Customer Reviews

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

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I'm mystified by the rave reviews here. Hutchinson is indeed a fascinating figure, but LaPlante's oddly-arranged book obscures more than it illuminates. LaPlante presents Hutchinson as a proto-feminist rather than a zealous religious dissident. Although LaPlante acknowledges that Hutchinson exhibited as much moral certitude as her prosecutors -- she believed, for example, that she could personally identify those chosen for salvation by God -- most of the book either downplays the significance of theological dispute in favor of gender politics (suggesting, e.g., that John Winthrop was principally motivated by a desire to keep women in their place), or twists itself into knots trying to recast arch-Calvinist Antinomianism as a progressive movement. Incredibly, there is no serious discussion of theology until 50 pages into the book.

Gender is naturally central to this story. After all, its protagonist is a woman in seventeenth century Boston who brazenly challenged the city's Cambridge-educated male elite. But the reason for Hutchinson's banishment -- like that of the more influential and sophisticated Roger Williams a few years earlier -- was theological, and the faith of Hutchinson and her slippery mentor John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) was no more rational and no less fanatical than that of John Winthrop, whose conciliatory tendencies actually marked him as a rather moderate fellow by Puritan standards. Unlike Williams, whose radical separatism led him to become one of the first notable advocates of religious freedom, Hutchinson was primarily concerned not with political liberty but with denouncing those who she believed to be under a "covenant of works." This category included all the ministers in Massachusetts except for Cotton and her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright.

LaPlante does not seem to be an expert on Puritan New England, and she has trouble with theology. To give one example, she employs "orthodox" as a general term of abuse -- using it at one point to describe the Puritans' Anglican opponents in England, and at others to describe the Puritan leadership in Boston. Like Howard Zinn, who blurbs the book, she seems to view underdog status as an indication of righteousness. A reader who is more interested in ideas than identity politics will note that Hutchinson's Antinomian theology was no more enlightened than that of her "orthodox" enemies; she was ahead of her time only in her belief that women are as able to interpret scripture as men (no small matter), and in her relatively humane views regarding Native Americans (which she shared with Williams and Samuel Sewall, among others).

Of course, historical figures should not be chastised for every transgression against contemporary sensibilities. But as someone with no dog in the fight between the varieties of seventeenth century English Protestantism, I was irritated by LaPlante's verbal gymnastics on behalf of her ancestor -- especially after she declares in the intro that her work will avoid the "exaltation" found elsewhere. While the reader gets some sense of Hutchinson's admirable qualities, including her sparkling intelligence and stubborn bravery, critical analysis is limited to the occasional throw-away sentence, and the book contains little psychological insight. LaPlante has thus transformed a strange charismatic figure into a cardboard cutout. LaPlante is not, thankfully, the sort of historian who simply dismisses all Puritans as benighted and backwards, but she makes an equally serious mistake in attempting to transform a proud, complex, and extraordinarily devout woman into a digestible hero for contemporary readers.

Three final points: (1) LaPlante has a habit of substituting her own language for that of her subjects, making it hard to determine who is saying what. Quotes sometimes end abruptly, replaced by LaPlante's paraphrasing. I suspected at several points that her summaries were generous to Hutchinson (facilitating Hutchinson's transformation into a Puritan Susan B. Anthony), and less than charitable to her prosecutors. The book is at its best when LaPlante isn't speaking at all, since her commentary adds little to the natural drama. (2) The general tenor of the book is hagiographic. Many of the quotes that LaPlante culls from other histories of the era seem to have been included only because they are complimentary of Hutchinson. LaPlante defends her subject in an almost lawerly fashion, informing us, for example, that "Harvard University" credits Hutchinson with its founding (in fact, one Harvard professor!), and that Hutchinson founded Rhode Island (only technically true, since Williams had established Providence Plantations a year earlier). These are minor details, but combined with the suspicious paraphrasing, they undermined my trust in the author's intentions. An honest defense of Hutchinson would have been fine, but this book seems to lionize its subject using sleight of hand. (3) I learned some things from "American Jezebel" that I had not found in other books on this period. Particularly interesting were LaPlante's discussions of Lincolnshire and Boston, England.

