A Froward Woman Beloved of God

This chapter argues the importance of gender culture in seventeenth-century spirituality and gender politics in the response of the magistrates to Hutchinson in particular, and strong religious women in general. The chapter begins with a reconsideration of the patriarchal nature of this society and the political and social threats represented by nonconforming women. The chapter returns to witchcraft and midwifery in connection with conversion mysticism: three female identities very similar in themselves and, apparently, equally threatening. Finally, the chapter returns to the beginning point: the growing Puritan concentration upon rational religion in comparison with the experiential, spirit mysticism that characterized the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In its reconstruction of a female religiosity, the argument connects the historically constructed nature of women with the Puritan construction of a masculine God and a feminine soul, and the sexual nature of Puritan spirituality.

Epilogue

This chapter briefly considers the persistence of Anne Hutchinson as a historical figure, remembered but frequently misunderstood, across the centuries. Notes the limited sources and chronicles the changing perceptions of her that accompanied the changing viewpoints of Puritan New England. For many, the treatment of Hutchinson became a marker for society’s understanding of the character of Puritans. After changing perceptions of her as heretic and egotistical sinner, nuisance, brilliant woman oppressed and misunderstood, transformative philosopher, and advocate for women’s rights that accompanied.

Helpmeets, Mothers, and Midwives among the Patriarchs

This chapter reviews old and New England society and culture, emphasizing the patriarchy that governed women’s lives. Following a general discussion of the model of household structure, the chapter addresses the social, legal, and political realities of women’s lives along with the cultural construction of women, biologically, socially, and intellectually. The chapter explores the ideological constructions of gender from, as far as possible, both a male and female perspective. The chapter also discusses the distinct women’s community, including not only women’s labor and friendship networks, but also the centrality of the reproductive community: woman as healer, midwife, and reproducer. Throughout, the chapter places the control exercised through law, custom, and prescription against the power women discovered within the female community.

Gracious Disciples and Frightened Magistrates

This chapter begins with the Quakers in England, the appeal of the Quaker movement in New England, including Hutchinson's followers, and the threat that Quakers posed to the New England magistracy. It examines Hutchinson’s followers in some detail, but the Quaker/ Magistrate conflict is central to the chapter. The response of the governors and clerics mirrored so completely the official responses to the Hutchinsonians that the Quaker crisis becomes a venue through which the same social, political, and ideological issues are encountered and resolved. This is less a second-generation event than the last gasp of the founding generation.

Sectarian Mysticism and Spiritual Power

This chapter explores the religious culture of Puritanism. Beginning with the amorphous, pluralistic character of early English dissenters, the chapter discusses the problem of establishing orthodoxy in Massachusetts, particularly the issues central to the Hutchinsonian crisis: sanctification as evidence of election, the conversion experience as evidence, and preparationism. From here the chapter considers the gendering of Puritan religiosity through the privileging of formal education and the rationalist preparation for grace and examines the construction of female spirituality as grounded in biology. The perceptions of woman as weak and woman as evil are developed in great detail. The chapter then places Puritan theologians’ understanding of women within a reconsideration of Puritans’ construction of sin, salvation, and election. It returns to conversion as a mystical experience available to all regardless of rank or gender, thus fostering a radical egalitarianism.

Prophesying Women and the Gifts of the Spirit

This chapter delineates in greater detail the radical potential of this Puritan spirituality and the profound appeal of radical sectaries to women. This includes the deep respect earned by female partisans, from the Henrician martyr Anne Askew to the centrality of women in the Quaker movement. Along this same trajectory, the mystical side of this spirituality is tracked from the followers of Henrik Niclaes through to the sectarians of the 1640s and 1650s. Data for this chapter comes from material produced by both proponents and detractors of the sectaries. The chapter includes the stories of many individual women and their theologies as well as sectarian communities, essentially fleshing out the promise of the final pages of chapter four.

Introduction

Underscores the focus upon Anne Hutchinson, not ministers and magistrates, and lays out kay scholarship and the problems driving this study. Acknowledges scholarship upon sexual politics and patriarchal oppression, but turns attention to the questions: Hutchinson’s religious background, her belief that she had received revelations from God, and her charismatic leadership in Boston. The essay identifies scope of study, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and transatlantic and provides a foreshadowing of the scholarship on Puritans as dissenters, Puritan radicalism and the appeal to women, and the transformation of New England’s religious culture.

Prologue

This chapter chronicles Anne Hutchinson’s Boston career: her arrival, family’s status, her rise to prominence, and her fall. The chapter establishes her charismatic leadership, accompanied by the growing divisions in the church and colony, ending with her trials and final excommunication. The narrative focuses upon Hutchinson with references to her family and the Hutchinsonian disciples as needed to connect developments. Although this first chapter is primarily descriptive, it incorporates a detailed, critical analysis of the General Court and church trial transcripts, comparing these texts with the account provided by Governor John Winthrop. The analysis challenges common historians’ misreading of the evidence and poses questions to be considered in the remaining chapters.

The Puritan Experiment

This chapter describes the social and political background of English Puritanism and New England’s colonization, 1590–1645, through the lens of Hutchinson’s life and experience. It begins with Puritan politics in England (partly through the problematic career of Hutchinson’s father Francis Marbury), rising political and religious discontent, and the decision of many to emigrate. The chapter then explores the first fifteen years of Massachusetts’s history, emphasizing Winthrop’s personal political battles, church politics, and the colony's social divisions. The chapter analyzes this socio/economic/political world as a world of men, acknowledging that much of the Hutchinsonian crisis can be seen as a power battle among men. However, in this world Hutchinson played a dominant “male” role, faction leader, and while many have argued that she was treated like any male disrupter, in fact she was not. The chapter ends with the attacks upon her usurpation.