Amanda Ewoldt
Dr. Logan
LIT 6009
24 April 2009
True Womanhood and Anti-Catholicism in R. Reed’s
Six Months in a Convent
In August of 1834, a mob of working class men from Charleston, Massachusetts, attacked and burned an Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict. The mob was at least forty to fifty men strong, all participants wearing disguises. The Mother Superior attempted to reason with the mob, and failing that, to threaten them with a supposed army of twenty thousand Irishman under the command of the Bishop in Boston. When reason and threats failed, the inhabitants of the Convent—roughly a dozen sisters and sixty girls from the ages of six to fourteen—were forced to flee to a nearby refuge while the mob ransacked and burned the Ursuline Convent to the ground (Billington 16). The overarching question of the matter is why would this happen? It seems inconceivable that a mob of men would go so far as to attack an institution made up of women and children.
The answer is not as complicated as one would think. Anti-Catholic and nativist sentiments mixed with the societal mores of the traditional Protestant woman like high-grade pool cleaner and glycerin: explosively. This paper will explore both anti-Catholicism, true womanhood, and Rebecca Reed’s novel to explain not just what happened but why.
One of America’s ugly but defining characteristics is paranoia and obsession with conspiracy theories. There have been quite a few: anti-Masonry, anti-Communist, and anti-Catholicism are a few of the bigger ones. Catholicism was a threat to the Protestant peace of mind; unlike the Protestants who exist in splintered sects, the Catholic Church presents a cohesive front. Further, the Catholics’ powerbase was not located in America—every church was part of a tall hierarchy that could be traced back to the Pope in Rome—at least for then. In Reed’s novel, Bishop Benedict “thought that America rightfully belonged to the Pope, and that his Holiness would take up his residence here at some future day” (Reed 130). Understandably, this made people nervous, as it seemed to go against the fundamental principles of freedom and individuality that America was founded on (Hofstadter 80) and there was a fear that Europe and Rome were trying to take over the government by stealth.
In fact, for years the struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism was looked on as a life or death issue. There was a myth of an imminent Catholic war reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition that persisted into the twentieth century (Hofstadter 83). In the narrative, the Bishop speaks of getting a letter from the Pope himself, congratulating him for “his success in establishing the true religion in the United States, and made him offers of money to advance the interest of the Catholic Church and more firmly establish it in America” (Reed 115-16). To conspiracy theorists who believed that Rome was trying to take over the government, this might have been alarming.
Antebellum American had an obsession with sexual purity, “[a]nti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan” (Hofstadter 83). Indeed “[c]entral to anti-Catholic literature was the articulation of the nature and role of the True Woman” (Pagliarini 99). Common in convent tales such as Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures (though noticeably missing from Six Months in a Convent) is the descriptions of horrors and debauchery that happens behind closed doors, where the priests use convents as brothels. Protestants considered celibacy and rejection of marriage and family to be unnatural—not just for women but also for men. “None but he that is unmarried” says the Bishop, “careth for things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of this world, how he may please his wife” (Reed 116-17). That passage could be construed as an insult—Catholic priests dedicated their lives to God be remaining celibate and unmarried, whereas their Protestant counterparts were married.
This violation of the “‘laws of nature,’ laws that God implemented for the propagation of the species” (Pagliarini 100). This kind of unnaturalness disturbed the social order, especially for the pure and domestic ideal of the true woman. Protestants were worried that under the guidance of male Catholic confessors that true women would discover hidden passions and become everything that the ideal woman was not supposed to be sexually (Pagliarini 107). Perhaps this is one of the reasons that convents generally reeked of impurity, cruelty, vice, corruption, and were unnatural things that injured the reputation of the communities they were in (Kenneally 16).
True Womanhood is a relatively new term, coined in 1966 by Barbara Welter in her groundbreaking essay “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820—1860.” True womanhood was defined by four major characteristics: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (152). The ideal Protestant woman’s place in society was home and hearth. She left the public sphere to her husband while she raised the children and kept the home. She was naturally religious; religion gave her peace of mind, dignity, and did not take her away from her domestic sphere (153). For the true woman, purity was just as important as piety, for women without it were considered to be fallen women (Welter 154). Submissiveness to men was considered to be the natural, God-appointed order of the universe (159). It can be argued that Reed’s Six Months in a Convent reflects what could happen in a world where women are not under the immediate control of men—the destruction that comes from women having the agency to act and rule in the place of men. Certainly the Mother Superior is reported to have been an intimidating and domineering woman (Cohen 1996, 157).
The final quality is domesticity. The true Protestant woman knew her place in society was that of a wife and a mother, “Very rarely a ‘woman of genius’ was absolved from the necessity of marriage, being so extraordinary that she did not need the security or status of being a wife” (170). These instances were rare, as mentioned before. Marriage was generally considered a cure for a girl who was flighty or difficult—the idea being that a firm hand and responsibility would settle her down.