For better books on pre-Revolutionary New England, I recommend Philbrick's Mayflower, Morgan's Puritan Dilemma (on Winthrop), Gaustad's Roger Williams, Lepore's The Name of War (flawed, but erudite and beautifully written), and Richard Francis' wonderful book on Samuel Sewall. American Jezebel isn't worthless, and may be a decent intro to this subject for younger readers, but it would be unfortunate if anyone picked up their whole education on the Puritans here -- as many of the other Amazon reviewers seem to have done.

As Founder of "The Friends of Anne Hutchinson" on Aquidneck Island (Newport,Portsmouth, Rhode Island)I read "American Jezebel"with the knowledge that most of what we know about Anne Hutchinson were first or second-hand accounts from the men she disturbed and quarreled with. What more could the author glean about this woman who dared to challenge Puritan Boston?

On Anne Hutchinson Day (April 27,an annual gathering at Founders' Brook Park in Portsmouth RI, the settlement she co-founded) Our "Friends" group asks -where is the history of the women who came here in 1638? Even their names seem erased. Our mission is to find, collect and record the lost history of women who left Puritan Boston and followed Anne Hutchinson to this Island as wives, sisters, in-laws or servants. Incredibly, 366 years later, many proud descendants are found here with stories to tell of Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer(a Quaker martyr)and the women Hutchinsonians. (14 names to date and adding) Many in our group have read everything we can on the life of Anne Hutchinson and her era. We believe this new book is an important addition to the few good, older books that are available on her.

Eve LaPlante's "American Jezebel" delivers an account that throws us into the action and weaves us carefully into Hutchinson's world in England, Boston-old world and new- Pocasset(Portsmouth RI) and New York with new detail. Finally an author has given us a meticulously-researched guided tour with maps to the places she lived. I know LaPlante did it well because some of us attempted to research the same areas, including her birthplace in Alford, Lincolnshire England. LaPlante did it right and thoroughly. She seemed to know the interest out there. In this book the early 1600's come alive with the details we want to hear: describing the locales, the living habits and the obsession with religion. Thank you, LaPlante,for clarifying the long civic and church trials of Anne Hutchinson, making them lively and readable for a change.

The book provides us with a unique account of how a feisty, literate mother of 16 children leaves the comforts of low-gentry English life, moves to the edge of a wild continent, works as a midwife and counselor to women and evolves into a charismatic spiritual leader who dares to challenge the Boston Magistrates. There is much more after that. I will never again pass "split rock" off the Hutchinson Freeway on the way to Manhattan without a thought to Susan Hutchinson, the seven-year old who hid and waited..that's for the reader to continue.

"American Jezebel" is the book a filmmaker should read

signed Valerie Debrule, Founder,The Friends of Anne Hutchinson

AMERICAN JEZEBEL is an excellent work, giving us a glimpse into the life of an extraordinary woman. In a world nearly four hundred years ago, that continues to echo into our own, the life of Anne Hutchinson has much to teach us still about women, religion, government and faith.

Highly readable and meticulously researched, I especially appreciated the maps and descriptions of the world Hutchinson lived in and also the details on how to find the footprints of her world in ours today.

A must for anyone interested in feminist scholarship, American history or religion.

As America faces continuing constitutional questions over such matters as the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings and the daily pledging by children to acknowledge a God over their nation, it is good to be reminded that there has never been religious unanimity in our country, not even in its beginnings as a religious haven for the Puritans. It was Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan immigrant, who caused the first political (and necessarily religious) crisis in the colonies, and her story is told in detail in _American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans_ (HarperSanFrancisco) by Eve LaPlante. It is a stirring story of conscience and faith, and a refusal to buckle under to men and to the overwhelming religious majority. Hutchinson was truly a hero, and in many ways a founding mother of the republic that would be born more than a century after her death.

