John Humphrey Noyes: Complex Marriage In The Oneida Community

In 1848, John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), a former student at the Yale Divinity School , founded the Oneida Community in New York after he was driven out of Vermont following accusations that he had committed adultery. This new community was guided by the new way of salvation that Noyes had established and branded as Perfectionism, achieved through conversion. This is why today they are referred to as the Oneida Perfectionists’ Community. It later broke up in 1881, and the evidence of its once-upon-a-time existence is portrayed by Oneida Limited, a giant silverware company . The primary practices that characterized this extinct community were communalism, male continence, "complex marriage" as well as mutual criticism . Of special interest to this paper is their concept of complex marriage, which is by all means a most interesting model. In this regard, the paper explores both how and why complex marriage was developed in the Oneida community.
The complex marriage was a system of marriage that believed in the expression of free love where no one belonged to anyone. It was the central tenet of the Perfectionism established by …show more content…
Sex had two roles. One, it was for a holy purpose as already discussed, and two, it was for procreation. As earlier mentioned, the Oneida community was communal. This was not only in regards to wealth, love, sex, and marriage but also in relation to childrearing which was a group matter . Some individuals desired to have children, but again, sex would be with different partners. When the young ones reached the weaning stage, they would be taken away from their mothers and raised together/communally. As a result, this complex marriage system prohibited the creation of strong attachment bonds between parent and their children. This marriage and families developed out of the belief in divine links rather than matrimonial and biological