Customer Reviews

The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (Landmark Law Cases & American Society)

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As an American Studies major in the late sixties, I understood the tale of Anne Hutchinson as the fleeting hint of a nascent feminism in the New World, a feminism that, almost 400 years later, took root and transformed American culture during my young adulthood. Michael Winship's The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson removes imposed meanings to reveal Anne Hutchinson as a quintessential puritan losing a passionate and destructive struggle to define piety and salvation. Because the dogmatic intolerance at the soul of of puritanism still colors the political discourse of our own day, Winship's scholarship, translated into readable and engaging prose, is a valuable contribution to our understanding of where we come from and where, without consciousness of our roots, we may be headed.

I was looking for a book about Anne, but ended up with a book about everyone else. I realize that to understand her, you need to know the situation and the culture etc., but this was too much. the last one quarter of the book is about Anne. It is very very dry and very boring and difficult to follow.

This book says Anne Hutchinson, the colonial leader, died "in August or September 1643." In fact Governor John Winthrop recorded in his journal on July 22, 1643, news of the Indian massacre in which Hutchinson had died. It's ironic that an author who describes Hutchinson as little more than a fiction of Winthrop's imagination didn't check this primary source. More important, this book claims Hutchinson's "personal influence proved ephemeral", and "most of her followers" and family "died with her" in the massacre. In fact, according to Winthrop and other contemporaries, she was survived by scores of followers in Rhode Island and Boston, five children, and many grandchildren. Her descendants include Presidents FDR, Bush, and Bush. Her lasting influence in Rhode Island contributed to the freedom of religion clause in the 1660s colonial constitution, which helped inspire the constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion throughout America.

This was a gift for a friend of mine, and she was very happy with the book.