Oneida
Subtitle: from free love Utopia to the well-set table
By: Ellen Wayland-Smith
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9781250043085
Subjects: Tableware; Oneida, ltd; Silver flatware; Biography; Collective settlements; Oneida Community; Free love; Social reformers; History
Other titles: From free love Utopia to the well-set table
Description: "Amidst the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus' millennial kingdom here on earth. Noyes and his followers built a large communal house in rural New York where they engaged in what Noyes called "complex marriage," an elaborate system of free love where sexual relations with multiple partners was encouraged. Noyes was eventually inspired to institute a program of eugenics, known as "stirpiculture," to breed a new generation of Oneidans from the best members of the Community--many fathered by him. When Noyes died in 1886, the Community disavowed Noyes' disreputable sexual theories and embraced their thriving business of flatware. Oneida Community, Limited would go on to become one of the nation's leading manufacturers of silverware, and their brand a coveted mark of middle-class respectability in pre- and post-WWII America. Told by a descendant of one of the Community's original families, Oneida is a captivating story that straddles two centuries to reveal how a radical, free-love sect, turning its back on its own ideals, transformed into a purveyor of the white picket fence American dream. - For readers of Jill Lepore, Joseph J. Ellis, and Greg Grandin"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A minister is born; title: Noyes in the underworld; title: New Jerusalem (in Vermont); title: Electric sex; or, How to live forever; title: Marriage grows complex; title: The machine in the garden; title: Sticky love; title: Brave new world; title: Twilight of the gods; title: Things fall apart; title: Selling silver; title: Survival of the fittest; title: "The strike of a sex"; title: "Back home for keeps"; title: The burning.