It can be argued that neither Rebecca Reed nor Superior St. George in the narrative could be considered as true women. True women were expected to stay out of the public sphere. Indeed, even the one woman, Sister Mary Magdalene, who is the closest to true womanhood as any of them, could not be considered a true woman. As mentioned above, the “cult of true womanhood” is a modern construct—back in the day true women were judged by respectability and gentility, not necessarily the same things. In the nineteenth century, respectability referred to a person’s moral or religious conduct (Cohen 424). Whether or not a man or woman had money was not the issue; it was in their moral deportment. Indeed, respectability for a woman was piety, submission to her male betters, purity before marriage and absolute faithfulness afterward, and the desire and ability to keep a home and raise a family. A respectable, domestic woman knew her place in society and stayed in her sphere. Gentility was connected with good manners and style of living (Cohen 424).
Domesticity was something of a problem in this definition of the ideal woman. Not every woman had a suitor with prospects who was determined to sweep her away. Thousands of young, unmarried women worked in the public sphere for their living, in the factories (Cohen 425). This was not actively encouraged. Women’s participation in any facet of the public sphere was considered to be questionable. It was men who were supposed to be the breadwinners, engaged in the public eye. One place that women were encouraged to work outside the home was the church. Activity in a church community was domestic, as religion came more naturally to women than it did to men (Welter 153). This is an interesting view that looked good in theory, but threatened men when put to practice. Becoming a nun gave a woman a good deal more agency than she would have had as a married woman. If the convent had a school attached she could teach, she was dedicated to God and the community, and thus could blur the lines of the separate spheres of domesticity and public.
Still, in anti-Catholic literature such as Six Months in a Convent, “the convent thus appeared as a dangerous threat to the values of the pure American woman…the convent system undermined the foundation of the family. Through its seduction and incarceration of the single woman, the convent imperiled the system of marriage” (Pagliarini 115). Because the Catholic woman turned away from her roles as wife and mother to pursue her own spiritual fulfillment, she was seen as grossly lacking in selflessness. She challenged the normal view that woman was a weak and needed a man to look after her by remaining independent (Pagliarini 116). Society would consider the truest, most virtuous woman would be considered sullied and “damaged goods” if she entered a convent, no matter if she had done anything wrong or not.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Ursuline convent, both Rebecca Reed and Mother Superior Mary Edmond St. George’s female respectability came into question. According to the tenets of domesticity, the true woman would keep herself away from scandal, and not take part in it publicly (Cohen 425). Thus, it caused some consternation on both sides when both Reed and St. George engaged in a she said/she said public spat. In order to maintain the image of Reed’s innocence and victimization, her publishers had to add a disclaimer to the prefatory material:
We wish it to be distinctly understood that the publication is not made at the instigation, or on the responsibility of the author. On the contrary, she has very reluctantly yielded to the force of circumstances and the dictates of duty, which, in the opinion of her friends and the friends of truth, have left no other course proper to be pursued; and has placed her manuscript at her disposal. If then there is an error of judgment in giving this work publicity, it belongs to the friends of Miss R., and too many of our most sedate and respectable citizens who have advised with them, and not to herself. (Introduction 13)
This is an interesting play. Not only are they reinforcing her respectability by implying that she bowed to the will of her male superiors in allowing her account to be published, but that she herself expressed a worry about engaging in an unwomanly public scandal. Also, this passage makes clear that her character is unimpeachable, because her friends and community who support her are respectable as well—they would hardly leap to the defense of a fallen, sullied woman.
Reed herself is conscious of this very fine line that she and her supporters are walking. In a letter to the editor of The Courier on January 6th, 1835, she writes: “Much as I am averse to allowing my name to come before the public, in any manner, I cannot, in justice to myself, remain silent when such a gross calumny has been put forth” (Introduction 29). Still, the fact that she does respond to attacks on her character in print, rather than allowing a male friend of hers to do so on her behalf, is suggestive that she was not the meek lamb she was made out to be. Yet her supporters are adamant:
“Miss Reed avoided any publicity that would lead to an excitement against the church. For nearly three years before the destruction of the convent, she had been living in the bosom of her own family, an exemplary member of the Episcopal Church, industriously applying herself…to acquiring and giving instructions to young ladies in music and needlework” (27-8).
She is a good girl, by their accounts. Not a “commonplace chit of a girl” according to Ray Allen Billington (Billington 10).
Whether or not the novel Six Months in a Convent can be held directly responsible for the agitation that led to the destruction of the convent is still up for speculation. Certainly, Reed’s narrative and paranoia that there were plans to kidnap her and take her off to Canada to keep her from speaking out against the horrors of convent life were generally held as truth rather than a possible fiction, “it would not do to have such reports go abroad as these persons carry; that Agnes must be taken care of; that they had better send her to Canada, and that a carriage could cross the line in two or three days…it would not do for the Protestants to get hold of those things and make another ‘fuss’” (Reed 163). Her story seemed to be further corroborated when another nun, Elizabeth Harrison, truly did escape from the convent in a state of mental distress from overwork (Billington 10).
