Creating Space
In relation to A Faithful Narrative of the Wicked Life and Remarkable Conversion of Patience Boston alias Samson (1738),1 Tamara Harvey argues that the “ventriloquized voice [of the criminal] is more easily analyzed as an ideological construct than as the expressive vehicle of a creative agent” (257). Harvey considers that within A Faithful Narrative, although “it is not her own, proper voice”, Boston “exercised a kind of agency which influenced their shape and direction” of the narrative (259). I will expand upon Harvey’s discussion of Boston’s agency by considering how it could manifest in The Confession, Declaration, Dying Warning and Advice of Patience Sampson, alias Patience Boston (1735). Boston’s limited agency conflicts with the newspaper reports about her arrest and execution.
The Newspaper Reports:
The newspaper reports’ relationships with space reflect how eighteenth-century colonialism arranged space. Firstly, the arrangements of the articles upon their pages centralise European concerns. At the beginning of the New-England Weekly Journal, the Weekly Rehearsal, the Boston News-Letter, and the Boston Post-Boy, the news from European cities such as London, Vienna, Paris, and Rome are reported before the news in North America. Even in a newspaper written for a North American audience, information about the colonising nations is prioritised. Indeed, the subheading for the New-England Weekly Journal is the assertion that it contains “the most Remarkable occurrences Foreign & Domestic” (1). The newspaper’s claim to remarkableness draws upon the commonplace marketability of novelty. Yet the primacy of ‘foreign occurrences’ within the structuring of this line suggests that the most sellable of these notable events are European. The prioritisation of newspaper stories reflects the dominance of colonising nations in their relationship with colonies.
Furthermore, the way in which colonialism arranges colonised land is also reflected in the structural format of the newspapers. In a literal sense, the reports of land inheritances, exchanges, and sales show how European relationships to territory and property have been imposed upon Indigenous peoples’ lands. For instance, after the report of Boston’s execution, the Boston Post-Boy advertises that “A Convenient Distilling-House, Dwelling-House, Barn, Stable and Out-Houses” are to be let (4).2 Yet the organisation of these articles means that European land claims surround Boston’s narrative. The borders of the articles can be read as a linguistical extension of the fenced boundaries of settler agriculture: they work to categorise and control indigeneity even within the public literary sphere. Therefore, the constructions of the newspapers work as a microcosm for the arrangement of colonialism. This is manifest both on a global scale, with the primacy of colonising nations and the marginalisation of colonised land in the news stories, and within the colony itself as the white settler encroaches upon, confines, and steals Indigenous land and narrative space. The way in which Boston’s narrative is placed within these colonial restrictions and acts of exploitation on the page reflects the oppressive limitations enforced upon Boston’s life and the white settler regulation of her storytelling.
Within the narrative of the articles themselves, Boston is constrained by Indigenous stereotypes constructed by white settlers and Europeans. All the articles open by describing her as “an Indian Woman”. Only the New-England Weekly Journal and the Boston News-Letter then name her as “Patience” (New-England 2, Boston News-Letter 2). By removing Boston’s name, she becomes a homogenised symbol of the settler notion of indigeneity. In the New-England Weekly Journal and the Boston News-Letter, she is described as a “wretched creature” (Boston News-Letter 2, Weekly 2). ‘Wretchedness’ can refer to a person in misery or someone contemptible.3 The term “creature” suggests that the articles refer to the latter, as the beast-like phrase prevents a more sympathetic interpretation of Boston’s misfortune. Therefore, the articles follow the aesthetic framework of racial stereotyping as they firstly standardise Boston as indistinguishable from any other ‘Indian woman’ and then they burden her with dehumanised, unredeemable characteristics. She is constrained to a white settler ‘archetype’ of an ‘Indian woman’.
The Confession, Declaration, Dying Warning and Advice of Patience Sampson, alias Patience Boston (1735)
In her confession and declaration, although Boston declares her sinful, ‘corrupt’ behaviour, she does not frame it as an immutable part of her nature, which is what the newspapers suggest. She does draw upon the language of wretchedness as she lists her sins and confesses that “I Drank to drive away Sorrow. And I, (Wretch that I was) us’d to try to be worse after I had been reproved” (3). However, she does not use ‘wretch’ to suggest someone inherently base or animalistic. Rather “Wretch” is part of the linguistical field of biblical humility and redemption. Paul described himself as a “wretched man” in the Bible, signifying the beginning of his Christian enlightenment and conversion (KJV, Romans 7:24). Whilst a stereotype, by nature, cannot adapt or change, Boston illustrates her personal transformation through her confession.
