Desire & Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller's Intimate Memoir

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

Written between 1867 and 1879, this memoir by the most prominent woman of the younger generation at the Oneida Community is the first that deals explicitly and openly with the sexual conflicts there. It chronicles Tirzah Miller's social and sexual life, including her relations with her uncle and lover, founder of the colony John H. Noyes, and her participation in the eugenics experiment Noyes dubbed ""stirpiculture"". Miller, a sensitive observer of the internal life at this celebrated communal family, details the shifting political forces within the community just before its breakup in 1880. Her memoir is full of intimate conversations with John H. Noyes about issues and personalities, her love affairs, her doubts about communism, her love of music, and her anguish over the loss of two partners. Throughout the account she is torn between her desire for romance and her duty to the community. The memoir, which begins when she is 20 and ends when she is 36, sheds light on several issues that are central to understanding this daring experiment in communal living and social engineering.

Genres: Religion, Memoir, History, Nonfiction

204 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Elizabeth Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was part of my research for my novel-in-progress, Perfecting Eden, which is a fictional account of the lives of my ancestors in the Oneida Community. I was so taken with Tirzah that she became one of the three women at the center of my novel. This book offers a fascinating inside view of Oneida.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edited in 2000. Fogarty (now deceased) was fortunate to have had access to Tirzah Miller's work. I couldn't find out how this came to be. I looked in this volume's preface, acknowledgements and introduction. He apparently was a capable editor, and I enjoyed reading his 40 or so pages of his commentary, including footnotes. I conclude that the collection librarians at Syracuse University make the materials available to anyone, but I'm not sure.

But, Fogarty erred when he wrote of the burning of archival material by Oneidans in "the 1920s" when it happened instead in 1947. Unless there were two large, similar events. Another phrase jumped at me from the page (p. 10): "Tirzah...felt justifed ..to accept several men as her sexual partners and to gratify their needs..." Ummm. Is that why she had sex, to gratify *their* needs? Did Professor Fogarty not read her diary entries? And there were a lot more than several.

But I am still confused - by statements from several other sources - as to whether women were allowed to initiate sex, or instead were relegated only to saying yes or no - the passive role. (In the mid-19th century, being able to say no was already a big improvement over typical marriage of the day.)

Even in this document, we read of Tirzah's confusion about whether she could refuse, after she had become tired and benumbed by so much "activity." The cult leader, who was fond of her and was simultaneously her uncle, lover, mentor and spiritual guide (yes, ick) reassured her that she should not accept so many invitations, if they sapped her. But why did she already not know this? She was raised in the cult. And I suspect, as some were "more equal" than others (thanks, Orwell), that he may have given her dispensation that other women were not. She was "connected."

The more interesting part of this volume, and the larger part, is the diary itself. (It wasn't a memoir.) What I find most intriguing is the relative lack of attention paid to the children. Yes, we know that kids were sent from their birth mothers to a group setting at the age of 1-1/2 or 2 years of age. Tirzah gave birth to 3 kids, about 4 years apart. (and a fourth kid after the end of the diary) But compared to other things that she is compelled to write about, her children show up seldom. Why?

I would have preferred a more feminist analysis of these diary entries. The Oneida Community is held up as an experiment that was so progressive for women. It certainly was, *for its time.* But in what ways did it succeed or fail to show what's possible for women, for men, for children?

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

tirzah was an interesting person, i was definitely rooting for her & also feeling sorry for her throughout. she had so much drama in her life that seemed to be instigated by her uncle ... but on the other hand it might have been a better life than living in a normal community at that time, she got to participate in governance and really struggle with these ideals and putting them into practice and making the community work.... i just wish she hadn't been pushed around so much and laid with all these guilt trips about what she was doing. it really did seem at times that she would think these totally reasonable things, that went along with the purported ideals of the community, & then talk to the uncle and totally change her mind. frustrating. and it was frustrating that because it was a personal diary it was hard to follow what was going on sometimes, because she didn't explain certain things, not expecting to have a posthumous audience.

[Nora Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to find out why the utopian Oneida Community fell apart quickly in the late 1870's, Tirzah Miller's diary poignantly describes her inner struggles as a well-educated woman whose instincts about love, motherhood, religion, and life decisions were sabotaged by her uncle, Oneida's autocratic leader John Humphrey Noyes. This was painful to read. Had I been in Tirzah's place, I would have been expelled from the Community.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly interesting firsthand account of life in the utopian Oneida Community. Gives a good sense of what members of the community experienced, as well as how a nineteenth-century American woman experienced religion and romantic relationships.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

These people (Oneida Community) were really strange!

[Karen]

Oneida Community is the first that deals explicitly and openly with the sexual conflicts there.