denial – The narrative of Elizabeth Wilson is noteworthy because of the fact that she never admits to commit infanticide. Instead she tells a story in which the illegitimate children are killed by their father after he had called her into the woods. She claims that he rebuked his prior offers to bear the financial burden of the infants.,he then told Wilson to kill them which she would not do and drew his pistol to her head and then stomped the life out of two of his kin. Wilson would ultimately come to terms with her sentence and her previous wrongdoings but would not admit to actually murdering the children.
friend – Her the notion of God as being your “friend” during your last days on this earth while in confinement is a fascinating notion of the preparation continually taken by criminals to ready themselves as best they could for the afterlife. Through his mercy God becomes “friend of sinners” and offers them his hand. They must embrace him for he is singly important at this stage in the game, knowing the fate has been determined in this world.
family – The notion of family in this narrative is quite interesting. There is the murder of one’s own children either by the father or the mother, we can’t be sure of Wilson’s testimony, coupled with the notion of illegimate children that cannot be part of a true family being born in sin. There is also the case of the brother who is said to have visited Elizabeth while she was incarcerated and even obtained a letter that was to delay her execution. He being delayed himself along the way back to her execution, arrived 23 minutes after she had been “turned off”. He even was said to have taken her home where he tried to revive her somehow and seeing that she was “irrecovably gone”, “she was decently enterred”.