Tweet of the Week: Oneida Community

An unorthodox Christian sect living in Oneida, New York beginning in 1848, the Oneida Community practiced the teachings of John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886). Noyes, the son of God-fearing New England parents, believed in what he called “Perfectionism,” the idea that once one has converted to Christianity, one has been vindicated from all sin forever (Noyes attended one revival meeting and claimed it had done the job). One of the defining practices of the Oneida Community was polygamy, or the principle of “Complex Marriage” as Noyes called it. “Complex Marriage” ruled that, within the community, every man was married to every woman, and every woman married to every man. It prohibited couples from being exclusive with one another, and even adolescents in the community had to comply with the rule. “Complex Marriage” was associated with “free love” and the rejection of conventional marriage vows, which in most cases unjustly benefited the husband at the cost of his bride. "God did not intend,” said Noyes, “that love between men and women be confined to the narrow channels of conventional matrimony."

Upon the publication of Leaves of Grass, and because of its overtly sexual content, Whitman immediately became associated with the “free love” movement and its beliefs. Emerson associated him with the movement; and when Boston banned the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, it was The Free Love League that came out to protest the ban. David S. Reynolds writes in Walt Whitman’s America that Whitman did indeed have a lot in common with the free love movement:

“Like them, he saw profound defects in the relations between the sexes. Also like them, he tried to repair these defects by appealing to natural passion and attraction. Just as they equated marriage with slavery, so the reason he gave for not marrying was ‘an overmastering passion for entire freedom, unconstraint’ (though his attraction to men was a more likely reason).”

However, as Reynolds goes on to explain, Whitman had his objections to the free love movement. Certain editorials he wrote for the Daily Eagle indicate that he held the institution of marriage in high esteem, calling it “the root of the welfare, the safety, the very existence of every Christian nation.”  He also believed that men and women should have certain social and moral responsibilities, that they shouldn’t be able to hide from those responsibilities under the flag of free love.