51 pages • 1-hour read
Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse.
Costs of Unequal Intimacy
Throughout Sister Wife, Christine Brown Woolley delves into the complications of living plural marriage in order to explore the hazards of unbalanced intimate relationships. She baldly presents the hardships and challenges that she faced throughout her marriage to Kody Brown, and within her concurrent relationships with her sister wives, Meri, Janelle, and Robyn. By refusing to veil the truth of these relational difficulties, Woolley offers an authentic depiction of unequal intimacy, emphasizing the many ways in which these unfair dynamics influenced her, both emotionally and psychologically.
Woolley incorporates her past perspective on polygamy and her present-day, evolved stance on the practice, and the stylistic choice to blend these points of view results in a much more nuanced, complex examination of this religious practice. In the early chapters of the memoir, Woolley inhabits her youthful point of view to illustrate how hopefully optimistic she was about the prospect of practicing polygamy. When Woolley fell for Kody, she was hopeful that he might choose her as his third wife, and her younger self’s favorable regard for her prospective polygamous marriage conveys her longing to believe in the possibilities of equal intimacy, even amidst this tradition. As she retrospectively states, “I wanted to be a third wife, because the family would have worked through all the kinks as they brought in the second wife. What could go wrong? I thought I would have two sister wives who would become my best friends” (27). In this passage, the use of the question, “What could go wrong?” strikes a deeply ironic tone and foreshadows the struggles that Woolley would face in her marriage to Kody and her relationships with her sister wives. Because she was so young and naïve, she did not understand how Kody’s favoritism of the other wives would impact her self-regard.
Woolley’s retrospective authorial voice captures the extent to which her outlook on polygamy has changed as a result of her negative experiences with Kody. For years, Woolley would work hard to promote a kinder version of polygamy even as she suffered grave injustices within her own marriage. Kody blatantly disregarded Woolley’s physical, sexual, emotional, and parental needs, ignoring her children and slandering her to his other wives and to a broader audience on national television. Kody’s overt devotion to Robyn over Woolley and her sister wives thwarted Woolley’s romantic notions of marital intimacy and compromised her self-esteem. In reflection, Woolley understands that she was never in control of Kody’s behavior, and she is proud that she was eventually able to advocate for her own needs. Leaving Kody and pursuing a more balanced relationship with David ultimately offered her the fairy-tale romance that she always dreamed of finding. Woolley’s story therefore explores both the positive and negative aspects of plural marriage, while underscoring her personal relationship with the tradition.
Redefining Selfhood Outside of Institutional Belonging
As Woolley’s memoir traces her journey away from her faith and towards self-reclamation, she conveys the power of rediscovering her pride in herself. The early sections of the text depict episodes from Woolley’s early life and underscore her childhood, adolescent, and young-adult attachment to the LDS church. In her youth, Woolley never questioned her parents’ or her community’s belief system because she never felt unsafe or unloved. Her childhood investment in the LDS faith set a precedent for her life to come and fostered her early self-regard. As she explains, “Everyone in my circle was kind, and I could go anywhere and feel safe. […] We all believed the same things. We all knew the same people. We all worked toward the betterment of ourselves and our community. From the day I was born, I felt cocooned in love” (5). The cocoon metaphor conjures notions of comfort and conjures up a warm, domestic mood, making it clear that, despite the issues she would one day perceive in her religion, Woolley felt secure as a child and was deeply connected to her church community. In short, she believed that her family and their belief system offered her a stable life and identity. When her mom left the church, Woolley’s faith only intensified, and she used her beliefs to rebel against Annie. However, the harder she clung to her beliefs, the harder it would be for her to let go of this system of thought and community of people when the time later came for her to do so.
Although her marriage was full of strife, Woolley’s fraught relationship with Kody Brown and her involvement in the Sister Wives TLC reality show would ultimately usher her into a journey of self-exploration and personal transformation. When she saw herself on the show, reacting to Kody and her sister wives, she started to wonder, “Is this really who I am? Someone who makes unfair demands and throws emotional temper tantrums?” (229). Through her retrospective analysis of her own appearances on the show, Woolley gained a new perspective on the person she had become in the context of her marital and familial worlds. Specifically, she started to notice how limited she felt in these contexts, and she lamented how little space and freedom she had for herself. Once Woolley allowed herself to interrogate the fundamentals of her marriage, religion, and social customs, she started to form a greater sense of independence and self-esteem, and she began to identify and process her emotions and develop healthier coping methods.
Woolley’s reflections in the epilogue convey her pride in the work that she has done to claim a holistic sense of self that transcends the confines of her former religion and marriage. While these spheres once offered her a sense of belonging, she would come to find surer footing in her own independence. As she explains, “I have loved doing the show. I loved it being a part of our life. I love all the opportunities we’ve had. But most of all, I love the change that has come for me as a person” (295). Now that she is more assured in herself, Woolley feels confident enough to live the life has always wanted. Redefining herself beyond her faith and family has challenged her as a person but has ultimately made her more confident and resilient.
Influence of Televised Narratives on the Truth
As a primary cast member on the show Sister Wives, Woolley pens a memoir that details her experiences on that show and explores how the televised version of her life complicated her own sense of what was real. When Sister Wives first started airing on TLC, Woolley hoped that the series would educate the American public on her family’s “demonstration of a kinder, gentler polygamy” (121). She believed that the show could earn acceptance for her community and her religion while bringing her family together. Over time, however, the show merely created drama, upheaval, and confusion amongst her family members, incited turmoil from the public, and spurred Woolley to walk away from her roots and seek a different way of life.
Because many of the earlier chapters are engaged in explaining the earlier versions of Woolley’s life, she delays her analysis of the interplay between her complex marriage and her experiences on the show until Part 3, where she finally delves into the social, emotional, and mental repercussions of allowing her life to be broadcast on the air. On one hand, participating in Sister Wives endangered Woolley and her family from a legal standpoint, for “As soon as [they] went national-TV-show public, Utah state authorities had to decide what to do with [them]” (120). Woolley and her family lived in fear of prosecution for their crime, as polygamy was illegal in Utah. They ended up moving to Las Vegas as a result, but even there, the family faced new challenges as a result of the show. Woolley explains, “At first, being recognized was fun for [the children]. They were mini celebrities. Then it became exhausting. These weren’t kids who had ever sought the spotlight” (125). As the show continued to gain traction, the family feared how the public saw them and struggled to reconcile their public personas with their real lives and identities.
These external concerns gradually morphed into internal complications for Woolley as the show went on. At first, seeing herself on camera was uncomfortable, as she was forced to realize that she “can be pretty selfish” and “wasn’t great at conversations” (126). Woolley was embarrassed by these realizations, but she acknowledges that this alternate version of the truth nonetheless helped her to grow over time. She used the televised version of herself to make personal changes in her outlook and demeanor. Meanwhile, the show further complicated Woolley’s perception of her relationships, as her husband and sister wives would behave differently towards her on camera than they would in person. The televised episodes would also reveal new truths about Kody, Meri, Janelle, and Robyn’s opinions, which often challenged her understanding of their family life. While these dynamics were often hurtful or frustrating, they ultimately granted Woolley a greater sense of clarity. Because of the show, she was able to liberate herself from the negative dynamics of her marriage and claim her true self. As she says, “I love who I am today. That came from the show, and living polygamy, and all the people I’ve met along the way” (295).
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