Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities: Nineteenth-Century America

By Raymond Lee Muncy

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140218602
• ISBN13: 9780140218602
• Release Date: June 1974
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

FASCINATING STUDY OF "RELATIONSHIP" PATTERNS IN UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES

Raymond Lee Muncy was a professor of history when he wrote this book in 1973. Muncy states that Utopian John Humphrey Noyes' question, "Has any attempt at close association ever succeeded, which took marriage into it substantially as it exists in ordinary society?" challenged him "to examine the literature and records of the major utopian communities of the nineteenth century in America in an effort to determine if communal societies could indeed exist over an extended period while maintaining the nuclear family." Muncy studies the Shakers, the Rappites, the Fourierites, Zoarites, Jansonists, Oneida, New Harmony, the Mormons, and other groups in fourteen thematically-oriented chapters (e.g., "They Neither Marry Nor are Given in Marriage"; "Celestial Marriage: An Experiment in Polygamy"; "Unusual Sexual Practices, Fact and Rumor"; "Women's Rights in Utopian Communities"). Muncy's focus allows him to unearth facts not often brought out in such surveys; e.g., Shaker founder Ann Lee "scolded her own mother for 'carnal acts of indulgence' in the marriage bed"; George Rapp "believed that Jesus was perfect and did not possess a physical sex organ"; "There had been one brief experiment in polygyny among (Anabaptists) Christians during the sixteenth century"; "Rarely did the Oneida male spend the entire night with a lady, as this might lead to an exclusive attachment, the worst of all Oneida sins." This specialized book, though older, is still of great interest to those interested in utopian societies, intentional communities, communes, and similar experiments in living.