Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England - Hardcover

Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England offers an incisive exploration of how the story of Anne Hutchinson has been repeatedly reshaped in American cultural narratives to address anxieties about female autonomy, dissent, and individualism. Examining literary representations of Hutchinson, particularly in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the study uncovers the persistent tension between the self-assertion of women in public discourse and the societal impulse to suppress that assertion. Hutchinson, infamous for her religious radicalism in Puritan Massachusetts, becomes a literary archetype of the "public woman," a figure whose defiance of established authority--whether religious, political, or literary--threatens the fabric of the social order.