Desire and Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller's Intimate Memoir [Hardcover]

Tirzah Miller Herrick (Author), Robert S. Fogarty (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

Tirzah Miller's "Oneida Memoir" was written by the most prominent woman of the younger generation at the Oneida Community between 1867 and 1879. It is the first memoir that deals explicitly and openly with the sexual conflicts at Oneida. It chronicles the social and sexual life (including her relations with her uncle and lover, the colony founder John H. Noyes) and her relations with the three men with whom she had children as part of the eugenics experiment, called stirpiculture. Tirzah Miller was also a sensitive observer of the internal life at this celebrated communal family and she details the shifting political forces within the community just prior to its break up in 1880. Her memoir is full of intimate conversations with John H. Noyes about issues and personalities, about her love affairs, about her doubts about communism and her love of music, and her anguish over the loss of two partners. Throughout the memoir she is torn by her desire for romance and her duty to the community. The memoir begins when she is 20 and ends when she is 36 and several key issues emerge that are central to understanding this daring experiment in communal living and social engineering: questions about free love and incest which they call "consanguinity"; questions about the conflict between her commitment to her mentor, Noyes, who is grooming her to become their Margaret Fuller, and another "special lover"; questions about her religious life and her understanding of Perfectionism; questions about the forces that led to the restructuring of the society and the abandonment of "complex marriage". Tirzah Miller was a "magnetic force" at Oneida as she drew men toward her and her memoir is the most remarkable piece of confessional literature to emerge from the newly opened archives. She was at the vital centre of the colony and her story is represenative of the younger generation who enthusiastically embraced the scientific programme introduced by Noyes in 1869 to produce a new breed of Perfectionists. She was the only woman to have three children in the experiment, including one by her uncle George Washington Noyes who died suddenly during her pregnancy.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press; First Edition edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253336937
• ISBN-13: 978-0253336934
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,543,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Utopian

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sizzling Civil War Era Memoir June 13, 2000

By Johnna J. Adams

Format:Hardcover

This was a fascinating glimpse into the Oneida community and an amazing find.

Tirzah Miller is the niece (and lover) of community founder John Humphrey Noyes and has access to the real inner circle of community leadership. You follow her various lovers (the marriage had 200 members and they practiced a form of 'complex' marriage that left Tirzah with MANY suitors) and the trials and tribulations of her love life in intimate detail. There are curious omissions in the memoir (which Fogarty points out in his thorough introduction)-- she doesn't chronicle the birth of her first child George (the offspring of one of her other uncles, born without the sanction of marriage leader Noyes) nor the death of the father of George's father (George, Sr. dies before the baby is born). You are not sure whether this was an omission on Tirzah's part or an omission made by the descendents who released the memoir to the public (more likely it was the descedents given Tirzah's candid style). And there are several gaps in the journal where Tirzah was working on the community newsletter and stopped writing. These omissions frustrate the reader a little, but obviously there is nothing Fogarty can do about it, except speculate on the reasons behind the omissions in the introduction and provide missing background info which compensates somewhat.

The material that Tirzah did choose to write about is both poignant and sensational! Not only was her uncle an avid promoter of incestuous relationships (he felt the devil was behind social mores prohibiting this), but she chronicles several other outlandish suggestions John Humphrey Noyes makes for improving the community sex life (like, live sex acts performed during the religious meetings- a plan he never actually implemented). But the real heart of the journal comes from her painful experiences falling in love with and losing the love of her life due to strict community criticism of 'special love' relationships. It is heart-breaking to see her turn her back on a man she loves, teach their child to revile him and public renounce him all for the sake of her uncle's rather un-natural influence over her.

By the end of the book you feel as if you have been introduced to and become the intimate acquaintance of a remarkable historical figure. Tirzah's memoir is basically the story of a modern woman (she had a job, serial lovers, daycare, short hair and wore a unique trouser outfit) only, shockingly, she lived in the civil war era. A must read for feminist history enthusiasts!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Could this be real?!? March 12, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Being from Oneida myself, I have always had a special interest in this subject. I found that the most helpful elements in this book were the introduction and the notes following the diary entries of Tirzah. Without reviewing these notes before hand, it might be difficult to understand who many of the people are that the diaries refer to, as well as many of the locations mentioned. It seems almost unreal when reading this memoir that such a colony ever existed, it seems almost impossible that such people could live these lives, and that John Noyes had so much control over every aspect of these people's lives. I very much enjoyed this book and believe that it is highly worth reading, more so people from this particular area.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Insider's View of Oneida January 3, 2001

By R. Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

We can now read the memoir of a woman who lived in the famous Oneida community of the nineteenth century and did her best to live up to its principles. Tirzah Miller was born in 1843, and her unique memoir, published as _Desire and Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller's Intimate Memoir_, edited by Robert S. Fogarty (Indiana University Press), gives us a view of how some very strange sexual principles were practiced under Biblical inspiration. Miller's memoir was part of the Oneida archives, which were opened in 1993, and are fully printed here for the first time. There is useful editorial introduction and notes to prepare a reader for much of Miller's descriptions. Miller was the most important figure among the younger generation at Oneida, which had been founded by her uncle John N. Noyes, a prophet of "Perfectionism" which, among other things, entailed shared sexual relations in order to make jealousy impossible, and even planned breeding of humans to bring out the best traits in the young.

Tirzah Miller was involved in this sort of breeding, and writes about her participation. Her memoir tells about her doubts about Noyes, doubts which were always soothed by prayer so that she continued within the community. She was Noyes's favorite sexual partner, but had longings for others, and acted on them. Among the difficulties this caused was that there must not be any sort of "special love" analogous to marriage. Miller writes quite a bit about how she has to avoid this, and about her quarrels with Noyes, and about her liaisons with other community members.

Miller's memoir breaks off during the tumultuous end of the community. There had been raids on Oneida by ministers from the outside, shocked at its peculiar principles, but also Oneida was racked with internal dissention as members strove for more independence. Noyes declared that traditional Pauline marriage was now to be advised, and before the community broke up, Miller was able to abandon her worry that her love for the father of her third child was "too special;" she married him exclusively, and lived thereafter in apparent happiness. Her memoir is good reading to reveal a lively, thoughtful, and reverent woman, and throws welcome light on the innermost workings of a famous, failed social experiment.