Superior Mary Edmund St. George’s own respectability was called into question as well. A stout, middle-aged woman of medium height, Madame St. George was an intimidating woman with a quick temper and a regal demeanor (Cohen 1996, 157). She was “of quick step and vivacity” haughty and extremely self-assured, described as queenly (Kenneally 17). She is portrayed in the narrative first as a kindly woman, and later becomes a fearsome being in the eyes of Reed and a few other inmates, namely Mary Francis. Mary Francis “feared the Superior as she did a serpent” (Reed 110). Reed herself came to be terrified of the Superior: “I was so frightened by the threats and manner of the Superior, that I sobbed aloud, and blood gushed from my nose and mouth” (144). Until recently, most scholarship has focused on the burning of the convent as an expression of unstable politics, class warfare, and anti-Catholic sentiments, but in 1979, James Kenneally looked at the situation in a different way.
The Superior of the Convent was the very embodiment of the two things that people of the time feared and disliked: a Catholic woman who rejected the traditional roles of women in Protestant America. Women like her frightened men who believed than any change in the status quo would result in the disruption of society (Pagliarini 117). The catalyst that started the riot was that one of the nuns had escaped earlier but had been prevailed upon to return to the convent for a few weeks to finish up her duties. When the appointed time of Harrison’s release came and went and no one had seen her, the people got restless and prepared to destroy the convent if there was not a prompt investigation. To the rioters, they were not destroying a convent but protecting femininity (Kenneally 16-17). St. George’s behavior did nothing to calm the rioters—far from playing the weak damsel in distress, she responded to the crowd in a “manly” fashion. One of the men sent to check on Harrison, Fitch Cutter, admitted that if she had been less feisty and appealed to the crowd’s better natures that perhaps the incident might never have escalated (Kenneally 19). Whether that would have worked can be debated—mob mentality tends to be subversive to reason.
Six Months in a Convent is a part of a long line of anti-Catholic alarmist propaganda. It played into the antebellum America’s worst fears—the takeover and influence of Catholicism on the status quo of society, and the threat of the convents on true womanhood. Protestant Americans did not want women to go beyond their boundaries of house and home into the convent—to sanction such things, they believed, would destroy the social order and cast the young country into chaos at the best, and invite takeovers from the foreign Other of the Catholic Church.
Works Cited:
Cohen, Daniel A. “The Respectability of Rebecca Reed: Genteel Womanhood
and Sectarian Conflict in Antebellum America.” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 419-461. 9 February 2009. www.jstor.org.
Billington, Ray Allen. “The Burning of the Charlestown Convent.” The New
England Quarterly, 10.1 (Mar., 1937) 4-24. www.jstor.org
Reed, Rebecca Theresa. Six Months in a Convent. Boston: Russell, Odiorne &
Metcalf, 1835.
Pagliarini, Marie Ann. “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic
Priest: and Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America.” Religion and American Culture, 9.1 (Winter, 1999), 97-128. www.jstor.org
Kenneally, James J. “The Burning of the Ursuline Convent: A Different View.”
Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 90.1 (1979), 15-21. www.jstor.org
Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harper’s
Magazine, (Nov., 1964), 77-86. www.googlescholar.com
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820—1860.” American
Quarterly, 18.2 (Summer, 1966), 151—174. www.jstor.org
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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.”
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.”
Thursday, April 9, 2009
First Draft--Or At Least What I've Got So Far
Okay, so it isn't complete, but this is what I've got so far. It's a little difficult when I keep finding really cool stuff that I want to use. And I'm afraid that I'm scatterbrained. Be assured, this paper has kept me up nights. As I finish drafting parts of the paper, I'll post them here. I've included my rough outline in the beginning of this, so you and I will both know whereabouts I'm heading. Things will change, they always do, but for now I'm trying to stick to this as much as possible.
Word count: 1849
Outline for Conference Paper
I. Introduction
Thesis: The Catholic inmates of the Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict were perceived as threats to the Protestant woman’s role in society. The way that they lived and their role in the community was closer to that of the New Woman of the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, than the True Woman.
a. A brief history of the Charleston, MA Ursuline Convent
II. Main
a. The True Woman
i. Role of the Protestant woman in society
ii. Respectability and gentility
iii. How do various characters hold up to the ideal of True Womanhood?
b. The New Woman
i. Role of Nuns in the Community
1. Teachers
2. Caregivers of poor
ii. Nuns’ lives
1. Not under the influence of father, brother, or husband
2. Did not raise families
3. Lived in a “mysterious” single-sex community
4. Supported themselves
c. Protestantism vs. Catholicism
i. Paranoid Protestant Politics
ii. Catholics as the “Other”
d. About the riot
i. Possible reasons for the riot
ii. Fall-out of the riot—“attack on defenseless women”
III. Conclusion
Introduction:
The burning of the Charleston Ursuline Convent in August of 1834 has generally been considered by historians to be result of anti-Catholic nativism, class conflict, and hard economic times. However, in recent times, a new interpretation has begun to arise; the idea that the destruction of the convent as an attempt to safeguard common societal values (Kenneally 15). The values in question were in regards to the traditional roles of women in the early nineteenth century America. The Catholic inmates of the Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict were perceived as threats to the Protestant woman’s role in society. The way that they lived and their role in the community was closer to that of the New Woman that emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, than the True Woman of the domestic sphere.
