Online Encyclopedia
Fawn M. Brodie
Fawn McKay Brodie (September 15 1915 – January 10 1981) was a teacher and biographer. In the Latter-day Saint (LDS) community, Brodie is best known for her non-hagiographic biography of LDS founder Joseph Smith, Jr. titled No Man Knows My History.
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Early life
Brodie was the second of five children born to Thomas E. McKay and Fawn Brimhall, whom she was named after. Born in Ogden, Utah, she grew up in Huntsville, ten miles east of Ogden.
Raised in a devout Latter-day Saint home, her paternal uncle was David O. McKay, a prominent LDS leader. David O. McKay was an Apostle in the LDS church when Brodie was born and he later became the ninth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brodie was a precocious child. A whooping cough epidemic convinced her mother to homeschool Fawn's sister Flora, two years older than her. Young Fawn demanded to learn along with her sister, and when she entered public school, she was promoted to the same grade as Flora. They graduated Weber High School simultaneously in 1930 when Fawn was only fourteen. In high school, Fawn began dating Dilworth Jenson. Jensen was four years her senior, but a stimulating companion for her.
Brodie earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of Utah in 1934 graduating as a Phi Beta Kappa student. By the following semester—at age nineteen—she taught English at Weber College in Ogden. Most students she taught were older than her, but she received excellent student reviews.
In June 1935, both Fawn and her lover Dilworth Jensen were accepted for graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but Fawn and her parents agreed it was best for her to study elsewhere. This fateful decision was made after Flora eloped with Dilworth's older brother against her parent's objections. Therefore, Fawn enrolled in the University of Chicago where she earned an M.A. in 1936.
At the University of Chicago Fawn lost her faith in the LDS religion entirely. She recalled this time period to an interviewer in 1975, "It was like taking a hot coat off in the summertime. The sense of liberation I had at the University of Chicago was exhilarating. I felt very quickly that I could not go back to the old life, and I never did." She quit her correspondence with Dilworth Jensen who was a faithful Mormon and returned missionary.
Fawn met Bernard Brodie through acquaintances at the University. Born of Latvian-Jewish immigrants and raised in Chicago tenements, Brodie enchanted Fawn. Bernard was similarly struck. He found her to be beautiful, tall (she was 5 feet, 11 inches), and highly intelligent. They were married August 25, 1936, on the same day that Fawn Brodie received her M.A. in English. They were married in an LDS chapel, which offended Bernard Brodie's family. His parents and siblings declined to attend, and only Fawn's mother traveled from Utah.
No Man Knows My History
After her first son was born in 1942, Brodie was awarded an Alfred A. Knopf biography fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Called No Man Knows My History, the title alludes to a speech Smith gave shortly before his death in which he denies any mortal could know his saga. Brodie's book was published to critical praise in late 1945.
The biography made many claims contrary to official LDS Church doctrine about Smith's life and teachings. For example, it speculated about how Smith may have written the Book of Mormon which he claimed was translated with divine aid from Golden Plates. Brodie also wrote about how Smith supposedly convinced people he even had Golden Plates. She detailed connections between Masonic rituals and LDS temple rituals; some Latter-day Saints find Brodie's perspective on this connection as both simplistic and sacrilegious.
Brodie interpreted all of Smith's purported revelations as being merely expedient, and saw Smith as power-hungry and lustful. This opinion was formed, in part, by her research of James Strang, leader of a small splinter-group who claimed that Smith recorded power-obsessed thoughts in an encoded diary. A power-hungry conception of Smith is portrayed througout No Man Knows My History.
Initial drafts of the book were even more hostile to Smith, but Bernard Brodie, her husband, and Dale Morgan, who was Fawn Brodie's mentor, urged her to write a more balanced account in order to be taken seriously. These reviewers thought the drafts were unsatisfactory because they failed to be sympathetic enough even to explain Smith's popularity. Some readers still cite this problem. However, the book remains notable, especially for its laborious attempts to document Smith's plural marriages. An expanded edition was published in 1971.
Brodie was excommunicated from the LDS Church in May, 1946 for apostasy, which included refusing to edit or alter controversial material in her book. She was unsurprised about the excommunication, and proclaimed that she had lost her faith before her work on the book began. Brodie regretted hurting her parents, but never sought to rejoin the church.
