| Top | Brief Bio: Anne Hutchinson née MARBURY (baptized July 20, 1591, Alford, Lincolnshire, Eng.--d. August or September 1643, Pelham Bay, N.Y.), religious liberal who became one of the founders of Rhode Island after her banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The daughter of a clergyman, she married William Hutchinson, a merchant, in 1612, and in 1634 they migrated to Massachusetts. Anne soon organized weekly meetings of Boston women to discuss recent sermons and to give expression to her own theological views. Before long her sessions attracted ministers and magistrates as well. She stressed the individual's intuition as a means of reaching God and salvation, rather than the observance of institutionalized beliefs and the precepts of ministers. Her opponents accused her of antinomianism--the view that God's grace has freed the Christian from the need to observe established moral precepts.

Her criticism of the Massachusetts Puritans for what she considered to be their narrowly legalistic concept of morality and her protests against the authority of the clergy were at first widely supported by Bostonians. John Winthrop, however, opposed her, and she lost much of her support after he won election as governor. She was tried by the General Court chiefly for "traducing the ministers," was convicted in 1637, and was sentenced to banishment. For a time in 1637-38 she was held in custody at the house of Joseph Weld, marshal of Roxbury, Mass. Refusing to recant, she was then tried before the Boston Church and formally excommunicated.  

With some of her followers she established a settlement on the island of Aquidneck (now part of Rhode Island) in 1638. After the death of her husband in 1642, she settled on Long Island Sound, near present Pelham Bay. In 1643 she and all her servants and children save one were killed by Indians, an event regarded by some in Massachusetts as a manifestation of divine judgment.

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Bremer, Francis J. ed. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, NY : Krieger, 1981. F67 .H92 A56

Chinn, Sarah E. "'Much Madness Is Divinest Sense': Heresy as a Trajectory in America Women's Writing from Anne Hutchinson to Gertrude Stein." DAI 57.5 (Nov 1996): 2035A 36A DAI No.: DA9631676.

Dillon, Elizabeth M. "Representing the Subject of Freedom: Liberalism, Hysteria, and Dispossessive Individualism." DAI 56.9 (Mar 1996): 3579A DAI No.: DA9602531.

Egan, James F. "Ideology and the Study of American Culture: Early New England Writing and the Idea of Experience." DAI 52.11 (May 1992): 3927A DAI No.: DA9211508.

Etulain, Richard. "John Cotton and the Anne Hutchinson Controversy." Rendezvous 2.2 (1967): 9-18.

George, Carol V. R. "Anne Hutchinson and the 'Revolution Which Never Happened'.; Essays in Honor of Nelson Manfred Blake." "Remember the Ladies":New Perspectives on Women in American History. Eds. Carol V. R. George and Ray A. Billington. Syracuse : Syracuse UP, 1975. 13-37.

Goldman, Maureen. "American Women and the Puritan Heritage: Anne Hutchinson to Harriet Beecher Stowe." DAI 36 (1975): 1503A 04A.

Hall, David D. ed. The Antinomian controversy, 1636-1638; a documentary history. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1968. F67 .H92 H3

Heidish, Marcy. Witnesses: a novel. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1980. PS3558.E4514 W5 (subject: Anne Hutchinson).

Johnston, Paul K. "Killing the Spirit: Anne Hutchinson and The Office of the Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 22.1 (Sprg 1996): 26-35.

King, Anne. Anne Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet: Literature and Experience, Faith and Works in Massachusetts Bay Colony." International Journal of Women's Studies 1 (1978): 445-67.

Lang, Amy S. Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. Berkeley : U of California P, 1987.

LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel : The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans. San Francisco: Harper, 2004

Lewis, Mary J. "An American Inquisition: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy." Symposium Presented as a Public Service on 17 19 Apr. 1980 in the Alumni House Conf. Center, State Univ. of New York at Albany; 2 Vols. Proceedings of Asclepius at Syracuse: Thomas Szasz, Libertarian Humanist. Ed. M. E. Grenander. (Albany : Inst. for Humanistic Studies, State Univ. of New York.)

Porterfield, Amanda. "Beames of Wrathe and Brides of Christ: Anger and Female Piety in Puritan New England." Connecticut Review 11.2 (Sumr 1989): 1-12.

Schutte, Anne J. "'Such Monstrous Births': A Neglected Aspect of the Antinomian Controversy." Renaissance Quarterly 38.1 (Sprg 1985): 85-106.

Stout, Harry S. "Word and Order in Colonial New England." The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History. NY: Oxford UP, 1982. 19-38.

Tobin, Lad. "A Radically Different Voice: Gender and Language in the Trials of Anne Hutchinson." Early American Literature 25.2 (1990): 253-70.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 1: Early American Literature to1700 - Anne Hutchinson." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap1/hutchinson.html (provide page date or date of your login).  

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