The Prescribed Norms of the Puritan Culture - Essay Example

Anne Hutchinson: Ahead of Her Time Although women came to America expecting some of the same liberties and freedoms their men fought and died for both in England and in the new world of America, it was a very long time before they were able to enjoy the rights and freedoms they enjoy today. This is because Puritans who settled in Colonial America created laws and customs relating to women’s roles that were, in some cases, more stringent than those that existed in England at the time. This traditional, patriarchal society was intent on punishing women who did not conform to the prescribed ‘norms’ of the Puritan culture. A well-documented example is women who would not marry again following the death of their husband. Choosing to be a single woman was considered by the Puritans to be disregarding ‘God’s will.’ These women were looked upon suspiciously and this choice heightened the chance that they would be accused of being a witch. Many of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by women today were brought about by women recognized for their courage and their ability to stand up for their gender such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Queen Victoria. However, there were many women involved in these early migrations to the new continent who held many of the traditional concepts regarding women’s true proper place in society without sacrificing their concepts of strength within the home. One of these women was Anne Hutchinson who brought the ideals of her modified belief system into the new world and helped establish a community that continues to survive today. Biography Hutchinson began her life in England and traveled through Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Netherlands, now the Bronx in New York before being killed there by Indians in one of the many disputes between natives and settlers that occurred during that time. She was baptized as Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England on July 20, 1591 as a minister’s daughter, but her father always had questions about the church.1 Uncharacteristically, Anne was given a decent education and was permitted to reach a more mature age for marriage, not marrying William (Will) Hutchinson until she was 21. Throughout this period in England, Anne and her family had been following the teachings of John Cotton, whose views were strongly similar to those of Anne’s father, both of them taking exception with the structure of the church’s hierarchical configuration.2 Cotton was forced to leave England by the persecution of the Church of England authorities in 1633 and departed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony with a group of followers. Anne and her family followed him a year later with another large group of colonists who strongly agreed with Cotton’s ideas.3 Up to this point in her life, Anne performed as expected of women in all respects other than her advanced education. The Puritan Woman According to Fraser,4 most of the New England colonies adhered to a strongly similar structure that was perhaps even more confining than the structures they had left behind in England. “Before the middle of the nineteenth century, the property rights of American married women followed the dictates of common law, under which everything a woman owned became her husband’s property upon her marriage.”5 These restrictions on what a woman could do or own were partly due to the fact that most women were not considered intelligent enough to properly manage themselves or their property. Thought of as the physical, intellectual and emotionally weaker gender, women were considered more likely to give in to the temptations of the Devil. Women were the images of Eve, lustful for sexual gratification, power and money. This common view held by Puritan men “made women susceptible to charges of witchcraft, particularly those who stood to inherit large estates that would have endowed them with uncommon economic influence.”6 Women were, by and large, expected to accept this subservient position within the public as well as the private spheres as the proper punishment due through Eve. However, Anne Hutchinson refused to accept this position. Presumably at no point in her life did Anne Hutchinson accept these definitions of herself or the attitude she was expected to adopt. According to Robert Ellsberg,7 there is a good chance that Hutchinson was eventually banished from her colony because of her unwillingness to accept her powerless social position. In her criticisms regarding her society and her place within it, Hutchinson frequently denounced the practices, policies and codes of the church and state government. There were two elements that seemed most likely to have been the cause of Hutchinson’s later troubles: first, her outspoken rejection of the view that women were a curse rather than a blessing and second, that she had begun to gather a large following among those individuals who also had difficulty with the strict traditions of colony government. Hutchinson’s Impact in her Society Hutchinson was a strong advocate for women’s rights as human beings. Her belief that she was as valid as her male counterparts was supported by her own interpretations of the Bible, which she began discussing with her neighbors and friends. Although her philosophy was largely based on Puritan doctrine, she felt strongly that the strict social order between the church and the governing bodies was too close. Her beliefs gained her powerful enemies within the Puritan and Church of England faiths as well as with the governing body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.8 Because her ideas were not accepted within the church, Hutchinson began hosting informal Bible studies discussions in her home that challenged traditional concepts and explored potential meanings. “Driven by her intense faith, Hutchinson had begun having meetings in her home, for both women and men, to discuss the Bible and its teachings. She believed that God could speak directly to anyone and did not communicate only through ministers. The popularity of her message was perceived as dangerous by the government and the clergy.”9 She began to question the authority of the clergy as it was potentially founded on false interpretations. Eventually, her sermons drew such large crowds that she was forced to move to the church, attracting even more negative attention to herself by the patriarchal authorities. As the pressure increased, Hutchinson began supporting the ideas of the covenant of grace that was the foundation of the Protestant Reformation and taught