Katherine Garret's Authorial Presence
Katherine Garret’s confession reads as more than simply a capitulation to her condemnation or an appeal for salvation. As Moore et al. suggest in their chapter on Garret’s confession in Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions, the text was “inescapably shaped by Adams” yet “testifies to Garret’s role in defining her narrative as well.”[1] They point to the moment when Garret “subtly accuses her executioners of subjecting her to a ‘Violent Death,’” as well as the surprising direct address to “Parents and Masters” and the active role Garret describes taking in her own conversion, all as signs of Garret’s possessing some level of narrative agency.[2] This attention to Garret’s agency and resistance on the textual level warrants further consideration.
Garret’s exhortation addressed to “Parents and Masters” is especially startling when considered alongside Adams’ account of Garret’s own master, Reverend William Worthington. Adams claims, “During her Confinement she often Lamented her neglecting to Improve the Advantages she Enjoyed, always speaking honourably of her Master, who was frequent in giving her good Instruction and Advice.”[3] He mentions Garret’s master again: “Towards the Evening her Master came from Saybrook to take his last farewell of her, with whose presence, the Instructions and Consolations that were given & the Prayers that were made for her, she something revived and was Overheard in her Prayers … to bless God who had sent his Servants that Day to Pray for, to Instruct and Comfort her a poor Dying Creature.”[4]
Garret’s confession does express gratitude for the education she received while in the Worthington family’s employ: “I thank God that I was learn’d to Read in my Childhood.”[5] Yet her only explicit mention of any master comes in her warning to them: “I would also Intreat Parents and Masters to set a good Example before their Children and Servants, for You also must give an Account to God how you carry it to them.”[6] The contrast between Adams’ account of Garret’s warm sentiments toward Worthington and Garret’s stern warning to “Masters” in her confession throws into question the true nature of the relationship between Worthington and Garret. The implication that masters sometimes set bad examples for their servants makes unavoidable the question of whether Garret’s master was the father of her child. The contrast between the two accounts signals the emergence of Garret’s own narrative voice in resistance to Adams’ narrative of the benevolent master. If Adams were the sole author of both texts, such inconsistency and tension would be unlikely to develop.
The confession’s language around Garret’s conviction and sentencing also slips between different registers. As Moore et al. note, Garret’s use of the words “Violent Death”[7] suggests that Garret viewed her sentencing as unjust, even as she declares, “I Own the Justice of GOD … and also Acknowledge the Justice of the Court who has Sentenced me to die this Death.”[8] Furthermore, the confession seems at once to assert Garret’s culpability and to evade it. The text at first acknowledges Garret’s conviction for the “Crying Sin of Murder,”[9] a reference to the four biblical crying sins. Adams likely played a significant role in the inclusion of this biblical language, which seems strongly to assert Garret’s guilt. However, it is worth noting that this opening line only entails a description of Garret’s condemnation, not an admission of guilt. Later in the paragraph, Garret does provide an admission of sin: “I Confess my self to have been a great Sinner; a sinner by Nature, also guilty of many Actual Transgressions, Particularly of Pride and Lying, as well as of the Sin of destroying the Fruit of my own Body, for which latter, I am now to Die.”[10] Garret describes herself as a sinner, but then qualifies this admission with the words “a sinner by Nature.” This phrase can be read either as an acknowledgement of deep sinfulness or as an assertion that Garret’s sin is original sin, the same blameless sin inherited by all other humans at birth, according to Christian theology. The latter meaning does suggest an awareness of Christian theology, of which Adams would likely have approved, but it also renders Garret’s preceding confession meaningless as an acknowledgement of transgression. Garret goes on to admit to “many Actual Transgressions,” with the word “Actual” further implying a distinction between original sin and sinful actions. Garret curiously gives “particular” status to the commonplace sins of “Pride and Lying”; although she admits to killing her child, she relegates this confession to a dependent clause, subordinating it to lesser sins. The language of “destroying the Fruit of my own Body” is also a weaker description than “the Crying Sin of Murder,” such that the language Garret uses to admit guilt is softer than the language she uses to describe the charge on which she was condemned. Rendering the sin of infanticide as an addendum to more minor sins subverts audiences’ expectations for the confession and suggests an effort on Garret’s part to evade a full admission of guilt.
Garret cannot fully evade an acknowledgement of guilt or provide a direct accounting of her relationship with her master, given her “limited agency”[11] and Adams’ influence on the text. Yet the slipperiness of her language alternately meets and denies readers’ expectations in a way that resists a straightforward narrative, not only of her own circumstances but of Indigenous guilt and settler-Christian benevolence.
[1] Lisa L. Moore (ed.) et al., “Katherine Garret (Pequot; ?-1738),” 101.
[2] Ibid., 101.
[3] Eliphalet Adams, “A sermon preached on the occasion of the execution of Katherine Garret, an Indian-servant (who was condemned for the murder of her spurious child,) on May 3d. 1738. To which is added some short account of her behaviour after her condemnation. Together with her dying warning and exhortation. Left under her own hand,” 38.
[4] Ibid., 41.
[5] Ibid., 43.
[6] Ibid., 44.
[7] Ibid., 43.
[8] Ibid., 43.
[9] Ibid., 43.
[10] Ibid., 43.
[11] Karen Weyler, “‘Common, Plain, Every Day Talk’ from ‘An Uncommon Quarter’: Samson Occom and the Language of the Execution Sermon,” 122.