Emma has been hailed as both a hero and a villain in Church folklore. Professor Chris Blythe’s colloquium speech explored why.
In the musical Hamilton, the final song begins with a line from George Washington: “You have no control: Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” A person can’t control their legacy. Instead, it’s defined by the stories people tell about them once they pass on.
Like all prominent historical figures, Emma Smith is no exception to this truth. Very little historical information about Emma exists; we really only have a handful of letters and a few secondary sources. However, people have passed down a vast and varied range of folklore stories that portray her as anything from a saint to a child of hell, so trying to get to the root of Emma’s actual character can feel impossible. Assistant Professor Chris Blythe (Folklore and Latter-day Saint Literature), however, has taken to the task with enthusiasm, writing a book titled The Redemption of Emma Hale Smith: A Folk Biography, which will be published by Oxford University Press. In his colloquium presentation on December 5, 2024, Blythe discussed some of the topics he examines in his book, diving into the story of Emma’s folklore.
The Course of Folklore History
Folklore about Emma first took a negative turn after the prophet Joseph’s death in 1844 and Emma’s subsequent falling out with the Church. Previously, members of the Church loved her and knew her as the “Elect Lady,” but by the 1860s, the stories people told painted her as a figure Blythe called the “Arch Apostate.” Blythe said, “Every tradition needs a set of villains, and we have our constellation of them. Emma [became] the center of that constellation . . . through the telling of story.”
These stories ranged from historical to fictional, focusing largely on Emma’s intense hatred of polygamy and her decision to support the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ). These stories (whether true or false) damaged Emma’s reputation for nearly a century. Blythe explained, “In the 1900s we see some nice comments, but often we either present Emma as an apostate, or she’s just completely absent.”
However, in the 1970s, Blythe explained that a few things changed. Joseph and Hyrum Smith’s descendants organized a reunion in Nauvoo, and Church history scholar Truman Madsen gave a speech there about Emma and Joseph’s romance. Around the same time, a woman named Gracia Jones introduced herself to Joseph Fielding Smith as the first descendant of Joseph and Emma to remain a member of the Church, and he told her that she was the fulfillment of a prophecy about the return of Emma’s descendants.
From there, interest in Emma only grew. The Church began to commission artwork and statuary of her for Nauvoo and other projects. Ordinary members of the Church—artists and actors and writers and musicians—started telling stories about Emma again, except this time, they were decidedly redemptive. “I see this project of the redemption of Emma Hale Smith starting at the reunion, but it really picks up with playwrights and amateur authors,” Blythe said. “[As LeGrand Richards said], ‘It’s time for Emma’s story to be told with love.’”
The Impact of Recent Folklore
In the 50 years since those events, people have made the effort to tell Emma’s story with love. “We have really critical novels being published by major presses like Random House,” Blythe said. “We have plays, an 1820 musical . . . Emma is everywhere today.”
Emma is mediating some of the actual suffering people go through.
Jones wrote an article in 1992 that became the first piece on Emma to be published in the Ensign. Stories have been told of Emma’s grief in the later years of her life and of the hardships she experienced. Feminist writers have described their desires to talk to her about the difficult topics—historical and modern—that they deal with themselves. Women have shared revelations and spiritual experiences they’ve had while seeking to better understand her life and character. And though having scarce historical records of Emma’s life means very little of the folklore today can be historically verified, Blythe still finds immense value in studying it. “These stories can only tell us about how we want her to be in the present moment,” he said. “[Through her folklore], she’s mediating some of the actual suffering people go through.”
Learn more about Emma with Gracia Denning Jones’s original Ensign article.