Oneida Community

I think that what Whitman and the Oneida Community have in common is that they both had radical views for the time and were not shy to express them. I believe the most obvious and important connection would be that of their views on equality. No one is more than an another and no one is less either. Whitman strongly believed this view and expressed it often in “Song of Myself” with regards to the status of women and slaves, etc. In the Oneida Community women held important positions in their businesses and they were not looked at as inferiors. The Oneida Community developed a different type of dress for women that was less restrictive as well. I think Whitman would have liked this, but probably would have taken up a notch and said to lose the clothes all together as he advocated stripping bare so that one could experience the “touch,” that one could “know” the world around him. The Oneida also had the not so popular idea that Jesus had already come back to earth in AD 70 so they had the view that we are not just waiting around here and suffering in our earthly existence as a pit stop on the way to heaven, but that heaven is on earth, that we must have pleasure in this life as well. Whitman definitely thought that experiencing pleasure, that loafing, were beneficial which did not fit with traditional Christian views.