be eternal marriage with offspring. Paradoxically, the Mormon theocracy seems at times to be remarkably gentle and naïve, even one dimensional with respect to human nature. When I compare the Mormon theocracy to Roman Catholicism, three major differences stand out.
• Mary as a revered person, sometimes a great strength of Roman Catholicism.
• A strong monastic tradition and priestly celibacy that offer roles for single people.
• But the totalitarian grip on daily living can be fierce. One of course thinks of the inquisition (Mormonism has a version of that too).
Since the Renaissance, there have been strong Catholic ideas of conscience and frequent confession—which includes labeling impure thoughts and impulses as sins and detailed accountings of sins. Foucault comes to mind, for his vivid evocation of this total surveillance under God’s eyes.
To summarize, the Mormon theocracy is younger and seems less accomplished in its totalitarianism, which may partly explain how the protagonists in “Legacies of a Mormon Family” manage to love while in pain.
Leslie Fevre sent via email to me personally
This review was based on the first published version of Legacies… The current edition has made some changes to the novel.
I have read your novel with great interest. As a reader, I personally find it to be autobiographical in nature, leading the reader to discover along with you your challenging, sincere and honest efforts to explain your personal metamorphosis into the person you are and have always been. This process for any individual takes courage, time and dedication. Your use of dialogue is phenomenal. You have truly made an art of it. You leave it up to the reader to appreciate the fact that you value his/her participation in the process. Some prospective readers may decline to do so, but are, I think, pleased that you respect them enough to have given them this option. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to review your book. It has been a pleasure doing so.
Joseph O’Mealy excerpt from review posted on Lulu.com; this excerpt approved by O’Mealy for inclusion here via email exchange.
This review was written based on the first published version of Legacies… The current edition has made some changes to the novel.
…James Cartwright’s treatment of his characters is consistently sympathetic and even empathetic, especially when their life choices are so constricted. There is a similar gentleness in the presentation of Church authorities, whose advice rarely rises above “Pray away the Gay.” [He has] a real ear for dialogue and conversation, though I wish the narrative exposition did not get lost in details that do not advance the central dilemma of sexual identity. Often he develops lengthy episodes tangential to the thrust of the story (e.g. the ten pages given over to the swimming lessons the father receives from an attractive male friend or the many chapters about the son’s mission…). The novel ends on an epiphany for the mother but not her gay son, an outcome this reader found disappointing.
Kathryn Klingebiel
This review was written based on the first published version of Legacies… The current edition has made some changes to the novel.
Legacies of a Mormon Family opens with an introduction (vii-xvi) which provides excellent background for non-Mormon readers, along with the appended “Mormon Vocabulary” (305-314). (Note that “disfellowshipping” (‘to exclude from fellowship, especially from religious communion’) would benefit from inclusion.)
The introduction also documents the institutional misogyny of the LDS church, as well as its ongoing condemnation of homosexuality and same-gender marriage. Yet the author has no agenda to villify any of his cast of characters: “There are no villains here, only mortals who make mistakes” (viii). His characters are all handled gently. He debunks any notion that “Legacies” is purely autobiographical: “while stories, characters, and incidents may spring from reality, they are fiction” (ix).
A family tree at the end of the introduction opens the story of two couples, CT and Emma, Caleb and Belle. Part 1 (“The Corral”, 1-126) takes its title from the sheep pen that CT and Emma expend much time and effort to build. As Part 1 glides over their marriage, we hear Emma begin to wonder about CT’s lack of passion toward her. They spend time together, they cuddle (but “rarely,” 96), they start a family and then add to it, yet their relationship remains essentially platonic.
In a key chapter, “Dreams” (90-92), some time before his swimming lessons with Roger, CT dreams of a lamb hanging from a crossbeam of the corral and bleeding from the crotch. More than a lamb, of course, it is revealed as a man, and then as Roger. Eventually, when it is cut down, the emasculated figure reveals itself as CT himself, with Roger standing over him weeping. The Roger episode signals a truth that CT cannot ignore. CT’s reaction to the news of Roger’s death is prophetic: desolate, “numbness enveloped him” (89).
Part 2 (“Promises”, 129-303) opens in 1959, 20 years later, following Caleb as a college student and then – at great length – as a missionary. Once he returns to BYU, Caleb’s love interest appears. After several months of dating Belle, Caleb goes to see the bishop of his student ward (214), admitting that he is drawn to men. What should he do? The glib promise is quickly made (and repeated): continue dating, get married, and the Lord will heal you.
Two days after the wedding, Caleb consummates their marriage (Ch. 14, 226-227), then lies still beside Belle… “dear God this has got to get better… so unpleasant to me”. Three nights after Caleb and Belle return to Provo, it happens again: “I dislike having sex with her”. It’s so unpleasant, so wrong…,” (228).
