For as much as Mormons appropriate from evangelicals, I’m surprised we’ve never stolen the Proverbs 31 woman.
In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans dedicates a chapter to the evangelical emphasis on Proverbs 31 as a guide to all things righteous feminine. “Visit a Christian bookstore, and you will find entire women’s sections devoted to books that extol her virtues and make them applicable to modern wives. At my Christian college, guys described their ideal date as a ‘P31 girl,” and young women looking to please them held a ‘P31 Bible Study.’” The Proverbs 31 woman “looms so large over the biblical womanhood ethos” that many Christian view the passage “as a task list” to which they must comply in order to become perfect housewives and win the favor of men.
While my evangelical friends recited Proverbs 31 from heart, during my teenage years I never heard of it. It’s certainly not included in seminary scripture mastery. I have no memory of any general conference talks or any lessons in young women, Sunday school, or institute discussing the passage. Searching LDS.org last week, I discovered that former General Relief Society President Barbara Winder tried to elevate the passage in Mormon consciousness. giving multiple talks on the Proverbs 31 woman throughout the 1970s and 1980s. But her message doesn’t seem to have stuck around enough for me to have learned it in the 1990s and 2000s.
I did, of course, absorb the underlying message about perfect housewives, as propounded by both evangelicals and Mormons. It’s just that the Mormon texts were the Proclamation on the Family and gender-roles General Conference talks. I grew up believing a Mormon woman’s divine role was to nurture and her preordained place was at home.
Even as a child, however, I picked up on the fact that “home” did not literally mean “at home.” College was acceptable: a woman should seek out the best books of wisdom, and an educated mother was a role model and asset to her children. A woman who chose to attend or return to school, even with children at home, was to be celebrated. (Education was also a useful “backup” plan in case of tragedy.)
“Staying at Home” also encompassed active community engagement. A mother was lauded if she served dozens of hours per month in Relief Society, Young Women, Primary, or other church callings. She was spoken of in reverence if she volunteered for the Parent-Teacher Association or as an election officer at the polls. She was honored from the pulpits if she regularly visited soup kitchens and nursing homes and Bishops Storehouses and shelters.
But one message remained constant. “Home” did not include a salary. Except in case of debilitating life circumstances, a mother was never to “work.” A career-oriented woman was a crass, selfish, riches-pursuing, children-abandoning, Babylonian sinner.
As a college girl at Indiana University I repeatedly found myself standing up for these religious conceptions of motherhood. I pushed back in liberal arts classes against those who condemned full-time mothers as a pox upon 1970s feminism. I complained about grad school applications that didn’t consider “mother” as an acceptable long-term goal. I wrote one term paper on the “Mommy Wars.”
Despite my public defense of home and family, I was nonetheless conflicted. After secular classes I often found myself wandering over to the Institute building, confessing that I needed to repent from the worldly temptation to become a career woman myself.
But then my rigid conception of 1950s-housewives-as-paragons-of-religious-perfection began to crack. One night in October 2006, my evangelical Lutheran boyfriend and I were immersed in our weekly Bible study. After I offered some insight, he whispered a word of sincere (and sappy) praise. “You remind me of the woman in that passage in Proverbs,” he said. “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”
His words were unfamiliar. I didn’t recognize the passage. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense: he had attended a private Baptist high school where Proverbs 31 was constantly emphasized, I had attended Mormon early-morning seminary before public school, where it wasn’t.
But at the time, I mentally scrambled. I’m competitive in all things, including scripture, and I wasn’t about to let my boyfriend out-quote a Mormon. Maybe I didn’t recognize the verse due to a difference in Bible translation? Maybe this was my lack of diligence in studying the Old Testament coming back to bite me? I latched on to a faint echo of one lyrical phrase I had heard a couple times in seminary and at EFY. “That reminds me of another verse,” I responded. “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.”
“That’s it, that’s the same passage,” my boyfriend exclaimed. He then reached for my Bible, flipped to Proverbs 31:10-31, and read all of it aloud. Highlights:
Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.
I was stunned. I had no idea such an ode to the power and independence of spiritual women existed, anywhere, in the Bible. I had only quoted verse 10 because I only knew verse 10. I had thought the “virtuous…rubies” phrase was from an isolated verse about sexual purity. I’d never bothered to look up the full passage. I had surmised it was some proof-texted, decontextualized quote that if I read in full would likely offend my tender ears like pomegranates in the Song of Solomon. [1]
I was right, in part. It had been decontextualized — but where the sexual reading was the wrong one!
That night I read Proverbs 31 over and over again, amazed at the “virtuous woman.” Sure, she engages in “classic” feminine activities — she cares for children and sews her own clothing and shops at the food market and treats the poor and needy with kindness. But she also makes merchandise, sells linen, negotiates over the purchase price of fields, oversees vineyards, preaches with wisdom, and is known for her honor and strength. She is not a mere shadow of her husband – her husband is respected among the elders and at the city gates because of her. It is “her own works” that “praise her in the gates.”
Suddenly the Mormon dividing line between “selfish careers” and “selfless service” seemed ridiculous. What on earth were we doing, valuing the exact same management and leadership skills in inverse proportion to how much a woman was paid!?!
It only took a modicum of my attention for the disparity to become acute. A Relief Society president who dedicated 30 hours a week to balancing a budget, planning activities, coordinating compassionate service, managing a network of volunteers, and attending interfaith community events was praised. But a single woman with a Masters of Public Administration working 40 hours a week in nonprofit management was a tragic spinster?
I’d seen the subtext phenomenon more times than I could count. Even if church members accepted that a woman must work, our culture seemed to value her job less if she made more money. A nonprofit secretary or public school teacher was viewed as morally superior to a middle manager at Deloitte or a female executive at Google.
However did we become a religion of unironic Jane Austen worshippers? Was Mormon / Biblical Womanhood nothing more than a grand attempt to recreate Victorian society? Where a true “Lady” could have large and ambitious charity projects, but was debased if she participated in politics or contributed to the marketplace? Was our unwavering focus on “stay at home mothers” – where we didn’t actually mean “at home” we just meant “volunteer and unpaid” – part of a mass societal prejudice to devalue the economic value of women’s worthwhile labor?
Because that’s squarely not what Proverbs 31 instructs. Proverbs 31 is couched in militaristic and noble language. It is a command to men to wake up and realize wives and women are already their equals. Most Bible translations today do not translate the passage as “virtue,” they render it as “valour.” We are women of valour. We are fierce and independent and competent. We perform invaluable labor both at home and in public. Whether we choose to make our primary vocation at home or in the workplace, the Bible recognizes that we are economic contributors to the household.
This realization marked a radical shift in my personal theology of womanhood. My journal from that night expounds for pages on the whole new world that had just opened up to me, alongside my sappy gratitude to my boyfriend for opening my eyes. I even inscribed a little note in the old seminary scripture margin for Proverbs 31. Bradley, October 27, 2006. It marks the day my entire conception of “Biblical Womanhood” changed.
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[1] My perception was understandable. The Old Testament seminary guide strongly focuses on the “virtue” verse alone, with the rest of the passage treated as more of an afterthought. The Old Testament Gospel Doctrine manual skips over Proverbs 31 entirely. And three years after my 2006 realization, the Young Women added “Virtue” as a value. The “Virtue” value only uses the “rubies” verse as its anchor and heavily emphasizes sexual purity.
*Photo Credit: Tore Bustad