American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans

by Eve LaPlante

Cast out by men who themselves had been outcasts in their native England, Hutchinson is a classic rebel’s rebel, revealing how quickly outsiders can become authoritarians. The members of the Massachusetts Court removed Anne because her moral certitude was too much like their own. Her views were a mirror for their rigidity.

“The record of [Anne Hutchinson’s] trial, if it is proper to dignify the procedure with that name,” Edmund Morgan observed, “is one of the few documents in which her words have been recorded, and it reveals a proud, brilliant woman put down by men who had judged her in advance. The purpose of the trial was doubtless to make her conviction seem to follow due process of law, but it might have been better for the reputation of her judges if they had simply banished her unheard.”

For a woman in colonial Massachusetts, to conform to the status quo was to be silent and passive. This was not an option for Anne Hutchinson.

Yet “we have seen the hazards—even terrible harm—that sometimes result from unquestioning acceptance of religious authority.”

The “problem of Anne Hutchinson,” Lang concludes, “is the problem of the public woman.”