"That Deep Kind of Discipline of Spirit": Freedom, Power, Family, Marriage, and Sexuality in the Story of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community

For John Humphrey Noyes and his followers the desire to retreat from the dominant social order represented less an urge to be free from the forces of social change than it did a wish to impose order on a world many saw as spinning out of control. Oneida is perhaps best seen as one of many competing regulatory regimes in the middle and late decades of the nineteenth-century United States that promised order in the midst of chaos. The paradox was that Oneida, in its retreat from mainstream society, and through Noyes's attempt to redefine the family, marriage, sexuality, and individual freedom, served ultimately as a vehicle for making the dominant social order appear less chaotic and more normal over time as an example that reinforced rather than challenged the way that power was organized in society.