Page "Marie-Joseph Angélique" Paragraph 17

The historiography of Angélique ’ s story is not extensive, as only a few professional historians have looked at her case until quite recently, and most of the older work dealt with her superficially and rapidly, in a paragraph or page or two, as part of larger works on slavery or crime in New France.

The older works all agreed with the opinion of the judges — Angélique set the fire to revenge herself on her owner.

However, the first full length non-fictional account of her trial, written by Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne and published in Quebec in French in 2004, was also the first serious study to use all the trial records.

The author sets out to present the documents in detail, to question the court proceedings and to present all the possible culprits.

She concludes that the fire was most likely accidental, the result of poorly cleaned chimneys and a cook fire in the neighbouring house — a cook fire manned by Marie-Manon, the young panis slave who was the very person who started the rumours about Angélique having said that her owner would not sleep in her bed.

In this interpretation, Marie-Manon, who could have been severely punished by her owners had she been implicated in accidentally causing the fire, had plenty of motivation for diverting suspicion elsewhere.

Beaugrand-Champagne believes that the authorities, under pressure by an enraged population looking for a scapegoat for their troubles, took the easy way out and condemned Angélique more on the basis of her independent and outspoken character than on any genuine evidence.