Abstract

Amanda Ewoldt
Dr. Logan
LIT 6009
2 March 2009

True Womanhood and the Inmates of the Ursuline Convent

The first half of the nineteenth century saw a remarkable re-defining of women’s roles in society. Called True Womanhood, the literature and propaganda of the day extolled the duties and virtues held most dear to the antebellum American woman, who was trained to be a wife and mother: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women’s virtue was held above all else, and changes in society and alternate ways of life were considered to be a threat to the roles and “powers” of women. It is no surprise then, when the already fraying tensions between the Protestants and Catholics were further exacerbated by the convent life of the nuns. While the nuns were held to the same standards of virtue as the women on the outside, the facts that it was done in a single-sex community, away from the immediate influence of male authority, and that these women eschewed the “natural” roles of wives and mothers that made up the identity of the American woman, caused Protestants no small amount of anxiety. My aim for this paper is to analyze the characters of Rebecca Reed’s narrative Six Months in a Convent, with the purposes of discovered whether or not these women were indeed “True Women” or precursors to the “New Woman.”

In order to accomplish this, I will study the historical context of the events around the destruction of the Ursuline convent, the definitions of True Womanhood, and female autonomy. Within this social-historical context, the text of the Six Months in a Convent, especially the prefatory matter, will be examined closely in the light of the times. The letters and even the very narrative are singular instances of a woman stepping outside of True Womanhood by engaging in a public controversy and defending herself—actions which risked her already tenuous hold on gentility, and had to be explained away by her (male) supporters in a preface to the text. Furthermore, there is a suggestive parallel between the Protestant women who chose to stay spinsters because they felt a higher calling of service (missionary work, etc.), and the women who chose to join a religious order of nuns for the same reason. Spinsters were trying to overcome the stigma attached to their unmarried status, but as mentioned before, anything that shook up the status quo was seen as an attack on female virtue.

Rebecca Reed, a disadvantaged girl with an incomplete education and no prospects turned to the convent with the hopes of finishing her education and being able to support herself. Women at that time had few career options, seeing as how they were confined only to home and hearth according to True Womanhood. Becoming a nun was one such way of escaping abject poverty, learning a skill, and finishing her education. Understanding the framework of the times is integral to understanding what really happened and why. It is easy to judge a work like this from a modern feminist perspective so as to cast the players in the drama as either a hero or a villain. There is more to the situation and these people than black-and-white stereotypes. Understanding the broader framework makes understanding the text much easier.