Hutchinson, wife to a prosperous tradesman who plays little role in her story, immigrated to the Puritan Boston, and within two years caused controversy by holding women's meetings to discuss the weekly Bible reading and the most recent sermon they had heard. LaPlante is very good at describing the sources of Hutchinson's heresy, although Christian churches are quite different now and the tempest then seems very much one in an ancient teapot. The actual heresy matters little; what troubled Governor Winthrop and his fellow leaders was that she was acquiring a following, and that she threatened the status quo by the emphasis on individual conscience. (It was Winthrop who labeled her "American Jezebel;" it is incorrect to say the book has a misleading title since this is how she was known.) Thus in 1637 she was put before a colonial court (which will remind readers of the far more famous ones that condemned the witches in Salem a half century later) to pressure her to recant her heresies. Astonishingly, she conducted herself with such self-confidence (and she was in her sixteenth pregnancy at the time) that she won an acquittal, but she refused to go home quietly. Instead, she started lecturing her accusers, giving them more ammunition.

Her profession of direct revelations from God was the basis of a second trial; it really isn't possible to think that such a gathering of men were going to let her go for long. She was excommunicated and banished in 1638. In the unforgiving words of one of her accusers, in Christ's name "... I do deliver you up to Satan, that you may learn no more to blaspheme, to seduce, and to lie!" Thirty families voluntarily went with her in banishment to the new settlement Rhode Island. There they drafted the Portsmouth Compact, which said that "no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question on matters of religion - so long as he keeps the peace." This revolutionary and tolerant idea is the direct ancestor of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Hutchinson has also been given backhanded credit for the founding of Harvard College; her heresy inspired the colony to educate ministers who would not allow such sedition. She was to move on to New Amsterdam for further removal from English control, where in 1643 she was killed by Indians; an irony, for she was generous and tolerant to all tribesmen. She has been lauded as a feminist hero, but LaPlante's detailed and instructive biography makes clear that she was more than that. Hutchinson steadfastly refused to keep quiet, refused to have religious ideas imposed upon her, and refused to countenance religious imposition of any type on anyone, and thus she is a hero to anyone who cherishes individual freedom.

Anne Hutchinson was a courageous woman, for standing up for her beliefs and to men. Unfortunately, she was herself a religious fanatic, with perhaps more tolerance than some - perhaps - but with religious beliefs that in fact on the issue of "justification by works" at least were more extreme that that of her accusers. She did not protest or speak out against puritanical laws - she apparently believed laws against heretics were necessary - she merely wanted to define heretic.

Nevertheless, a true heroine for bravery if not for her beliefs. The author, unfortunately, writes a thin book, with many an error on matters of religion, Puritan life, law and customs. With nowhere near enough information about Hutchinson to make a 288 page book, other than records of the proceedings, she dwells at length on them, apparently not understanding the arguments well herself. She also goes on interminably about the details of the altars, tombs, rood screens, etc. etc. of churches in England with only the most tangential relationship to Anne's life, not to mention the insufferably long episode of the author trying to locate the split rock. A book by a non-descendant hopefully would have been able to find more on-point material to fill the almost 300 pages.

A great portrait of the colonial rebel Anne Hutchinson
that resonates with issues faced by women today,
starting with how to balance home life and work.
AMERICAN JEZEBEL also gives us a vivid depiction of
17th century Puritan life in Elizabethan England and
Massachusetts. The book opens with Hutchinson's trial
for heresy, which is beautifully described and
explained, as a result of which she was banished from
Boston and went on to found the colony of Rhode
Island! This book shows how extraordinary Anne
Hutchinson was and that, as the first PERSON in
America to espouse religious freedom and individual
rights, she should be considered our founding mother.
What a character! She raised 15 kids, was a midwife,
AND could debate theology with the founders of Harvard
College and make them look foolish (while pregnant for
the 16th time)! The maps of 17th century Boston,
Portsmouth, Rhode Island, the Bronx, and Lincolnshire,
England alone, along with Laplante's excellent guide
to touring these sites of Hutchinson's life, are worth
the price of the book.

AMERICAN JEZEBEL is a compelling and fast-paced work that offers a colorful close-up on life in colonial America. Eve LaPlante has masterfully created a detailed sense of place and manners in early New England, allowing us to fully engage in the Puritan world of the confident, literate, ever-pregnant and heroic Anne Hutchinson.

I have to ask... whose idea was it all these years to hide the story of Anne Hutchinson from the grammar and high school American history student? Anne's biography of conscience and faith is very important and should be celebrated in our schools. The image of Anne, articulate and self-assured, standing up to the array of 40 male judges should be as ingrained as the image of honest Abe Lincoln walking back several miles to a store when he noticed he'd been given one penny too much in change.