Yet, like the articles on land claims which fence the newspaper reports about her crimes, Boston’s declaration is restricted by colonial apparatuses. For instance, she uses the European, Christian construction of the confession to express her narrative in a manner not dissimilar to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Whilst her work is not allegorical, Boston similarly battles the sins of “Bashfulness, Fear, Bodily Weakness and failing of Spirit, together with Satan’s Temptations” before she transforms into a ‘good’ Christian (Confession 3). Katherine Grandjean explains that “crime narratives championed spiritual conversion. Most traced a criminal’s journey from sinful malefactor to dedicated Christian” (929). Indeed, she describes that the “narrative of Patience Boston…was certainly fashioned to present this lesson” (Grandjean 929). In other words, her narrative functioned to deliver a message of submission to the Christian faith. Moreover, like the colonial politics which frame the newspaper reports, Boston’s confession is surrounded by the apparatus of settler legality. The end of the text is a legal disclaimer, and the text opens with a precis of Boston’s crime and a report of the legal proceedings. Whether through form, upon the page, or the process of transcribing her words, Boston’s narrative is immersed within networks and institutions introduced to North America by colonialism.
However, within her confession, Boston creates spaces for interpretation through repetition, irony, and metaphorical language. For instance, Boston’s use of repetition in reference to her punishment encourages one to consider the validity of justice. Harvey notes Boston’s use of “ironic repetition” in A Faithful Narrative too (263). Boston uses the term ‘binding’ in reference to her experience as an indentured servant and “to describe her decision to commit the murder for which she was eventually hanged” (Harvey 263-4). In her confession, four time after referencing her “Sin”, or how she “murder’d the Child”, Boston declares a variation of the phrase “for which I am now to suffer” (Confession 4, 5, 6, 7). The use of a triad, which is the most effective number for emphasis, would suggest that she wishes to acknowledge the consequences of her actions. However, after the first three iterations, Boston declares that “I am justly made to suffer” (Confession 6). Firstly, the inclusion of justice in the fourth phrase may suggest an absence of justice in the first three phrase. Secondly, as one repeats a word frequently it becomes meaningless. Likewise, by the fourth iteration, the phrase seems banal. Indeed, the predictability of “I am now going to suffer” in Boston’s confession is pushed to its humorous extreme as she repeats it for the fifth time at the end of the text (Confession 7). Because Boston includes “justly” within her fourth iteration of the stock phrase, justice is also rendered hollow (Confession 6). Therefore, Boston’s use of repetition implies that there is a vacancy or emptiness within the concept of judicial law.
Furthermore, Boston also quibbles the Christian legitimacy of the justice system on earth in relation to the justice system in heaven. She describes:
Many of these numerous Spectators saw me hold up my Hand at the Bar of Justice in this World; and as certainly as you will see me presented Executed; so you will all, sooner or later, hold up your Hands at CHRIST’s Bar, there to receive either a Sentence of Justification or Damnation, and it will as certainly be executed upon you. (Boston, Confession 7)
This sentence exemplifies one of Boston’s purposes on the scaffold to a white settler hegemony: to serve as a deterrent and advisor to the possible sinners or insurgents who are spectating. Yet she also voices the divide between God’s “Bar” and the court of mankind (Boston, Confession 7). Michel Foucault explains that the scaffold confession “occurs exactly at the juncture between the judgement of men and the judgement of God” (46). Existing within this liminal space, Boston could remind the crowd that the infallible law of God cannot be conflated with, nor is it equivalent to, the legal structures that are constructed by humans and ideological drives, such as colonial patriarchy.