by John Calvin instead of the covenant of works which was emphasized by the Puritan faith.10 This seems like a relatively minor shift, but it was actually quite profound. The covenant of grace suggests that faith alone is necessary for salvation of God and suggests that the individual has direct access to God rather than requiring the intervention of the clergy. This directly conflicted with the views of people such as John Cotton and John Winthrop who believed in a covenant of works in which the individual had to perform specific tasks and actions of atonement in order to achieve the grace of God. Coming to Trial In the summer of 1636, Sir Henry Vane, who had supported Hutchinson, was replaced as governor by John Winthrop who was staunchly opposed to Hutchinson’s ideas. Essentially, Winthrop “considered her a threat to his city set on a hill” and insisted the meetings she held were a “thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for [her] sex.”11 The trial of Anne Hutchinson was opened in 1638 in the General Court of Massachusetts. Although she was already 46 years old and was relatively far along in her 15th pregnancy, Hutchinson was required to stand for days at a time in front of her male accusers as they attempted to get her to admit secret ‘malicious and false statements’ she had never uttered directly against them and encouraging dissent among the population against the church and government.12 Conceding finally that she would never convince her accusers that she was following God’s will, she finally told them, “you have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harme, for I am in the hands of the eternall Jehovah my Saviour, I am at his appointment, the bounds of my habitation are cast in heaven, no further doe I esteeme of any mortal man than creatures in his hand.”13 This response only angered her accusers. One minister told her, “You have stepped out of your place, you had rather been a husband than a wife, a preacher than a hearer, and a magistrate rather than a subject”14 and Hutchinson was predictably condemned. It was August 1637 when Hutchinson was officially banished from the colony as “a woman not fit for our society.”15 However, she wasn’t able to leave immediately because this was just the civil trial. During the religious trial, Hutchinson remained on house arrest and lost her unborn child in miscarriage.16 Hutchinson’s followers who remained in Boston were also harassed as a further means of reducing her support and punishing her for her boldness. As soon as the trial was over, Hutchinson was forced to leave her home forever. Colony Founding Banned from the community and the church, Hutchinson and those who followed her could go to no other Puritan colonies for succor, and by necessity founded colonies of their own. The first colony was actually established by 19 men, including Anne’s husband, on the island of Aquidneck which was purchased from the Indians and the Hutchinsonians were able to relocate to what they now called Pocasset.17 The town they founded continues to exist today, but it is now known as Portsmouth. Under male leadership while Anne was still undergoing trial, the government of this colony strayed from her original visions of a separation of church and state. When Anne was able to join the colony, she spearheaded an effort to amend the settlement’s constitution in order to provide the inhabitants with the ability to veto actions of the governor as well as established a second branch of government. The change in governance in Pocasset was celebrated with an entirely new name – Portsmouth.18 Eventually, though, Anne came to feel that the proper state of man could only be found in individualist anarchism.19 This was a system of belief in which it is held that the individual, rather than the state, the church or any other entity, was best suited for determining the proper course of action for him or herself. Conclusion Throughout her life, Anne Hutchinson proved herself a woman ahead of her time in a number of ways. She braved a trip across the ocean during the time of sailing ships hoping to find a world in which she would be free only to discover a world in which the traditional ideals of her place as woman were perhaps even more rigid and controlled. Rather than resigning herself to her fate, Hutchinson proceeded to talk, making her opinions known and exploring her ideas with others. As a part of her discussions, the views of her religion were necessarily taken into account as religion played an important role in every aspect of a Puritan’s life. Refusing the interpretations of the church elders, Hutchinson preferred to interpret the Bible and its lessons for herself. Because her interpretations made a great deal of sense to other colonists who shared many of her concerns, Hutchinson began acquiring a number of followers which led to her persecution and eventual banishment from her society. Upon banishment, she became the only woman to have ever founded a new colony, today recognized as the co-founder of Rhode Island together with Roger Williams. The government she helped to establish in Rhode Island contained many of the elements we cherish today in our government – a separation of church and state, the right to a trial by jury, the need to have citizens be involved in the political structure and the concept of a multi-branched government in which checks and balances are built in. She also introduced new concepts into the church including the idea that women had a value all their own, everyone had access to God and it was the right of every citizen to know the Bible for him or herself. Works Cited Adams, Charles Francis (Ed.). Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636-1638. The Prince Society, 1894. Anderson, Robert. The Great Migration. Boston: New England History Genealogical Society, 1999. Crawford, Deborah. Four Women in a Violent Time. New York: Crown Publishers, 1970. Ellsberg, Robert. All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets and Witnesses for Our Time. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997. Fraser, James W. Between Church and State. Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Gomes, Peter. “Anne Hutchinson.” Harvard Magazine. November 2002. Humpherey, Grace. Women in American History. Bobbs-Merrill, 1919. Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. “Married Women’s Property Acts.” Reader’s Companion to American History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999. Stille, Darlene R. Anne Hutchinson. New York: Compass Point Books, 2006. Ziff, Larzer. The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962 Read More