Convictions– Although “convictions” usually suggests an absolute and unwavering value, for Patience it seems to mean a value she wishes she were convinced of. She talks about abandoning her “convictions” about God and returning to drinking and sin. Like Esther Rogers, she becomes convinced she is saved, but unlike Esther Rogers, she changes her mind many times. These wavering convictions seem like more normal human behavior than Rogers’ unflinching conviction that she is saved and special in the eyes of God.
Fixation– Patience is obsessed with truth and lying. She seems to think telling a lie about killing her child is worse than killing her child, saying of her lie “This I thought was a greater sin than if I had indeed murdered my child.” She also says “Having solemnly sworn that I would be the death of the child, I was so far from repenting of it, that I thought I was obliged to fulfill it.” Instead of stopping the drunken lies about killing her child, she wants people to take those lies seriously. It’s a strange twist on the commonly held value of keeping one’s word.
Wicked– A lot of the process of redemption in these narratives is acknowledging that one led a wicked life and repenting. Wicked seems to pertain more to the overall lifestyles of the criminals than to the crimes themselves. Patience describes her first reaction upon being put in jail: “I was in a distressed condition, not so much for my wicked heart or wicked life; for I saw little of either: as for fear of death and Hell, not being fit to go into another world.” This is before her murder of her child; the wickedness she talks about is her drinking, lying, and not praying. The puritans seemed to endorse a sorrow for offending God rather than a fear of God because one should not be concerned for one’s own state, even though they stressed the idea of hell and made people fear for their eternal lives.