The Ursulines and Their Convent:
The rise and fall of the Boston Ursuline community took place during the 1820s and 1830s, which was roughly the same span of time that a new ideology was taking hold in antebellum America (Cohen 1996 153). This ideology (really not really new, just given a louder voice) has been termed in modern times to be the Cult of True Womanhood. It was in this time period that Catholics—a distrusted minority in the overwhelmingly Protestant nation—had been immigrating to America, and consequently, their faith followed them. New churches and institutions were constantly being established to keep up with the increasing volume of Catholic believers. One sign of this expansion was the establishment of girls’ schools. They offered a fairly solid education for young girls, usually the daughters of middle to upper-class Protestants (Cohen 1996 155).
Of these teaching orders, the Ursulines were the largest. In September of 1820, the Ursuline order opened a convent/day school in Boston, with over one hundred students attending. Unfortunately, the cramped living quarters were inadequate to the support of all the nuns. At least four nuns (including the original Superior) died by 1824. The following year, a new Bishop took over Boston, Benedict Joseph Fenwick. He noticed the inadequate living conditions and commissioned a new convent to be built a few miles away in the rural town of Charleston. This was the location of the Ursuline convent and boarding school on Mt. Benedict (named for the Bishop) that would be ransacked and burned to the ground less than ten years after it was built (Cohen 1996 156).
At around nine o’clock in the evening of August 11th, 1834, a mob of lower-class workers began to gather and call for the destruction of the convent. The one town policeman was left to the charge of crowd control, but one man against fifty is an impossible task (Billington 15). The mob had gathered because a nun, Elizabeth Harrison, had escaped some time earlier but had been prevailed upon to return to the convent for a few weeks. It was agreed that if she still wanted to leave after her time was up, that she would be honorably discharged and let to go her own way. Allegedly, fearing detainment, before she returned she told her Protestant friends to make a stir if she did not emerge within the allotted time. Rumors that she was being held in a secret dungeon below the convent began to circulate.
As the mob became more unruly, the Superior Mary Edmond St. George, tried to reason with the mob, failing that she threatened them which only inflamed them further. Not even the students could talk the mob out of their intent. As fifty or sixty men stormed the convent, the nuns and students who ranged in age from six to fourteen, escaped out the back door while the convent was looted and set afire (Billington 16). The next night, another mob returned to the scene of the crime and set fire to anything that they had missed the night before, and was stopped from destroying a Catholic church only by a regiment of guards assigned to protect the home of one Edward Cutter (Billington 17).
The matter, of course, was complicated in 1835 with the publication of Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent. Reed was a young, impoverished Protestant country girl who had few prospects. She had been forced to give up her education in order to care for her mother who died of consumption, and later she had to take care of her father, who was by then an old man. The novel, part of the “escaped nun” sub-genre of the captivity narratives, is a warning against what would happen should the domestic order be upset.
True Womanhood:
In Barbara Welter’s groundbreaking essay “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” she defines the four categories of the concept of true womanhood: purity, submissiveness, piety, and domesticity (152). The ideal Protestant woman would live up to these qualities, for she was the pillar of virtue in the home, and it was her duty to maintain the home-front. The men were busy building a nation, but it was the woman, submissive to her father, brother, or husband, who held the nation together. She was the paragon of virtue, the homemaker, the raiser of children, and the one active in her religious faith community. Her place was entirely in the domestic sphere. Reed’s Six Months in a Convent took those social mores and turned them upside-down. Not for any feminist purposes, but instead as an example of what would happen if women stepped outside of their proper sphere.
It can be argued that none of the women in the narrative could be considered as true women. True women were expected to stay out of the public sphere. The cult of true womanhood is a modern construct—back in the day true women were judged by respectability and gentility, not necessarily the same things. In the nineteenth century, respectability referred to a person’s moral or religious conduct (Cohen 424). Whether or not a man or woman had money was not the issue; it was in their moral deportment. Indeed, respectability for a woman was piety, submission to her male betters, purity before marriage and absolute faithfulness afterward, and the desire and ability to keep a home and raise a family. A respectable, domestic woman knew her place in society and stayed in her sphere. Gentility was connected with good manners and style of living (Cohen 424).