The truth will out: the church’s promises have not been fulfilled, cannot be fulfilled. By page 237, Caleb is confessing to his father that he wants Belle to divorce him – or else he will ask her for a divorce or an annulment. In the coming-out scene echoing his own personal experience, the author beautifully captures the power of CT’s blessing on his son: “I bless you with peace in your heart as you follow the spirit’s guidance,” as CT and Emma agree: “we love you and want you in our lives.”
Belle wonders, of course, why Caleb wasn’t more honest with her before they married (247); but Caleb has been misled by the promises of his priesthood leaders (“God will change you”). He is also a victim of his own wishful thinking, having worked for years – since age 14 – at trying to overcome his attaction to men (248).
Caleb recognizes clearly the unspoken subtext of the church’s promise: “God will change you” but only if you deny the truth of who you are. He finds the words to admit to Belle: “[the bishop] insisted that I not tell you of this problem. He said I should marry you and trust in the Lord’s blessing. A lot of good that has done. You’ve been hurt and I’ve been repeatedly deceived by priesthood leaders, or abandoned by God…” (250) and concludes “we don’t belong together” (251).
With this scene we arrive at the emotional core of the novel, two generations’ diametrically differing takes on an identical reality: a homosexual man facing a hetersexual marriage. Compliance. Rejection. The generation gap is crucial to this novel – although its truths remain largely unarticulated, those truths link the contrasting stories of the two couples. In the first part of Legacies, even as CT plots to spend time with Roger and Emma suspects that he’s seeing another woman, Emma continues to yearn for more from her husband: “I still wish CT’d be romantic with me” (124), then begins to worry that CT is not bonding well with his son. As women will do, she blames herself on both counts. She feels no choice but to accept their situation.
Nor do they delve into their own situation the second time around when faced with Caleb and Belle’s quandry (“Talking about ‘It’”, 243-246). CT’s father, “Mr. Reynolds,” perfectly embodies the emotionally frozen American male with whom no dialogue would ever be possible. Emma at least has recourse to the loving wisdom of Aunt Mary. (The truth-tellers in this story appear to be the women.) But the younger couple have all the advantages, finding support undreamed of even a single generation earlier.Where Caleb is lucky in his father’s unconditional support, Belle is lucky to be able to consult with Dr. Louisa Belknap, a BYU faculty member who had taught Belle in a writing class and is known to help arrange counseling for young women.
At times, the author is too careful of details to let the writing go where it needs to. Some sentences seem too encumbered with details (consider the chain of adverbs in the following example, with its curious negative turn of phrase): “One hot September night just after Mr. Reynolds returned to live in his home on Harvard Street in Salt Lake City, CT was not catching the Interurban back to the station west of Draper” (66). Some sections seem too long, e.g., Caleb’s missionary experiences in chapters 4-8 of part two. The swimming lessons with Roger are overdrawn (26-36), yet remain strangely chaste, side-stepping the opportunity to show what CT might have felt (and/or yearned for) in such close proximity to Roger, lying in his arms, with Roger’s hands OK to move all over his body (what a set-up!). And think too of the feeling of the water….
There are rare stylistic lapses, e.g., “Caleb’s announcement that he was gay knifed Emma into her core being” (246). Quite the modern young woman, Belle has to remove a temple garment before she can experiment with masturbation, but she is apparently instantly successful, as the author has her “plunging high beyond metaphor” (289). If you have to ask what the heck a “temple garment” might be, the glossary is of less help (312) than a quick visit to Google:
“Mormon undergarments must be worn day and night… to remind them of the commitment they made to God; the garments also provide protection against temptation and evil.”
In the final chapter of the novel, “Liberating Emma,” an epiphany allows Emma to move toward reconciliation with her son’s need for liberation. “She gradually began contrasting her horror of Caleb’s confession to CT’s reaction” (302). She has trouble understanding her husband’s easy acceptance of their son’s decision to end his marriage with Belle. One Sunday afternoon some kind of (unexplained) conjunction in the cosmos leads her to ask: “Is CT homosexual also?”… “If he is homosexual also, was he spending those nights so many years ago in Salt Lake City with men?” (303) These essential questions bring the tale full circle.
But the (omniscient, omnipresent) narrator (let’s call him “J”) is the be-all and the end-all of Legacies. Disclaimers notwithstanding, it reads as “J”’s story, of vital, primordial importance to him. This is what he needed his novel (novel? semi-memoir?) to be, refracted through his characters. Finally, this reviewer notes, with a smile, that much of the time, most of the characters speak with the voice of Jim Cartwright. No complaints on that score: it’s a voice with a story to tell.
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