On
page 244 we have an excerpt from John Winthrop who wrote after hearing
of the horrible scalping death of Anne Hutchinson and her children in
1643: “This American Jezebel kept her strength and reputation, even
among the people of God, till the hand of civil justice laid hold on
her... and now in this last act... such was the presence and blessing of
God in his own Ordinance, that this subtlety of Satan was discovered to
her utter shame and confusion, and to the setting at liberty of many
godly hearts that had been captivated by her to that day... God giving
her up since the sentence of excommunication to that hardness of heart
as she is not affected with any remorse... and fears not the vengeance
of God which she lies under...”The excommunication refers to the 1637 trial in which Mrs. Hutchinson, a married woman with twelve living children, and pregnant at the time of the trial, was found to be a heretic and banished from Massachusetts, the colony over which Mr. Winthrop ruled as governor, and the civil court over which he presided. That’s pretty much what this book is about: the struggle between a man in authority and a woman oppressed by same for her views. Not only was she found guilty by the state but also by the church. A subsequent church trial found her guilty of the same crimes. She was judged heretical by the same Puritans that fled from English Law because they were judged heretical and were oppressed by same for their views. The author seems to find fault with this.
Anne’s husband had come to America to start a new life with the Puritans, according to the ideas of church/state as envisioned by the congregationalists. But Anne was no Puritan by their standards. Women were to raise children and take instruction from their husbands. Instead, her husband took instructions from her, as well as a good many other men of the colony. This was totally against the freedoms being fought for by the founding fathers. She held her own conventicles, which I leave to the reader to look up in the dictionary. She had her own interpretations of the Scriptures in which she was well-versed, and her differences were discussed at the trial. Much of this consisted of what we would consider today as hair-splitting. She wasn’t really on trial for any of her peculiarities so much as for her main heresy: she saw herself fit to teach, and that to men.
So out she must go. She was a free-thinking spirit-filled impudent female, which was not allowed by the early American church. It was O.K. to be a man and impudent, as long as you had a college degree and went along with John Winthrop or whoever happened to be in control at the moment. She was booted out of Boston, found refuge in Rhode Island for four years, lost her supportive husband, then wandered with seven of her children to the settlement we now call New York (was New Amsterdam). The Dutch warned her about the Indian raid that was coming, but she refused to evacuate as did the rest of the village, preferring to trust in her love. And that’s how she came to be scalped.
John Winthrop and the rest of the men who saw her as a threat to the purity and sweetness of the new colony saw her nasty death as God’s justice. However, time has been forgiving if not forgetful and Michael Dukakis, while governor of Massachusetts, pardoned her in 1987.
American Jezebel is written by a liberated woman. She is a direct descendant of Anne Hutchinson, and interestingly, her name is Eve. She says that John Winthrop derided Anne as “the instrument of Satan,” the new Eve, and the “enemy of the chosen people” (pg. xvii). The author does not put ‘the new Eve’ in quotes, so it seems it is she who makes Eve the enemy, not John Winthrop himself. She continues in the paranoid mode so common among today’s liberated women: “A woman who wielded public power in a culture suspicious of such power, she exemplifies why there are so few women, even today, in American politics, and why no woman has attained the presidency.” Then immediately, Eve LaPlante claims to have written a ‘balanced portrait’ of Anne (pg xix).
And so the author subtly waves the flag over Anne’s head while claiming not to. And she can’t help projecting her paranoia in the form of attacking the ‘culture suspicious’ of women’s power. It is plain after reading the details that the hypocrites (men) are on one side and Anne on the other, and this is her ‘balanced’ approach. She portrays the men as cold, clinical, ruthless and stark religionists, while the women are their chattel (as well as mothers who have to deal with warm flesh and blood). She portrays Ms. Hutchinson as a good role model for women hoping to break free from this tyranny. We’ve all heard this before (please see my book review of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique). The difference between Anne and Eve is that one can sit comfortably in her leather chair before a computer and write a biography of praise; the other had to stand in front of a tribunal in fear of her life. And in this women can rejoice: that they are now protected from these forefathers who framed our government. Let freedom ring! And so Eve handed the apple to her husband...
As the aforementioned Michael Dukakis puts it in his plug for the book, “Once again America faces the same question that the Bay Colony faced: liberty versus security [referring to 911?]. Let’s hope that the lessons of Anne Hutchinson’s banishment are not lost on those entrusted with ensuring that we are both strong and free.” What in the world is he talking about? Is he saying that women’s liberation from the oppression of the man has something in common with terrorism and national security? Yes, that’s it. He is part of that culture that is maturing into our governors, who can’t distinguish apples from atom bombs. Maybe he is a descendent of Ms. Hutchinson also.
The book is rather lengthy in its drawn-out descriptions of geography, weather, politics, economics, religion, customs, etc. but, this is commendable if we are trying to establish a place for Anne Hutchinson in the history of the world. I found the alternating chronology a little dizzying, as Eve went from the present to the past, jamming parenthetical sentences, paragraphs and chapters into the narrative flow. However, I must praise Ms. LaPlante for her painstaking research and very nice index, which I found extremely helpful trying to make sense of the back-and-forth accounts.
I have to admit: I feel for Anne Hutchinson. She would probably be the Aimee Semple McPherson, the Ellen G. White, the Joyce Langdorf, the Kathryn Kuhlman, or some other talk show host on ChristCeleb. Instead of being run out of town pregnant and miserable, she would be thin and trim, painted with stage makeup and appearing on T.V. on behalf of liberated Christians everywhere. Instead of being scalped by savages, she would be marvelously coiffured, interviewing Pocahontas so we can gain spiritual insights from Native Americans. She would be invited to Casual Chapel for tea, at which she would instruct the women on how to instruct the men, subtly, of course.
Thanks to Eve’s biography of her 11th generation grandmother, now I know who Anne Hutchinson was, which evidently went past me in the dozens of American History courses I had to take while a prisoner of the Los Angeles school system (and the California state college system). She appears to have been an Antinomian, meaning that she considered herself saved no matter what. She went so far as to say that even if she lost faith in God, she was still saved because she knew she was one of the elect, and God’s grace is not even based on faith. She is definitely in keeping with modern preaching methods. The author tries to present the complexities of Calvinism and its influence on early Americans, but she is probably not the best spokeswoman for this sort of analysis (but she did a wonderful job if compared to any sermons I’ve heard from Casual Chapel and its ilk).
The back cover touts Anne Hutchinson as “America’s Founding Mother.” But I’ll stick with the title: “American Jezebel.”
- Chris Simonson
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