Domesticity was something of a problem in this definition of the ideal woman. Not every woman had a suitor with prospects who was determined to sweep her away. Thousands of young, unmarried women worked in the public sphere for their living, in the factories (Cohen 425). This was not actively encouraged. Women’s participation in any facet of the public sphere was considered to be questionable. It was men who were supposed to be the breadwinners, engaged in the public eye. One place that women were encouraged to work outside the home was the church. Activity in a church community was domestic, as religion came more naturally to women than it did to men (Welter 153). This is an interesting view that looked good in theory, but threatened men when put to practice. We will return to this later in regards to the nuns.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Ursuline convent, both Rebecca Reed and Mother Superior Mary Edmond St. George’s female respectability came into question. According to the tenets of domesticity, the true woman would keep herself away from scandal, and not take part in it publicly (Cohen 4250. Thus, it caused some consternation on both sides when both Reed and St. George engaged in a she said/she said public spat. In order to maintain the image of Reed’s innocence and victimization, her publishers had to add a disclaimer to the prefatory material:
We wish it to be distinctly understood that the publication is not made at the instigation, or on the responsibility of the author. On the contrary, she has very reluctantly yielded to the force of circumstances and the dictates of duty, which, in the opinion of her friends and the friends of truth, have left no other course proper to be pursued; and has placed her manuscript at her disposal. If then there is an error of judgment in giving this work publicity, it belongs to the friends of Miss R., and to many of our most sedate and respectable citizens who have advised with them, and not to herself. (Introduction 13)
This is an interesting play. Not only are they reinforcing her respectability by implying that she bowed to the will of her male superiors in allowing her account to be published, but that she herself expressed a worry about engaging in an unwomanly public scandal. Also, this passage makes clear that her character is unimpeachable, because her friends and community who support her are respectable as well—they would hardly leap to the defense of a fallen, sullied woman. Reed herself is conscious of this very fine line that she and her supporters are walking. In a letter to the editor of The Courier on January 6th, 1835, she writes: “Much as I am averse to allowing my name to come before the public, in any manner, I cannot, in justice to myself, remain silent when such a gross calumny has been put forth” (Introduction 29). Still, the fact that she does respond to attacks on her character in print, rather than allowing a male friend of hers to do so on her behalf, is suggestive that she was not the meek lamb she was made out to be.
Even so, the Ursuline Convent itself was a genteel place. It catered to the middle class and the wealthy, teaching the girls to be respectable. The daily routines, and even the dress of the students was designed to mold spoiled young ladies into respectable, virtuous, industrious, and genteel young women. It taught them how to get by in life without every indulgence (Cohen 427).
Word count: 1849
Outline for Conference Paper
I. Introduction
Thesis: The Catholic inmates of the Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict were perceived as threats to the Protestant woman’s role in society. The way that they lived and their role in the community was closer to that of the New Woman of the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, than the True Woman.
a. A brief history of the Charleston, MA Ursuline Convent
II. Main
a. The True Woman
i. Role of the Protestant woman in society
ii. Respectability and gentility
iii. How do various characters hold up to the ideal of True Womanhood?
b. The New Woman
i. Role of Nuns in the Community
1. Teachers
2. Caregivers of poor
ii. Nuns’ lives
1. Not under the influence of father, brother, or husband
2. Did not raise families
3. Lived in a “mysterious” single-sex community
4. Supported themselves
c. Protestantism vs. Catholicism
i. Paranoid Protestant Politics
ii. Catholics as the “Other”
d. About the riot
i. Possible reasons for the riot
ii. Fall-out of the riot—“attack on defenseless women”
III. Conclusion
Introduction:
The burning of the Charleston Ursuline Convent in August of 1834 has generally been considered by historians to be result of anti-Catholic nativism, class conflict, and hard economic times. However, in recent times, a new interpretation has begun to arise; the idea that the destruction of the convent as an attempt to safeguard common societal values (Kenneally 15). The values in question were in regards to the traditional roles of women in the early nineteenth century America. The Catholic inmates of the Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict were perceived as threats to the Protestant woman’s role in society. The way that they lived and their role in the community was closer to that of the New Woman that emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, than the True Woman of the domestic sphere.
The Ursulines and Their Convent:
The rise and fall of the Boston Ursuline community took place during the 1820s and 1830s, which was roughly the same span of time that a new ideology was taking hold in antebellum America (Cohen 1996 153). This ideology (really not really new, just given a louder voice) has been termed in modern times to be the Cult of True Womanhood. It was in this time period that Catholics—a distrusted minority in the overwhelmingly Protestant nation—had been immigrating to America, and consequently, their faith followed them. New churches and institutions were constantly being established to keep up with the increasing volume of Catholic believers. One sign of this expansion was the establishment of girls’ schools. They offered a fairly solid education for young girls, usually the daughters of middle to upper-class Protestants (Cohen 1996 155).
Of these teaching orders, the Ursulines were the largest. In September of 1820, the Ursuline order opened a convent/day school in Boston, with over one hundred students attending. Unfortunately, the cramped living quarters were inadequate to the support of all the nuns. At least four nuns (including the original Superior) died by 1824. The following year, a new Bishop took over Boston, Benedict Joseph Fenwick. He noticed the inadequate living conditions and commissioned a new convent to be built a few miles away in the rural town of Charleston. This was the location of the Ursuline convent and boarding school on Mt. Benedict (named for the Bishop) that would be ransacked and burned to the ground less than ten years after it was built (Cohen 1996 156).
At around nine o’clock in the evening of August 11th, 1834, a mob of lower-class workers began to gather and call for the destruction of the convent. The one town policeman was left to the charge of crowd control, but one man against fifty is an impossible task (Billington 15). The mob had gathered because a nun, Elizabeth Harrison, had escaped some time earlier but had been prevailed upon to return to the convent for a few weeks. It was agreed that if she still wanted to leave after her time was up, that she would be honorably discharged and let to go her own way. Allegedly, fearing detainment, before she returned she told her Protestant friends to make a stir if she did not emerge within the allotted time. Rumors that she was being held in a secret dungeon below the convent began to circulate.
