Life After Community: the Communitarian Women Who Transformed Nineteenth-Century American Society
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UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Life After Community: The Communitarian Women who Transformed Nineteenth-Century American Society Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3wh39218 Author Hart, Amy Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ LIFE AFTER COMMUNITY: THE COMMUNITARIAN WOMEN WHO TRANSFORMED NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN SOCIETY A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY With an emphasis in FEMINIST STUDIES by Amy Hart June 2019 The Dissertation of Amy Hart is approved: ______________________________ Professor Marilyn Westerkamp, chair ______________________________ Professor Emeritus Jonathan Beecher ______________________________ Professor Emeritus Bettina Aptheker ______________________________ Professor Catherine Jones _______________________________ Lori Kletzer Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Table of Contents Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... iii Table of Illustrations................................................................................................... v Abstract ....................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: Intentional Communities and Social Change ................................... 1 Utopias, Communes, and Intentional Communities.................................................. 3 Charles Fourier .......................................................................................................... 9 Fourier’s American Followers ............................................................................. 14 Method and Theory in the Study of Intentional Communities................................ 17 Group Identity Created within Community ......................................................... 21 Reforming Society by Rejuvenating the Body and Soul ......................................... 25 Gender and Race in the Nineteenth Century ........................................................... 32 Chapter Breakdown and Reflection on the Sources ................................................ 40 A Note on Terms ..................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 1: Reverberations of Reform Activism: The Lasting Impact of Trumbull Phalanx ..................................................................................................... 56 Forming a Community: The Founding of Trumbull Phalanx ................................. 57 The Community’s Members: Angelique Le Petit Martin and Nathaniel Meeker ... 69 Life After Community: Social Reformers ............................................................... 81 The Next Generation: Lilly Martin Spencer’s Social Activism Through Art ......... 98 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 112 Chapter 2: Demonstrating Racial Diversity within Community: The Northampton Association of Education and Industry ........................................ 114 A Fourierist Experiment? ...................................................................................... 116 Life at the Northampton Association: Experiences Filtered Through the Lens of Gender and Race ................................................................................................... 123 Everyday Life: Rituals and Religions ................................................................... 134 Truth’s Sojourn ..................................................................................................... 137 Reformers Meet ..................................................................................................... 143 The End of a Community, Continuation of a Movement ...................................... 149 The Outcomes of Community ............................................................................... 153 iii Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 161 Chapter 3: Contested Community: The Wisconsin Phalanx and the Western Frontier .................................................................................................................... 164 Founding a Community on Another’s Land ......................................................... 168 A More Perfect Community .................................................................................. 174 Race, Religion, and Ritual in Community ............................................................ 181 Gendered Perspectives .......................................................................................... 189 Reformers and the State ........................................................................................ 202 Life in Ripon and Beyond ..................................................................................... 208 Chapter 4: Brook Farm: Two Women, Two Distinct Paths After Community 225 From Anti-Sectarian to Christian Socialism ......................................................... 230 The Transcendentalists of Brook Farm ................................................................. 238 Georgiana Bruce .................................................................................................... 253 Anna Blackwell ..................................................................................................... 272 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 284 Fourierist Futures: The Lasting Impact of the Fourierist Communities in the 1850s and Beyond .................................................................................................... 288 Founding the Republican Party ............................................................................. 290 Social Movements ................................................................................................. 294 Religious Reform .................................................................................................. 301 Health Reform ....................................................................................................... 305 Conclusion: The Webs of Reform ......................................................................... 309 Appendix 1: Timeline of Northampton Association Abolitionists ...................... 316 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 317 Archival Collections:............................................................................................. 317 Primary Sources .................................................................................................... 318 Newspapers ........................................................................................................ 318 Books/ collections.............................................................................................. 319 Secondary Sources: ............................................................................................... 322 iv Table of Illustrations Figure 1: “Self Portrait,” Lilly Martin Spencer, ca. 1840. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection, H 24656……………………….………………………..…….106 Figure 2: “Shake Hands?” Lilly Martin Spencer, 1854. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection, H 24655…………………………………………………..…….….….107 Figure 3: “Peeling Onions,” Lilly Martin Spencer, ca. 1852. Courtesy of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 88.6…………..……………108 v Abstract Life After Community: The Communitarian Women Who Transformed Nineteenth-Century American Society Amy Hart This dissertation examines the lives of women who joined Fourierist intentional communities across the United States throughout the 1840s, highlighting the ways they used their experiences in the communal environment as a launching point to engage in other social reform movements of the period including the women’s rights and abolitionist movements. This dissertation utilizes textual analysis of letters, journals, meeting minutes, and newspaper articles among other written media in order to analyze the experiences of these women during their time in the communal setting and afterward. Particular attention is paid to the religious practices explored within the Fourierist communities and the rituals created within the group as a means of creating social bonds between members that lasted beyond the existence of the communities themselves. The dissertation contends that these female communitarians used the social connections and personal experiences cultivated within intentional communities to engage with other social reform movements and even help shape the ideological underpinnings of those movements. Due to the role of female communitarians in shaping and contributing to various nineteenth-century social reform movements, the dissertation contends that intentional communities should be analyzed as a critical part of the history of social movements in the United States. vi Note on previously-published materials: Part of this dissertation has been published in the journal Nova Religio under the title: “All is Harmony in That Department”: Religious Expressions