Read this book. Tell others to read it. And let's get Anne Hutchinson into the school curriculum in the US. LaPlante has done a great service here, so effectively shedding light on Hutchinson's struggle for women's rights and freedom of expression, as well as her outspoken defense of the natives' rights. AMERICAN JEZEBEL of the 1600s has the ring of a modern feminist story, as the issues Hutchinson faced are not so different from issues we face today. Anne Hutchinson's vision, courage and accomplishments are astonishing. I've been thoroughly captured by this book.

In Puritan Massachusetts, there were fewer rights than today. One of the rights that was lacking was freedom of religious belief. The Puritans were trying instead to create the New Jerusalem where all would follow the same interpretation of Christianity. But under the surface, there were disagreements . . . especially between John Cotton and the other ministers. But Cotton usually tried to smooth over those differences when confronted with them, and then went back to preaching his true beliefs. Anne Hutchinson was a fond adherent of Cotton's ideas, but there was no such leeway for her teachings.

American Jezebel focuses on the meetings at which the Massachusetts General Court examined Anne Hutchinson and found her to deserve banishment from the colony, and the subsequent meetings in which her church examined whether she was to be excluded as well. The material is filled with dialogue and shrewd guesses about what the speakers may have been thinking. Ms. LaPlante also makes interesting comments about the background of these confrontations.

It's hard to imagine making theological arguments quite this dramatic, but much was at stake in the minds and hearts of the accusers and the accused. Yet the material works well.

Ms. LaPlante also does a remarkable job of describing the backgrounds of the key players, the religious disputes, and how the circumstances then compare to those today. There's even a fine section in the end about how you can visit many of the sites described in the book.

Ms. LaPlante brings a lot of love and care to this subject. Perhaps that is influenced by being a descendent of Anne Hutchinson, as are three U.S. Presidents (FDR and the two George Bushes).

The main drawback of the book is that much of the theological debate is about issues that you may not care much about, the role of whether those who are saved are preordained by God to be in the Elect . . . or whether good works can earn salvation. Many Protestant beliefs today are noticeably different from either of these views. I would have enjoyed the book more if there had been a little less in this area.

A nice surprise in the book was the history of Anne Hutchinson's father who preceded her in taking on bold views that were not sanctioned by the church's hierarchy.

I also enjoyed the discussion of what a midwife did in those days, and how people interpreted miscarriages and malformed fetuses.

Naturally, this book will appeal most to anyone who loves to cheer for the underdog and those whose rights have been ignored. In the Puritan times, women were to be seen and not heard for the most part. Anne Hutchinson's comments on sermons and discussions of the Bible drew a large number of people to her, and this role created a challenge to the male-dominated views of the church leaders. To some extent, her trials were a reflection of discomfort with her wit and courage . . . rather than just what she said. From the dialogues though, it's clear that she had many opportunities to play the meek woman and walk away. But she stood by her convictions and was willing to bear the consequences. That's even more remarkable when you consider that she was 46 and in her 16th and very troubled pregnancy as these meetings occurred. After a walk of 10 miles to the first meeting, she was expected to stand all day while the men were judging her sat.

Her banishment also had a large impact on the development of religious freedom as her family and many of her followers left to develop another part of Rhode Island, where religious freedom was permitted. While there, she was still harassed by the Boston ministers, and after her husband's death she moved on to New York where she died in an attack by a local tribe.

This biography written by a decendent of Ann Hutchinson is tremendous. Ann Hutchinson is an American woman that little has been written about and should be taught in all schools so that young girls and boys will know this part of our American history and not just think of the Puritans being the ones who brought us Thanksgiving. The Puritans were a male controlled religion who were as cruel as the religious leaders they fled England from! Eve LaPlante, the author has done her research well. I have never been to Boston or Rhode Island and now am hoping to go someday to trace a portion of our history. Martha Jo Billy

I'm usually not a fan of non-fiction, especially biographies, but this was great! It was so interesting to dive into Anne Hutchinson's life and learn about the way she impacted American History. The authors did an excellent job of making her story gripping to the point that it didn't feel like a typical biography. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes biographies or needs to read one for an assignment.