As the mob became more unruly, the Superior Mary Edmond St. George, tried to reason with the mob, failing that she threatened them which only inflamed them further. Not even the students could talk the mob out of their intent. As fifty or sixty men stormed the convent, the nuns and students who ranged in age from six to fourteen, escaped out the back door while the convent was looted and set afire (Billington 16). The next night, another mob returned to the scene of the crime and set fire to anything that they had missed the night before, and was stopped from destroying a Catholic church only by a regiment of guards assigned to protect the home of one Edward Cutter (Billington 17).
The matter, of course, was complicated in 1835 with the publication of Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent. Reed was a young, impoverished Protestant country girl who had few prospects. She had been forced to give up her education in order to care for her mother who died of consumption, and later she had to take care of her father, who was by then an old man. The novel, part of the “escaped nun” sub-genre of the captivity narratives, is a warning against what would happen should the domestic order be upset.
True Womanhood:
In Barbara Welter’s groundbreaking essay “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860” she defines the four categories of the concept of true womanhood: purity, submissiveness, piety, and domesticity (152). The ideal Protestant woman would live up to these qualities, for she was the pillar of virtue in the home, and it was her duty to maintain the home-front. The men were busy building a nation, but it was the woman, submissive to her father, brother, or husband, who held the nation together. She was the paragon of virtue, the homemaker, the raiser of children, and the one active in her religious faith community. Her place was entirely in the domestic sphere. Reed’s Six Months in a Convent took those social mores and turned them upside-down. Not for any feminist purposes, but instead as an example of what would happen if women stepped outside of their proper sphere.
It can be argued that none of the women in the narrative could be considered as true women. True women were expected to stay out of the public sphere. The cult of true womanhood is a modern construct—back in the day true women were judged by respectability and gentility, not necessarily the same things. In the nineteenth century, respectability referred to a person’s moral or religious conduct (Cohen 424). Whether or not a man or woman had money was not the issue; it was in their moral deportment. Indeed, respectability for a woman was piety, submission to her male betters, purity before marriage and absolute faithfulness afterward, and the desire and ability to keep a home and raise a family. A respectable, domestic woman knew her place in society and stayed in her sphere. Gentility was connected with good manners and style of living (Cohen 424).
Domesticity was something of a problem in this definition of the ideal woman. Not every woman had a suitor with prospects who was determined to sweep her away. Thousands of young, unmarried women worked in the public sphere for their living, in the factories (Cohen 425). This was not actively encouraged. Women’s participation in any facet of the public sphere was considered to be questionable. It was men who were supposed to be the breadwinners, engaged in the public eye. One place that women were encouraged to work outside the home was the church. Activity in a church community was domestic, as religion came more naturally to women than it did to men (Welter 153). This is an interesting view that looked good in theory, but threatened men when put to practice. We will return to this later in regards to the nuns.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Ursuline convent, both Rebecca Reed and Mother Superior Mary Edmond St. George’s female respectability came into question. According to the tenets of domesticity, the true woman would keep herself away from scandal, and not take part in it publicly (Cohen 4250. Thus, it caused some consternation on both sides when both Reed and St. George engaged in a she said/she said public spat. In order to maintain the image of Reed’s innocence and victimization, her publishers had to add a disclaimer to the prefatory material:
We wish it to be distinctly understood that the publication is not made at the instigation, or on the responsibility of the author. On the contrary, she has very reluctantly yielded to the force of circumstances and the dictates of duty, which, in the opinion of her friends and the friends of truth, have left no other course proper to be pursued; and has placed her manuscript at her disposal. If then there is an error of judgment in giving this work publicity, it belongs to the friends of Miss R., and to many of our most sedate and respectable citizens who have advised with them, and not to herself. (Introduction 13)
This is an interesting play. Not only are they reinforcing her respectability by implying that she bowed to the will of her male superiors in allowing her account to be published, but that she herself expressed a worry about engaging in an unwomanly public scandal. Also, this passage makes clear that her character is unimpeachable, because her friends and community who support her are respectable as well—they would hardly leap to the defense of a fallen, sullied woman. Reed herself is conscious of this very fine line that she and her supporters are walking. In a letter to the editor of The Courier on January 6th, 1835, she writes: “Much as I am averse to allowing my name to come before the public, in any manner, I cannot, in justice to myself, remain silent when such a gross calumny has been put forth” (Introduction 29). Still, the fact that she does respond to attacks on her character in print, rather than allowing a male friend of hers to do so on her behalf, is suggestive that she was not the meek lamb she was made out to be.
Even so, the Ursuline Convent itself was a genteel place. It catered to the middle class and the wealthy, teaching the girls to be respectable. The daily routines, and even the dress of the students was designed to mold spoiled young ladies into respectable, virtuous, industrious, and genteel young women. It taught them how to get by in life without every indulgence (Cohen 427).
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tangent
Thank Heavens that only the draft is due on Thursday. This paper looks like it could be a long bugger...maybe I'll get to use it for my Capstone course in the fall? That would be awesome.