Like Brodie's later biography of Thomas Jefferson, No Man Knows My History has been criticized by some historians as speculative and biased. Another excommunicated Mormon historian, D. Michael Quinn, claims that Brodie failed to take Smith's religious claims seriously (New Mormon History, xiv). This view is popularly held among mainstream historians, much more so now than when the book was initially published.
Prominent LDS writer and apologist Hugh Nibley challenged many of Brodie's claims in a booklet, No, Ma'am, That's Not History. Primarily, Nibley challenged her selective use of sources. Too often, Nibley asserted, Brodie relied on anti-Mormon newspaper stories over less biased sources.
Nonetheless, Brodie's biography is a favorite among some critics of the Latter Day Saint movement, especially anti-Mormons. Interestingly, some anti-Mormons such as Jerald and Sandra Tanner regard Brodie's work as sloppy and unreliable even though her unsympathetic view of Smith mirrors their own.
One such criticism attacks Brodie's brief treatment of the so-called "Solomon Spalding hypothesis" in appendix B. The Spalding hypothesis supposed that Joseph Smith based the book of Mormon off of the Spalding manuscript, a narrative about pre-Columbian Americans. The theory speculated Smith may have been aided by Sidney Rigdon, who was more formally educated than Smith. Brodie rejected the hypothesis proposing Smith as the sole writer, but the appendix is thought to be less rigorously researched, an afterthought.
In spite of its shortcomings, No Man Knows My History is often considered the standard naturalistic biography of Joseph Smith.
Subsequent biographies and later life
Brodie gave priority to raising her three children, but she completed four other major biographies while occasionally teaching history at UCLA. Her second biography, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (1959) was consciously an effort the rebuild the reputation of Thaddeus Stevens which she called an "about face" of her Smith biography's aims. Her third biography, The Devil Drives: A life of Sir Richard Burton (1967), was in part provoked by the interest Brodie took in Richard Francis Burton after editing a reissue of Burton's 1860s observations on Mormon polygamy called The City of the Saints.
Brodie's fourth biography, on Thomas Jefferson, is her most famous outside the Mormon community. Thomas Jefferson: an Intimate History (1974) is considered an early example of psychohistory, biography that attempts to analyze the psychological motivations of historical events. The biography has been praised for indeed exploring Thomas Jefferson's psyche. However, the speculative nature of Brodie's interpretation has been questioned. In particular, description of an extended romance between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings has been widely attacked (and subsequently vindicated). Brodie remarked that defenders of Jefferson were, "almost as protective of Jefferson as were the brethren in Salt Lake City protective of Joseph Smith."
Her last biography, Richard Nixon: Shaping his Character (1981) was completed as Brodie struggled with cancer. Her husband Bernard preceded her in death by cancer in 1978. Brodie maintained many of the values taught by the LDS church such as strong ties to family which may have kept her loyal to Bernard in spite of a difficult marriage. She was also aware of developments in Mormon history as suggested by the preface to the 1971 edition of No Man Knows My History in which she applauded for being independent from the church.
Brodie died of cancer January 10, 1981 and was cremated. Per her wishes, friends spread her ashes over the Santa Monica Mountains near where she had spent the last 30 years of her life.
A rumor circulated that Brodie asked to be re-baptized in her last days. Actually, Brodie only thanked her brother Thomas for a "priesthood blessing"—a type of special prayer intended to aid her in her illness—that he gave her in a Santa Monica, California hospital December 1980. She also added that it in no way meant she wanted to be taken back into the church—anticipating the rumor, which she "would repudiate...for all time."
Brodie's bibliography
- No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith ISBN 0679730540
- Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South
- The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton ISBN 0393301664
- Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History ISBN 0393317528
- Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character ISBN 0393014673
Reference
- Newell G. Bringhurst , "Fawn McKay Brodie and her Quest for Independence". In John Silletto & Susan Staker (Ed.), Mormon Renegades, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002 ISBN 1-56085-154-6
External links
- Biography of Fawn Brodie http://www.lightplanet.com/response/brodie.htm - from an LDS apologist site
- Excerpts from No Man Knows My History http://solomonspalding.com/Lib/Brd1945b.htm - from solomonspaulding.com, which defends the Spaulding hypothesis
- No Ma'am that's Not History http://www.lightplanet.com/response/nomaam.htm - full text of the booklet by Hugh Nibley