Annotated Bibliography

Geez. Took me long enough. Here's my annotated bib. I'm off to polish my paper a little, and then I'll post that here too...

Amanda Ewoldt
Dr. Logan
LIT 6009
30 April 2009

This annotated bibliography is compiled to be useful for anyone studying the escaped nun narrative, more specifically, Six Months in a Convent by Rebecca Reed. The sources here range from a socio-historical view of the destruction of the Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict, to issues of class, true womanhood, anti-Catholic sentiments, and the threat that Catholics posed against the ideal of true womanhood and society as a whole.

Billington, Ray Allen. “The Burning of the Charleston Convent.” New England Quarterly, 10.1 (Mar.,
1937), 4-24.
Billington’s article is about the aftermath of the destruction of the Charleston Ursuline Convent, and the injustices of the trial toward the Catholics from the Protestants from a largely unrepentant society. The attack on the convent was the Protestant Americans’ strike at the influence of Rome, seen as a threat toward American freedom. The trial of those arrested for on the charges of arson connected to the riot was something of a joke, considering that Rebecca Reed was called to the stand to testify to the horrors she faced during her time as an inmate of the convent. There could not be a conviction without the testimony of the Catholics, but when the Mother Superior and Bishop were called to the stand, their cross examination was less about the burning of the convent and more about the morality of the convent. The media and Protestant clergy deplored the violence of the riot, but were quick to add that perhaps all convents should be burned, in order to save defenseless Protestant girls from converting to Catholicism.

Cohen, Daniel A. “The Respectability of Rebecca Reed: Genteel Womanhood and Sectarian Conflict in
Antebellum America.” Journal of the Early Republic, 16.3 (Autumn, 1996), 419-461.
Cohen examines the life of Rebecca Reed from childhood through her death at the age of twenty-six. He paints her differently than most scholars—while clearly not the heroine or the villainess, she is portrayed as an able networker and opportunist who saw her way out of a life of poverty. He looks at both sides of the story of Six Months in a Convent and points out the differences and inconsistencies. For instance, Reed posits that she was in training to take the veil, the Mother Superior says that she was employed as a menial servant (437). His angle is that of respectability and gentility, the two defining characteristics similar to true womanhood in antebellum America. Respectability denotes one’s moral deportment—for a woman this meant she was pious, submissive, and domestic. Gentility was the mode of living, for instance, how one dressed (423-25). He reexamines her character in light of both of these qualities.

Cohen, Daniel A. “Miss Reed and the Superiors: The Contradictions of Convent Life in Antebellum
America.” Journal of Social History, 30.1 (Autumn, 1996), 149-184.
This article is similar in nature to his article “The Respectability of Rebecca Reed.” Since they were written in the same year and submitted to two different journals, parts will be familiar. Cohen takes a socio-historical approach to the burning of the convent, in which he compares Reed and the Ursulines to challenge the traditional dichotomies, that Reed was humble, forthright, and American as the Catholics were arrogant, secretive, and foreign. On the Catholic side, the Ursulines were educated, genteel, dedicated, and trustworthy, while Reed was ignorant, vulgar, shiftless, and mendacious (150). Cohen is interested in discovering the truth behind what was really going on at the time, and what really happened beyond the she said/she said public fighting.

Griffin, Susan M. “Awful Disclosures: Women’s Evidence in the Escaped Nun’s Tale.” PMLA, 111.1,
Special Topic: The Status of Evidence (Jan., 1996), 93-107.
From the 1830s-1860s, Americans were devouring scandalous anti-Catholic literature, purportedly written by renegades from the Catholic Church, an organization long veiled in secrecy. The most popular of these tales was a twist on the captivity narrative, or the escaped nun’s tales. These tales Gothic horror that readers were fascinated and repelled by gave accounts of rape, murder, and all manner of sins. Reed’s narrative of Six Months in a Convent, raised a public outcry against the Catholic. Even though her account is possibly highly fictionalized, she goes to great lengths to authenticate it—adding footnotes and extra documents to make it seem more real and believable to an already anti-Catholic audience. This genre of expose was considered to be the “romance of the real” and became used as evidence in the spiritual war between Protestantism and Catholicism, even though these accounts were usually fictional (97-8). Griffin also explores the phenomena in which the nun, the purported victim and witness against such horrifying crimes of “war” is scrutinized as well—she might escape from such a dreadful place as a nunnery, but she must still maintain her respectability and modesty and sexual integrity.

Hammett, Theodore M. “Two Mobs of Jacksonian Boston: Ideology and Interest.” The Journal of
American History, 62.4 (Mar., 1976), 845-868.
Hammett posits that the destruction of the convent was an action born of the American fear of chaos, disorder, class tensions, and the nebulous “Other” of the foreign influences. Immigrants were moving in at an alarming rate, which upset the people who valued homogeneity rather than ethnic and religious diversity. The Catholic Church was seen as a threat not only to Protestantism, but to the American way of life. The upper class was wary of the poor lower class, because the latter group verged on lawless at times. The burning of the convent was an expression of the social instability of antebellum America.

