“Winnie,” asks Phylis Jones, “were you ever in love?” Phylis is the protagonist in Susa Young Gates's 1894–95 serialized novel, “Donald's Boy.” Winnie Selden, her older friend and mentor, has returned home to live with her mother after escaping a disastrous marriage. Phylis is engaged to a wealthy non-Mormon man and wavering about whether she should go through with it. “Did it seem to you that you could not think of the future without him?” she pleads.
Winnie responds in unequivocal terms meant to shatter Phylis's illusions. “I have felt just like you do. I thought I couldn't live without him. I broke all bonds, disobeyed my mother; gave up everything for him and gloried in the thought that I could sacrifice everything on his altar,” she declares. “In less than four months after my marriage my idol lay shattered at my feet and at the end of a year,...