I had never really known how strong the anti-Catholic sentiments were in antebellum America. It has been rather eye opening. Can't say that it mystifies me, though. We've had a really long, really ugly history. I suppose that's why all those born-again Evangelists who come through my register at Publix keep giving me pamphlets about burning in Hell if I don't repent. I tell them I'm a practicing Catholic, and they only get more worried and insistent that I take the damn things. At least I don't get nearly as many as I used to. Used to get three or four every month, whereas now I get one every two or three months.
Victory? Not so sure. Nowadays, instead of asking me outright, they practically throw the things at me, or hand them to me quickly with their credit card slips and make a run for it. Got one just last Saturday, actually. They've changed the format. Saving souls is a sneaky business, especially since most Protestants think that the Pope actually is (or is a stand-in for) the Anti-Christ.
Hmm. I forgot the original reason that I was posting on this thing. It'll come to me eventually. I suppose I should get back to my ridiculous amount of reading, and figure out how to put it all together in a way that doesn't make me sound like a complete incompetent. *sigh*
I had never really known how strong the anti-Catholic sentiments were in antebellum America. It has been rather eye opening. Can't say that it mystifies me, though. We've had a really long, really ugly history. I suppose that's why all those born-again Evangelists who come through my register at Publix keep giving me pamphlets about burning in Hell if I don't repent. I tell them I'm a practicing Catholic, and they only get more worried and insistent that I take the damn things. At least I don't get nearly as many as I used to. Used to get three or four every month, whereas now I get one every two or three months.
Victory? Not so sure. Nowadays, instead of asking me outright, they practically throw the things at me, or hand them to me quickly with their credit card slips and make a run for it. Got one just last Saturday, actually. They've changed the format. Saving souls is a sneaky business, especially since most Protestants think that the Pope actually is (or is a stand-in for) the Anti-Christ.
Hmm. I forgot the original reason that I was posting on this thing. It'll come to me eventually. I suppose I should get back to my ridiculous amount of reading, and figure out how to put it all together in a way that doesn't make me sound like a complete incompetent. *sigh*
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Ignore Me, I'm Just Rambling
Three and a half weeks to go. It is Crunch Time. For some reason, I think I should be panicked, but I'm not. It would take too much energy.
In any case, I have devolved into a split personality. There's the kid in me that would much prefer to go play in the street or wash my car--especially on such a pretty day--and the grown up that says "If you don't quit procrastinating and get to work, there will be no 'NCIS' or 'The Mentalist' for you tonight."
Well, bugger. I suppose if I'm gonna be like that....
In any case, I have devolved into a split personality. There's the kid in me that would much prefer to go play in the street or wash my car--especially on such a pretty day--and the grown up that says "If you don't quit procrastinating and get to work, there will be no 'NCIS' or 'The Mentalist' for you tonight."
Well, bugger. I suppose if I'm gonna be like that....
Monday, March 30, 2009
In Context...
Contextual Materials
Rebecca Reed’s “Six Months in a Convent” deals with two main issues. The first one is anti-Catholicism. In the Protestant antebellum America, Catholics were regarded with no small amount of suspicion. Perhaps rightly so; the Catholic Church is renowned for keeping its own council and its rituals secret, so misunderstandings have and do occur. The more paranoid of the antebellum conspiracy theorists worried that the Vatican had designs on taking over the government.
The second issue is not directly addressed in the novel but is an integral part of the public reaction and the falling-out of the burning of the Charleston, MA, Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict in 1834. Catholicism—more specifically, nuns and their convents—posed a threat to the American Protestant woman’s role in society, or true womanhood. Nuns chose to remain single, thereby rejecting the husband and children that defined the woman’s sphere, and had a remarkable amount of autonomy in the community for those times.
The documents below are gathered with the intent of helping a reader of “Six Months in a Convent” understand the text in the contexts of anti-Catholicism, true women, new women, nuns, and the riot. The materials are separated under category headings.
Anti-Catholicism:
1. Billington, Ray Allen. “Tentative Bibliography of Anti-Catholic Propaganda in the United States (1800-1860). The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Jan., 1933), pp. 492-513. http://www.jstor.org
2. Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86. http://www.zbths.org/1653109815561217/lib/1653109815561217/_files/Richard_Hofstadter.pdf
Hofstadter examines the history of the paranoid, conspiracy-theorist form of politics from the 1700’s to the twentieth century in America, including the anti-Masonist movements as well as anti-Catholicism. Anti-Catholic conspiracies include Maria Monk’s escaped nun tale, the belief of a Catholic-Protestant holy war sanctioned by Rome, priestly spies, and that the Pope and Europe seek to take over the government. This essay is important because these paranoid ideas were still thriving well in the nineteenth-century.
3. Griffin, Susan M. Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Griffin examines the role and form of Anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century literature, as a genre. This might help a reader understand SMiaC better in regards to the genre of the anti-Catholic “escaped nun” tale.
True Womanhood:
1. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, 18.2 (Summer, 1966), pp. 151-174. http://www.jstor.org
Welter’s “Cult of True Womanhood” explains exactly what the roles of nineteenth-century women were, the virtues ideal women were expected to possess, and the rationale behind them.
