Anne Hutchinson

     I really liked the reading about Anne Hutchinson because it showed a different side of Anne and what she was really trying to do.   It was interesting to read about how she was not actually a deviant as she is portrayed so often to be.  One of the most interesting points of the reading was how Winthrop saw her as a threat, not because of her differing opinions about the church and beliefs, but the fact that she was a woman.  It would be interesting to see how Winthrop would have reacted if Anne had not been a female in this time.  Westerkamp talks about how he attacked her gender and the fact that she was not living up to her duties as a woman when she says, "Not only was she a woman, she was a disgusting woman, an unwomanly woman.  She could not even give birth" (493).  She also later says "Winthrop was responding to a threat he had linked, consciously or not, to Hutchinson's gender.   Whether or not he himself understood precisely the nature of that threat, there was a connection between Hutchinson's gender and her religiosity."  It seems like if Hutchinson was a man, things would have gone a lot differently.  If she was not a deviant, she simply was another part of a group with ideas that were different from Winthrop's and would have been looked at as much less of a threat, if she was not a female.