Polygamy

Polygamy is described as a foundational practice of Mormonism, a source of the community’s growth in Elder William Hitch’s account, and a subject of both political conflict and comic scrutiny during Phileas Fogg’s journey through Utah. The novel’s treatment shifts between the Elder’s defense of the practice, Passepartout’s anxious response to women’s constrained prospects in Salt Lake City, and the abrupt correction offered by a man fleeing a domestic quarrel: he has only one wife, and that is enough.

A Doctrine and a Political Dispute

On the train, Passepartout attends a lecture by Elder William Hitch, having heard of Mormonism chiefly through its association with polygamy. As the other passengers gradually leave the car, the Elder recounts the movement’s history and describes Brigham Young’s departure from Nauvoo for the shores of the Great Salt Lake. In the Elder’s telling, the new colony prospered in part because Mormons practised polygamy. The practice is thus presented not merely as a private household arrangement but as one of the means by which the community expanded.

The Elder also makes it a grievance in his account of the conflict with the federal authorities. He says that Congress has grown jealous of the Mormons, that Union soldiers have entered Utah, and that Brigham Young has been imprisoned. He frames the community as repeatedly driven from one place to another and urges Passepartout to join it in seeking an independent territory. Passepartout refuses and leaves the car, ending the Elder’s appeal with his only remaining listener gone. The scene establishes the practice as a political flashpoint, but its account of the dispute comes through a fervent advocate rather than an impartial explanation of federal policy.

Marriage and Women in Salt Lake City

During the party’s brief visit to Salt Lake City, the narration gives polygamy a visible social setting. It notes that the streets are nearly deserted in many areas, while many women are seen near the temple. The description explicitly cautions that not all Mormons are polygamists and says that people are free to marry or not. It also reports that, according to the religion as the novel presents it, unmarried women cannot attain its highest joys, making marriage a particular concern for female citizens.

That qualification sits uneasily beside the account of women’s apparent circumstances. Some wear short black silk dresses beneath hoods or shawls; others are dressed in what the narration calls Indian fashion. The women are described as seeming neither well-off nor happy. Rather than presenting marriage as simply an individual choice, the passage links women’s prospects to a religiously defined reward and to a household structure in which one husband may have several wives. The account offers little direct speech from the women themselves; their circumstances are filtered through the travellers’ observations and judgments.

Passepartout responds with alarm to the groups of women he sees. He imagines the practical burden on a husband expected to guide many wives through life and pictures them proceeding together toward the Mormon paradise. His reaction is comic and speculative, not an account of any household he has entered. The narration even marks his belief that the women are looking at him as possibly mistaken. His unease therefore exposes as much about his own response to the unfamiliar practice as it does about the women he observes.

The Lecture and the Limits of Passepartout’s Knowledge

Passepartout’s understanding begins narrowly: before hearing Hitch, he knows little of Mormonism beyond polygamy. The lecture widens the subject to the movement’s history, its leaders, and its clashes with the United States Government. Yet the Elder’s final appeal attempts to turn that historical argument into recruitment, and Passepartout declines it. His departure makes the encounter a brief collision between religious advocacy and the practical indifference of a traveller who has no wish to join the cause.

The visit to Salt Lake City follows soon afterward, translating the lecture’s claims into a scene of streets, houses, a temple, and women’s presence. The contrast matters: on the train, polygamy is argued over as part of a political struggle; in the city, it is treated as a social arrangement with consequences for marriage and women’s status. Neither scene supplies a comprehensive account of Mormon life, and the narration’s descriptions remain shaped by the travellers’ limited encounter.

The One-Wife Reversal

As the party is about to leave Salt Lake City, a Mormon arrives at the moving train after fleeing an unpleasant domestic scene. Passepartout, who has watched the man’s hurried escape, asks how many wives he has, supposing from the flight that he must have at least twenty. The man answers that he has one, and that one is enough. The small exchange punctures Passepartout’s assumption and turns the chapter’s broader subject into a compact joke: the practice associated with the community does not describe every individual, and even a single marriage can be presented as more than its husband wants to manage.

Taken together, the lecture, the city visit, and the fleeing husband give polygamy several distinct functions in the narrative. It is an element of religious identity, a justification invoked in an Elder’s account of communal growth, a cause of political confrontation, and a lens through which the travellers interpret women’s lives. The final joke complicates the travellers’ broad expectations without undoing the earlier account of social and religious pressures. Polygamy remains both a public controversy and a private arrangement, while the novel’s view of it is conveyed through advocacy, observation, unease, and comedy.