SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The novel satirizes utopian social reform communities, including those that practiced ethical veg*ism.

Set at Harmony Hall, the former home of a utopian social reform community and now a “celebrated Water-cure Establishment at Foufouville, New Jersey” (7), Carleton's novel is a scathing satire of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and similar reform communities. The members of Harmony Hall call themselves “New Utopians” or “Harmonians” (7), possibly referencing Charles Lane and the Harmonious Industrial College at Ham, Surrey that inspired Fruitlands. The topic of veg*ism is broached early in the novel when Dr. Goodenough, the founder and leader, declares the community's “most important” rules:

“Our food shall consist of fruits and vegetables, with such animal products as are not obtained by a sacrifice of life.
“The flesh of creatures into whom the Almighty has breathed the breath of life is strictly prohibited.
“My mind is not yet clear on the subject of eggs. It is known that some of them contain the vital principle, while some do not. We will reserve the determination of this delicate question for future discussion.
“Of the advantages of a vegetable diet, I am a living example, for, although not above the average height, I weigh nearly three hundred pounds.
“The deleterious juice of the grape is tabooed.
“Likewise that vile weed, tobacco.
“Also those highly injurious drugs, tea and coffee.
“Perfect equality shall exist between us.
“All property shall be in common; and we shall depend for our subsistence on the labor of our hands.
“In regard to the marriage state, while I am not absolutely opposed to it, I believe that it should not be entered into without long deliberation, and then solely for the purpose of carrying out that sublime, that holy instinct of our nature, to increase and multiply; and not, as I fear is too often the case, merely from a desire to gratify the whims of the flesh. For this reason, husbands and wives will be kept rigidly separated from each other, excepting at such times as the laws of physiology teach us may be favorable to the attainment of the great end in view (9-10).

Women's rights and dress reform (the “Bloomer costume” are explicitly mentioned (13), as the original group of Harmonians includes two vocal women's rights activists, Elizabeth Strongitharm and Serena Minerva Griffin, along with Dr. Goodenough, his daughter Charity, her lover Leander Lovell, Elizabeth Strongitharm's unhappy partner Peewit, and Professor Malpest, the doctor's right hand (who turns out to be a fraudster). The small group of founders is depicted as utterly incompetent in all practical matters, while often blissfully ignorant of their own incompetence, from cooking to playing musical instruments, from farming to finances. A lofty-headed dreamer, Dr. Goodenough is unfit to run the community which falls apart almost as soon as it is established, the rapid decline further aided by increasing internal strife.

Partly due to human incompetence, partly due to personal motives and schemes, none of the community rules are ever properly respected. External help is soon brought in, meat is secretly prepared at night, and no regime of equally distributed work is implemented. The novel also contains several romance plots that generate mix ups, pretense, and deceit. The narrator at one point remarks that “the plot has begun to develop itself, all sorts of passions have been brought into play, and almost everybody has got at loggerheads with somebody else” (59). The rest of the novel tracks these complications using a variety of (fictional) documents, such as newspaper articles, letters, and journal entries. The latter in particular parodically emulate the gnomic style of writers like A. Bronson Alcott and, to a lesser extent, Ralph Waldo Emerson (represented as Ralpho Bunsby, whose unintelligible letter is read aloud at a women's rights convention). The novel also mocks associationalism, women's rights activism, Abolitionist oratory, idealist philosophy, art criticism, educated discourse, Temperance, veg*ism, polyamory, spiritualism, religious sectarianism and, in a metafictional twist, romance novels.

In the denouement, everything is resolved to everyone's satisfaction, Harmony Hall is disbanded, and Malpest duly punished (which means he has to marry Harmony Hall's Irish cook). Despite the “disastrous experience at Harmony Hall,” Dr. Goodenough is depicted as continuing “to cherish his theories of reform. But his ideas would seem to have undergone some modification, for he acknowledged that the time had not yet come for their practical development” (271). In a final turn, “Harmonianism” is described as “but a branch of the banyan-tree of Foufouism” (which appears to be a mashup of Fourierism and Confucianism), the origins of which are traced to China. The novel ends on this orientalist and racist note – negative stereotypes and derogatory fictional names like Fou-Fou, Ly-ing, Fi-fo-fum, Bum, Dr. Quak, Pee-pee, and Poo-poo abound in these final passages of the novel. But even this odd episode is ultimately a parody of social reform and, particularly, Transcendentalism, as Fou-Fou “in very ancient Chinese, is supposed to have meant 'transcendental wisdom'” (278), branding Transcendentalism (and social reform in general) as nothing but Eastern hogwash.