51 pages • 1-hour read
Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom
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Symbols & Motifs
Sister Wives Show
Sister Wives is a reality television series that began in 2010 and airs on TLC. The series follows the Brown family—which includes Christine Brown Woolley, Kody Brown, Meri, Janelle, Robyn, and their 18 children—and presents a “palatable” version of polygamy to the American public. When the show first began, Woolley and her family believed that by sharing their loving family life with the nation, they would create awareness around their “taboo” religious practices. Over the years, however, the series would change how Woolley saw herself, her marriage, and her religion.
In Sister Wife, Woolley portrays the Sister Wives show itself in a way that stresses its connections to her own transformation. At the start of the experience, Woolley was committed to her faith, her polygamous lifestyle, her relationship with Kody, and her interactions with her sister wives. Yet over time, the show made her see herself and her circumstances differently. She began to realize how selfish she could be and how trapped she truly felt living polygamously. She started to see herself through the eyes of her viewers and began to understand that she needed to change her life. Over the course of the series’ 20 seasons, Woolley has left her marriage and faith and forged a new life for herself. She attributes these bold changes to her appearance on Sister Wives.
Rings
The motif of rings recurs throughout the novel as Woolley describes her own claddagh ring and those of her sister wives, as well as the claddagh ring the four sister wives bought for their husband. Other rings that appear in the narrative include Robyn’s engagement ring, Woolley’s wedding band, Kody’s Joseph Smith ring, and the My Sisterwife’s Closet ring that Kody and Robyn design together. Although the various rings come to have different meanings as the family’s life progresses, they are often connected with ideals like commitment, loyalty, and intimacy.
Each ring holds a different meaning to each of the memoir’s key figures, but as time goes on, all of the rings spur various negative feelings of hurt, loyalty, or betrayal. For example, when Kody refuses to set a diamond into Woolley’s claddagh ring, she feels offended and unappreciated, and when Kody stops wearing his and Meri’s wedding ring and exchanges it for the My Sisterwife’s Closet ring, Meri and the other wives understand that Kody favors Robyn. As Woolley says in her memoir, “He designed it with a sapphire on the inside of the band—so you couldn’t see it. To me, that meant he saw himself as having a secret life that was so special to him, only he should know about it” (148).
In many cultures, rings are archetypal, cultural, and matrimonial symbols of commitment (and often of eternity, as the circle shape never ends). In Sister Wife, each of the aforementioned rings is meant to represent a commitment between the members of each relationship, but when rings are exchanged, forgotten, melted down, traded out, or thrown away, the individuals involved feel betrayed. Woolley incorporates this motif to reify her complex feelings in her polygamous relationships; these alliances were meant to be eternal but ultimately proved fickle and unreliable.
Coyote Pass
Coyote Pass is a symbol of change and renewal. When Woolley first heard about the Flagstaff property, she resisted the idea of moving. However, when she saw the plot, she quickly changed her mind about a possible future there, admitting, “I fell in love with the view and immediately understood how wonderful it would be to have us all settled there on our own lots. […] It seemed magical and amazing, and a way to get a reset” (199). The wild view itself evokes notions of freedom and newness, and the open land and mountain reaches starkly contrast with Woolley’s former life in Las Vegas.
Although Coyote Pass never brings about the change that Woolley anticipated, the setting does remake her as a person. While living in Flagstaff, Woolley starts to realize the true inequalities in her polygamous marriage. She also embraces independence and sees herself as her own woman for the first time. The dream of Coyote Pass never comes true, but this disappointed dream spurs Woolley to take control of her life.
Bedroom Set
Woolley’s bedroom set symbolizes the past. This is the furniture that she originally shared with Kody. When she leaves Kody, she sells the set because she “did not need to bring that bad juju to [her] new space” (236). Woolley and Kody chose the set together years ago, and at the time, Woolley was in love with the design and aesthetic, which had tapestries “and a lot of gold and matching bedding” (236). Years later, the set represents a more youthfully naïve version of herself, and when she sells it, she lets go of this past self and this former era of her life. As she states, “They’re from the past and they felt important, but they didn’t feel like me anymore” (236). Parting with the set is Woolley’s way of parting with a difficult relationship and creating space for a stronger, more independent version of herself.
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