The "monstrous births" of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson: early modern interplays of religion, science, and politics in the Atlantic World

Martina Purucker
2016
This study analyzes how the so-called monstrous births of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson were interpreted and debated in the Atlantic World from the late 1630s up to the 1710s. Dyer and Hutchinson belonged to the protagonists of one of the most disruptive crises in the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From 1636 to 1638, the colony went through the so-called Antinomian Controversy, centering upon differing conceptions of Puritan covenant theology. For us today, the Controversy is also of
more » ... nterest in terms of the history of medicine: Dyer was delivered of stillborn child supposedly lacking a head and carrying horns in October 1637, and Hutchinson was said to have produced "thirty monstrous births or thereabouts" a few months thereafter, after having been banished from the colony. The two abnormal births became part of a highly complex rhetorical battle encompassing both sides of the Atlantic. During the Antinomian Controversy, Hutchinson's opponents tried to exploit the narrative of the two monstrous births for their own ends, presenting them as first-rate instance of Godly intervention in the world. Around mid-seventeenth century, English Presbyterians such as Robert Baillie presented the Antinomian crisis and the two ill-fated pregnancies as proof of the failure of the New England practice of ordering churches, Congregationalism. In addition to such politico-religious rhetoric, the discourse on the two failed pregnancies was influenced by what is often called the rise of New Science: as of mid-seventeenth-century, belief in miracles, witchcraft, and providence came under attack. Inspired by cultural history, the aim is to understand which function the narratives of Mary Dyer's and Anne Hutchinson's monstrous births had in varying public discourses, which metaphors were used, which themes recurred, and what differing participants in discourse made of these. Inspired by the history of science and intellectual history, a key point of interest is how religiously motivated interpretations were interwoven with e [...]
doi:10.5283/epub.33867 fatcat:ltczfubbd5crvgwa37erxiwqqi