2. Roberts, Mary Louise. “True Womanhood Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History, 14.1 (Spring 2002), pp. 150-156. Academic Search Premier. http://ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login?URL=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=6479854&site=ehost-live
Robert’s responds to Welter’s “Cult of True Womanhood” for not having a strong enough analytic framework, and briefly looks at the transition from the ideal True Woman to the New Woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century.
New Womanhood:
Todd, Ellen Wiley. The “New Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. eScholarship Editions http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft9k4009m7;brand=eschol
This is an eBook that can be found freely over the web. The first chapter in particular will serve as a good outline for what exactly the New Woman is. After reading the essays on true womanhood, the scandal of SMiaC will become much clearer, as the inmates of the Ursuline Convent (including Reed herself) start to resemble more the New Woman than the True Woman.
Nuns:
http://www.CatholicNunsToday.org
A brief site about what exactly nuns and sisters are and do, the roles they fulfill in their communities, and a definition of their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. If I were editing a new edition of SMiaC, I would certainly make sure that the diverse roles of Catholic nuns and convents in the community were explained.
Charleston Convent:
"Burning of the Charlestown Convent," Boston Evening Transcript, 12 August, 1834.
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/949.htm
This site contains a transcript of the Boston Evening paper regarding the burning and fall-out of the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charleston. The site is a part of the Yale “Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.”If I were editing a new edition of SMiaC, I would definitely seek to include these papers.
Rebecca Reed’s “Six Months in a Convent” deals with two main issues. The first one is anti-Catholicism. In the Protestant antebellum America, Catholics were regarded with no small amount of suspicion. Perhaps rightly so; the Catholic Church is renowned for keeping its own council and its rituals secret, so misunderstandings have and do occur. The more paranoid of the antebellum conspiracy theorists worried that the Vatican had designs on taking over the government.
The second issue is not directly addressed in the novel but is an integral part of the public reaction and the falling-out of the burning of the Charleston, MA, Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict in 1834. Catholicism—more specifically, nuns and their convents—posed a threat to the American Protestant woman’s role in society, or true womanhood. Nuns chose to remain single, thereby rejecting the husband and children that defined the woman’s sphere, and had a remarkable amount of autonomy in the community for those times.
The documents below are gathered with the intent of helping a reader of “Six Months in a Convent” understand the text in the contexts of anti-Catholicism, true women, new women, nuns, and the riot. The materials are separated under category headings.
Anti-Catholicism:
1. Billington, Ray Allen. “Tentative Bibliography of Anti-Catholic Propaganda in the United States (1800-1860). The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Jan., 1933), pp. 492-513. http://www.jstor.org
2. Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86. http://www.zbths.org/1653109815561217/lib/1653109815561217/_files/Richard_Hofstadter.pdf
Hofstadter examines the history of the paranoid, conspiracy-theorist form of politics from the 1700’s to the twentieth century in America, including the anti-Masonist movements as well as anti-Catholicism. Anti-Catholic conspiracies include Maria Monk’s escaped nun tale, the belief of a Catholic-Protestant holy war sanctioned by Rome, priestly spies, and that the Pope and Europe seek to take over the government. This essay is important because these paranoid ideas were still thriving well in the nineteenth-century.
3. Griffin, Susan M. Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Griffin examines the role and form of Anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century literature, as a genre. This might help a reader understand SMiaC better in regards to the genre of the anti-Catholic “escaped nun” tale.
True Womanhood:
1. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, 18.2 (Summer, 1966), pp. 151-174. http://www.jstor.org
Welter’s “Cult of True Womanhood” explains exactly what the roles of nineteenth-century women were, the virtues ideal women were expected to possess, and the rationale behind them.
2. Roberts, Mary Louise. “True Womanhood Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History, 14.1 (Spring 2002), pp. 150-156. Academic Search Premier. http://ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login?URL=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=6479854&site=ehost-live
Robert’s responds to Welter’s “Cult of True Womanhood” for not having a strong enough analytic framework, and briefly looks at the transition from the ideal True Woman to the New Woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century.
New Womanhood:
Todd, Ellen Wiley. The “New Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. eScholarship Editions http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft9k4009m7;brand=eschol
This is an eBook that can be found freely over the web. The first chapter in particular will serve as a good outline for what exactly the New Woman is. After reading the essays on true womanhood, the scandal of SMiaC will become much clearer, as the inmates of the Ursuline Convent (including Reed herself) start to resemble more the New Woman than the True Woman.
Nuns:
http://www.CatholicNunsToday.org
A brief site about what exactly nuns and sisters are and do, the roles they fulfill in their communities, and a definition of their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. If I were editing a new edition of SMiaC, I would certainly make sure that the diverse roles of Catholic nuns and convents in the community were explained.
Charleston Convent:
"Burning of the Charlestown Convent," Boston Evening Transcript, 12 August, 1834.
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/949.htm
This site contains a transcript of the Boston Evening paper regarding the burning and fall-out of the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charleston. The site is a part of the Yale “Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.”If I were editing a new edition of SMiaC, I would definitely seek to include these papers.
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