(Season 3, Episode 2 – “Empire”)
Barb is the wife I relate to the most. Maybe she is the wife everybody relates to the most– I don’t know. I adore Margene, but Barb is my favorite. So, I was nervous when she started seeing doctors and having scans to check for a recurrence of cancer.
Barb has spent the last seven years struggling with polygamy. She has her own goals and aspirations; leading two other wives and juggling five more children doesn’t always fit with her needs. So, to see her suddenly embrace Ana as a potential fourth wife is as baffling to us as it is to Sarah– except that she must be looking for a replacement. She must think that if something happens to her, the entire family will fall apart with only Nicki and Margene at the reigns.
So, now that she is cancer free, is she going to change her mind about Ana and a fourth wife? I don’t think she is.
When Barb had cancer the first time, it was only when she accepted moving into polygamy with Nicki as a second wife, and only after a blessing she received from Roman Grant, that Barb was cured. She has been cancer-free for seven years. However, suddenly, when she is showing the most resistance to polygamy and has ultimately shut down the growth of the family by forbidding a fourth wife, she has a legitimate cancer scare. And when she repents and begins Ana’s formal courtship? She finds out she is healthy.
In many ways, the cancer represents Barb’s leaving the “true” path set forth by the Juniper Creek church. She is physically healed only when she is spiritually healthy. When Barb and Bill were Latter-day Saints and living a monogamous life, Barb was spiritually sick, so she got cancer. If the cancer doesn’t actually represent these things, I think the case can be argued that it represents these things to her.
This leads me to another aspect of Barb. It’s one thing to accept Ana as a fourth wife, but I think Nicki has some legitimate points about privacy in her own marriage to Bill. If the wives are chosen because of their ability to grow the family through having children, then how are any of them supposed to feel like they are legitimate people with legitimate needs? No wonder Nicki is so messed up. She has been raised to be a brood mare. In some ways, it’s unfair and deceitful to Nicki to try to bolster her standing in the family if they are going to pressure her to get pregnant.
Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that Barb feels that she must succumb to a truth that she doesn’t really like. When she gets all gooey-eyed and starts talking about her testimony of polygamy (that she is so happy she will know what her family in heaven is going to look like), she seems like little more than a Stepford Wife.
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Jan 26, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
