Set in 18th-century Newport, Rhode Island, the novel explores New England history, highlights the issue of slavery, and critiques the Calvinist theology in which Stowe was raised.

However, in contrast to Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, The Minister's Wooing is a "sentimental romance";[2] its central plot revolves around courtship and marriage.

[3] With its intense focus upon the history, customs, and mannerisms of New England, The Minister's Wooing is one sense an example of the local color writing that proliferated in late 19th century.

[4] Finally, the work serves as a critique of Calvinism, written from the perspective of an individual deeply familiar with the theological system.

Stowe drew elements of the novel from events in both her and her older sister Catharine Beecher's lives.

[5] Throughout the novel, Stowe portrays the reaction of different personality types to the pressures of Calvinist principles, illustrating in this manner what she perceives as Calvinism's strengths and weaknesses.

It was published in book form first in England by Sampson Low, Son & Co., in order to guarantee British royalties, and then in the US by Derby and Jackson.

Stowe had first begun to reassess the Calvinist view of salvation after watching her sister Catherine wrestle in 1822 with the similar loss of an unregenerate fiancé.

[12] The story is set in Newport, Rhode Island, when it was still a prosperous fishing and shipping town and not a fashionable retreat for the rich.

Mary has other suitors, including Aaron Burr, but she sees that even though he is the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and has been raised in Calvinism, he is mired in evil.

He is named for and based on the historical Samuel Hopkins, minister at the First Congregational Church of Newport in the late 18th century.

She is a typical Stowe heroine, resigned to her sorrow and bearing her grief as atonement for her sins and those of her lost seaman.

Virginie is a Roman Catholic and serves as a figure of the religious tolerance that Stowe had begun to embrace by this time in her life.

"Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of hatred, so accursed in common esteem… one seems to see in a doom so much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins beyond those of ordinary humanity."