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Summary: "Friends of Anne Hutchinson" review American Jezebel
Review: 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
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Summary: "Friends of Anne Hutchinson" review American Jezebel
Review: 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
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Summary: An Uncommon Woman
Review: I just finished American Jezebel and really enjoyed the author's portrayal of the life and times of this American heroine. Anne Hutchinson was early champion of religious tolerance and freedom of expression and her story is an important one for us today.
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Summary: Elegant biography of an important early American
Review: I just finished American Jezebel and really enjoyed the author's portrayal of the life and times of this American heroine. Anne Hutchinson was early champion of religious tolerance and freedom of expression and her story is an important one for us today.
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Summary: Amazing Adventures
Review: If you're looking for a role model, there are all kinds of reasons why Anne Hutchinson would make a good one. She showed courage in defying the conventional wisdom of her day. She loved children and small animals, and although we don't know much about her husband he must have cared for her through thick and thin. After all, she was pregnant so many times! Above all, Hutchinson marched to the beat of a different drummer and yet she had the good sense and the fortitude to agree with like minds. When it came to founding the state of Rhode Island, for example, she made a few compromises and agreed to disagree with Roger Williams for the sake of the greater good.
Eve Laplante, one of the millions of American descendants of Anne Hutchinson, has written an engrossing, if somewhat limited biography of her honorable ancestor. Laplante excels in bringing us into the real fabric of the early Colonial era, what it felt like to have to make your own soap, to have to deal with native tribes some of whom understandably resented your presence, how it feels to see some of your children die before you. Often she extrapolates from the known facts to bring us a richer sense of period and character. Here and there, she goes too far, but I think on the whole her feats of intuition are by and large helpful.
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Summary: A Dramatic Rendition of Anne Hutchinson Facing Her Accusers!
Review: 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.
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Summary: Good story, but good history?
Review: It may seem overly technical to some people, but this book continues to perpetuate errors about the legal process used by the Puritans, and clearly readers are not understanding that her civil trial was not a court of Oyer and Terminer like the witch trials in Salem, but a "convention" (a means of trying seditious libel) and her church "trial" was not a civil trial at all, but a hearing by her fellow church members to decide whether she should be excommunicated from the church. The idea that women could not be subject to the law is simply untrue. Women could indeed answer for their own alleged crimes, in the colonies and in England in this period. For Puritans, excommunication did not need to be a permanent removal and many so-called Antinomians were accepted back into their churches. Anne Hutchinson was a woman who stood up against powerful forces, but she had powerful forces behind her. Hutchinson is an inspirational historical figure, but a complex one too. The circumstances of her trial are usually portrayed as persecution, but at a time when the whole Puritan experiment could have gone under, the reactions against her as well as those who supported her can both be understood.
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Summary: A Fascinating Read
Review: Puritan religious disputes can sound arcane to modern ears, but Eve LaPlante explains those quarrels in clear and meaningful terms, bringing out the intense drama of Anne Hutchinson's trial and its aftermath. I also appreciated learning more about Hutchinson's background in England, and about her father's own career in dissent. This research, along with the fluid writing, really made Anne Hutchinson come alive for me, in a way she just hadn't before.
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Summary: False title
Review: This book follows the story of a woman who opposed the puritanical laws of the early Americans. Yet the title is totally misleading. Jezebel lived in the time of Elijah and she was a killer of prophets, a religious fanatic who tried to whipe out one religion to replace it with another. This book is about someone who resisted an orthodox faith, and the heroin of this book is no Jezebel. Seth J. Frantzman
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