Helminski, Joseph John. Rome in America: Anti-Catholicism and American Identity in Antebellum
Literature. Diss. Wayne State U, 2001. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2002. ATT 3037080.
The dissertation examines anti-Catholic in early American literature. The focus is not solely on the escaped nun tale, but it does offer an interesting insight into the Protestant view that Catholicism was a threat to true womanhood—that Catholicism would make women want to give up or break out of their role in the domestic sphere and claim greater amounts of female agency, which was unthinkable to the stalwartly patriarchal Protestant society.

Hillery, Jr., George A. “The Convent: Community, Prison, or Task Force?” Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion, 8.1 (Spring, 1969), 140-151.
This paper was written because no scholarly work as yet had been done on the true nature of the Catholic convent. Hillery is interested in discovering what a convent is like, rather than relying on hearsay. He studies two kinds of convent: 1) the cloistered or monastic convent and 2) the apostolic convent that is concerned with working in society (141). He covers issues such as economics (convents are dedicated to God first, place economic concerns second) where as institutions like prison are not economical at all. Unlike the escaped nun narratives, there is an absence of force in the convent. Furthermore, the convent is not a prison—where it may share some surface resemblances to a prison, the convent is voluntary self-imprisonment into discipline, rather than an enforced imprisonment on a prisoner by a warden.

Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harpers Magazine, (Nov., 1964), 77-86.
This is an entertaining article. Not all of it pertains to anti-Catholicism, but the article is concerned with the multiple eras of paranoia that has shaped American society and politics, like anti-Masonry, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, the belief that Europe and/or the Pope is plotting to take over the government, and that Jesuit priests are actually the spies of Rome, here to infiltrate American society and stage a coup. The line “Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan” (82) is perhaps one of his most famous quotes in this article.

Kenneally, James. “The Burning of the Ursuline Convent: A Different View.” Records of the American
Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 90.1 (1979), 15-21.
Kenneally offers a new view for the riot and burning of the Ursuline convent, in which the rioters truly believed that they were protecting American womanhood—ironically, by attacking women. The belief that a convent was an unnatural place was fueled by anti-Catholic propaganda and sermons from Protestant preachers, and reinforced by the masculine behavior of the Superior. Indeed, Kenneally thinks that the biggest reason that the convent was burned has to do with the Superior herself—reported to be quick tempered, imperious, and saucy. All three qualities were seen as unattractive in a true woman, and the fact that she was in charge of the convent, had her own sense of agency, and was not constantly under the guidance and protection of a man, spelled disaster. Superior St. George was everything that Protestant America hated and feared, and was seen as an attack on their notion of true womanhood, especially when she refused to be intimidated by a mob.

Pagliarini, Marie Anne. “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An Analysis of
Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America.” Religion and American Culture, 9.1 (Winter 1999), 97-128.
Pagliarini posits that antebellum Americans were obsessed with sexual morality and deviance, and suspected not just the nuns of being impure, but also the priests. The fact that both priests and nuns rejected the sphere of domestics (marrying, raising children, and supporting a family, respectively) was considered unnatural and a threat to the social order of the country. Marriage was something that was ordained by God, and men who took vows of celibacy were setting themselves up for madness. Further, priests were a danger to the true, submissive American woman because through him, she might forsake “passionless” love and discover passion—thus becoming what true women were not supposed to be. A Confessor could hypnotize and seduce a good woman, and threaten her husband’s claim over her. A woman who entered a convent and stayed there instead of getting married and raising children was a lower woman who lacked selflessness. And since she remained independent, she challenged the notion that woman was inherently weak and needed a man to look after her.

Reed, Rebecca Theresa. Six Months in a Convent. Boston: Russell, Odiorne & Metcalf, 1835.
This is an escaped nun’s tale that may or may not have influenced the mob that destroyed the Ursuline convent on Mt. Benedict. Reed tells about her experiences as a novice in a convent for only six months before she escaped and returned to her Protestant family, friends, and faith. Also included is a long introduction defending Reed’s respectability, and documents about the convent’s destruction, as well as a letter to the Irish Catholics at the very end, trying to persuade them to switch their faith.

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, 18.2 (Summer,
1966), 151-174.
This is a groundbreaking essay on the perception and qualities of the Protestant true American woman. It details her four cardinal virtues of submissiveness, piety, purity, and domesticity, as well as her duties. She was the one who raised the children, took care of her husband’s every need, kept the home, was the pillar of virtue for the young country, and brought men back to God. The true woman was a fragile creature who needed a strong male influence to guide her, a lesser intelligence with a greater capacity for love. This is a modern explanation of the respectability and gentility as noted in Cohen’s “Respectability of Rebecca Reed.”