Furthermore, through Boston’s correction of Moody’s role in her confession, she hints once more at a divide between man and divine action. Boston explains that “many People have (to my great grief) endeavoured to make me think that the Rev. Mr. Samuel Moody was the chief cause of my pleading Guilty and the Bar of Justice” (Confession 6). She corrects these assumptions by declaring that “I did not plead Guilty to please Mr. Moody, nor any other Person; but only to please CHRIST” (Boston, Confession 6). Firstly, Boston’s rejection of Moody reasserts her Christian narrative of her self-motivated journey to salvation. Yet Boston also establishes a firm divide between Moody and Christ as she pleaded guilty “only to please CHRIST” (Confession 6). Similarly to how humankind’s courts are not the same as justice in heaven, Moody, and the Church which he represents, do not have the same authority as Christ. Boston’s insistence that she was not coerced into confession illustrates some personal control over her life too, as it was she that chose to confess. In this section of her confession, Boston insinuates that both the Church, and Moody, have the capacity for imperfection and she asserts her agency about her actions in court.
Yet she also uses dramatic irony to emphasise her general lack of power within the patriarchal colonial apparatus. Drawing upon the language of court, Boston announces that “I now think it my Duty, before this numerous Concourse of People, to declare him [Moody] innocent” of insisting that she confess (Confession 6). Foucault notes that the criminal was “given the task…of proclaiming” their condemnation on the scaffold, which “took up once again the scene of the confession” (43). However, momentarily, Boston transforms her spectacular reiteration of her confession into a parody of Moody’s ‘confession of innocence’. The clear contrast between both ‘confessions’ – Boston’s guilt and Moody’s innocence – enacts the racial and settler bias of the colonial justice system. Boston also uses the absurdity of the scene to illustrate her lack of power. On the scaffold, she may parody Moody, but she also suggests her position in this ‘court’ as the judge who declares him innocent. The idea of an Indigenous woman in the eighteenth-century passing judgement upon a white settler reverend is farcical. Yet Boston’s use of irony does show her, albeit limited, agency as she subtly critiques the hierarchy constructed by colonialism. For a moment, she becomes the judge, and he is the judged.
Finally, Boston indicates an indefinite critique of colonial land claims. Near the beginning of her confession, she declares that “I pleaded Guilty on my Trial to please GOD as I told the Judges, and to quiet my Conscience in taking the Guilt of Blood off from the Land upon my own Head” (Boston, Confession 2). Her use of “Land” is ambiguous (Boston, Confession 2). Does she suggest that she is taking ownership of the guilt of the crime, which has floated in the ether as it waits to be claimed? Yet the structuring of the line suggests that “Guilt of Blood” and “the Land” are connected (Boston, Confession 2). The land has been permeated by violence or killing, but Boston acquires this guilt. Boston may imply that she is serving the punishment for colonial violence on the land as she gave “way to Passion and Revenge” (Confession 4). In comparison to the ‘land claims’ and discussions of land ownership, which place pressure upon the margins of her story in the newspaper reports, in this moment, Boston appears to remind the audience of the history of the land. Who acquired guilt first?
Within the colonial retribution of her execution, Boston creates some spaces of possible resistance.
Works Cited
The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.
Boston Gazette. Boston, Massachusetts,no. 760, 29 July 1734.
Boston News-Letter. Boston, Massachusetts, no. 1590, 25 July 1734.
Boston, Patience. The confession, declaration, dying warning and advice of Patience Sampson, alias Patience Boston. Printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green in Queen Street, Boston, 1735.
--. A faithful narrative of the wicked life and remarkable conversion of Patience Boston alias Samson. Edited by Samuel and Joseph Moody, printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green in Queen Street, Boston, 1738.
Boston Post-Boy. Boston, Massachusetts, no. 37, 28 July 1735.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 2012.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1977.
Grandjean, Katherine. “‘Our Fellow-Creatures & Our Fellow-Christians’: Race and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Narratives of Indian Crime.” American Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 4, 2010, pp. 925–50.
Harvey, Tamara. “‘Taken from Her Mouth’: Narrative Authority and the Conversion of Patience Boston.” Narrative, vol. 6, no. 3, 1998, pp. 256–70.
New-England Weekly Journal. Boston, Massachusetts, no. 380, 22 July 1734.
Weekly Rehearsal. Boston, Massachusetts, no. 147, 22 July 1734.