American Jezebel

by Eve LaPlante
Category: "U.S. History - Cultural"
Pages:309
Year of Publication:2004
Date Added:03/22/2005
Date Read:04/29/2005
Notes:Subtitle: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
My Rating: 6

Reviews for American Jezebel

Review - American Jezebel

A biography of Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) written by a descendent. Anne was born in England, the daughter of Reverend Marbury. She married Will Hutchinson, a merchant. They attended services at the church of Sepratist John Cotton, and when he immigrated to Massachusetts, the Hutchinson’s followed.

Anne soon ran into trouble with John Winthrop. She claimed that he and the other civil-religious leaders of the colony were teaching a works-based salvation (which was true). She also said that they were unfit for the positions they filled. This was considered heresy by Winthrop, especially coming from a woman — and especially from a woman so far removed from her proper sphere as to teach classes in her home to both women and men.

Anne was a strict Calvinist who believed that people were saved without merit, without works and even without faith. It was solely Christ’s grace that saved the elect. She also believed that Christ somehow joined Himself to the believer physically upon salvation. She said she received information from the Holy Spirit that enabled her to detect who was saved and who wasn’t. She opposed the Puritan’s idea that they were a chosen people with a covenant from God.

Anne was brought up on civil charges and convicted. Her clever defense kept her judges from finding credible evidence against her, but they were determined to get rid of her. When she ended the trial by standing up and admitting to all the things her clever defense had failed to convict her of, they had their chance. She was held in house arrest for the winter, then excommunicated in a church trial.

Will had traveled to Rhode Island at the invitation of Roger Williams and set up a farm. Anne and most of her many children (she had 16 all together) walked there in six days the following spring (1638). Anne resumed her house classes.

In 1642,Will died. Massachusetts was threatening to take over the colony, so Anne took her family and moved to the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. They set up a house in a rural area and took no heed of the neighbors’ warnings about raiding Indians. In 1643, Siwanoy Indians attack the farm and kill Anne and all her children except Susan, who lived with the Indians from the ages of 9 to 18. The Siwanoy chief, Wampage, renamed himself Ann-Hoeck after his famous victim.

I’ve long wanted to read about Anne Hutchinson, and when Linda put this book on the Beyond 500 list, I was excited to read it. It was informative, but it was also dull. It was one of those books that was interesting enough while I was reading it but hard to pick back up once I put it down. The last chapters consisted of a long genealogy of Anne’s descendents up to and including the author herself. This part was, I’m sure, interesting to the author, but not to me. She then goes on to tell the further history of every person mentioned in the book, along with poems and trivia and any other fact she happened to come across.

Anne and the Puritan leaders were both impressed with their own importance; understandable, I guess, considering they were the pioneers of civilization on a new continent. But neither of them came across very well in the transcripts of the trials or in their subsequent statements. Still, Anne was right when she claimed the church leaders lacked the authority to regulate all areas of life, and she and Roger Williams were right to establish freedom of religious thought in Rhode Island.
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