Affirming Plural Marriage: Sister Wives With Benefits

Abstract

TLC’s controversial reality show Sister Wives, currently in its second season, radically challenges traditional conceptions of marriage. Sister Wives documents the daily life of the Browns, a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist family. As the title makes clear, the series is as interested in the relationships between the wives as it is the relationship between husband and wife in a polygamist family. The term ‘sister wives’ is used in fundamentalist Mormon contexts to acknowledge the importance of this special connection between the wives, a union that is valued alongside the marital commitment. While the faith of the Brown family is considered conservative in nature, is it possible that this family organization has feminist undercurrents? How does this concept of ‘sister wives’ fit into a feminist framework? This paper will chart the interpersonal communication and emotional development between the four wives on the show: Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn. By analyzing the rhetorical claims made by each wife of the show, each woman’s personal experience of her family and lifestyle will be honored. Even as there are immediate problems that present themselves when analyzing the show from a feminist perspective (for example that Cody, the husband, is free to have multiple wives while the wives are not able to have multiple partners) the show does reveal benefits to this arrangement that are not available in the ‘traditional’ family unit.