Final Conference Paper

Leslie Cordero
AML 4101
Dr. Lisa Logan
17 November 2008

Private versus Public Disclosure: How Submissiveness and Secrecy dictate the private Nun’s tale in Six Months in a Convent

Published in March of 1835, Rebecca Theresa Reed’s Six Months in a Convent not only brought back the reformation (a movement in which Martin Luther addressed the nobility and authority of the German empire on the necessity of a reform of the Roman church) but redefined it within its own societal context. While critics maintain that Martin Luther’s treatise and Rebecca Reed’s narrative can hardly sustain a worthy comparison, others say that many similarities (excommunication) in how the occurrences unfolded and how they resulted exist. Although Luther’s denunciation and excommunication - issued by Leo X in the 16th century - was a grave and vital component of the Reformation’s culmination, the burning of the Ursuline Convent by a group of working-class Protestant rioters and the publication of Reed’s narrative in the 19th century proved equally, if not more so, hazardous since “others have threatened its author, and those who should undertake its publication, with a worse excommunication and denunciation than was inflicted upon Luther for his temerity” (12). Confined in an era that enforced and idealized the virtues of True Womanhood (piety, purity, submission, and domesticity), the question then becomes: did Rebecca Reed neglect to fulfill the duties of True Womanhood or was she, in fact, subservient of a patriarchal society? Essentially, the pressure of safeguarding information constricted novices, superiors and other women in Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent to eventually define them – against their own instincts – as “patrons” of the patriarchal hierarchy.

Daniel A. Cohen, in “Miss Reed and the Superiors: The Contradictions of Convent Life in Antebellum America,” argues that while convents united ambitious women in search of “autonomy, sorority, leadership, and accomplishment” (170) into a distinct “separate sphere” that was enforced to adopt these virtues, others proclaimed that promoting women into “separate spheres” stripped them of their female, antebellum American identities. In renouncing their positions as mothers, daughters, wives, etc. and submitting themselves wholly to the will of God and the sanctity of the church, women unintentionally submitted their claim to privacy as well as their claim to informational disclosure. Defining what remains private and what becomes public is crucial in understanding the way in which narratives like Rebecca Reed’s and Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery work within a counter-reformed and socially driven society. In congruence with the church’s intentions, how they set about in accomplishing their goals, and how the [Protestant] public viewed them demarcated that very definition. Women, in such instances, have no primal authority – in either the Protestant community or the Roman Catholic sect – in declaring the exposure of any relevant source of information. It was only when the authority of a male in higher power was given, that women of such obligation were entitled to disclose “public” information.

The narrative begins in the summer of 1826 when Reed has her first encounter with two young ladies of the Roman Catholic order. Barely thirteen, incorrigible, and ignorant of history and the ways of the world, rearing Reed’s interests towards the convent wasn’t difficult after the excessive attention and flattery provided by the solemnly intriguing nuns. Against the wishes and desires of her Protestant father and friends, she eagerly decides to enter the convent as a pupil. Made clear in the narrative, Reed was only allowed by her father the ability to enter the convent after he was reassured by the Sisters that Reed would not be instilled with Roman Catholic ideologies. After a lengthy “interview” process, Reed was accepted by the Bishop as a pupil of the Mount Benedict Nunnery and encouraged by a Mr. R. to secrete “scripture proofs of the infallibility of the Romish Church; as, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it;’ and ‘whose sins ye remit they are remitted.’ ‘He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican’” (57).

Later in the narrative, as Reed begins to walk the reader, or public, through the rituals of surpassing the stages of nunnery, she states that during the time of her vocation she was baptized with the name St. Mary Agnes Teresa. It is important to note that each of the girls, or novices, were given the name “Mary” followed by a saint. This is a symbol of equality amongst all women who submit themselves to patriarchal reign, in which they equally share the burden of secrecy within the church. Upon entering the convent, each women possessed her own testimony, her own ambitions, her own will. Ignorantly declaring an ode to the church, , each woman relinquished the power of her individual voice and essentially her individualistic identity. In his article, Cohen states the following:
“Boston Ursulines called upon young novices to renounce their ‘own ideas, imperfect desires and self-will’ and urged them to cultivate a spirit of ‘profound humility,’ ‘self-denial,’ ‘self-contempt,’ and ‘self annihilation.’ Even fully-professed nuns were, as historian Margaret Susan Thompson has explained, ‘supposed to be docile, submissive, self-effacing, and unworldly” (150).

In an attempt to cultivate submission, docility, and self-effacement women were ultimately viewed as dead to the material world. If this were true for every ambitious woman in search of accomplishment, then did each of those women fail to abide by their establishments’ own moral code? Furthermore, when is it one’s duty to disclose information and where exactly is the line between private and public? If one is witness to an immoral happening, is it not just to expose that very immorality despite of the patriarchal system one has submitted to? For example, page ninety-three of the narrative explains a situation in which Reed was allowed to spend private time with the daughter of Mrs. G (a supposed “friend” within the convent). Upon Reed’s request, after being lavished with gifts and engaged in petty conversation, her companion was to deliver a message specifying Reed’s desire to receive visits from her closest “protestant” friends. However, the message was never delivered “as I have since learned I was deceived in regard to the friendship of Mrs. G.” In said situation, one wonders whether or not the decision to deceive Reed was entirely the intention of Mrs. G, or was she simply submissively following orders instructed to her by a higher power.

On the other hand, the one character, Sister Mary Francis, who strove to fight against patriarchal oppression, failed in all attempts. Prior to Mary Francis’ subtle attempt to escape from the convent, she disclosed to Reed that she would, in fact, be leaving the Ursulines to reside with a different order. When Reed, or Sister Mary Agnes Teresa (as was her ordained name) sat through harsh scrutiny and improper questioning by the Bishop, she inadvertently mentioned that she knew of Sister Mary Francis’ escape from the nunnery and insinuated that she was considering a similar departure. Upon hearing this claim, the Bishop grew irate and exclaimed,
“‘Ah! I know all; confess to me what she told you, and do not dare to deceive me; you cannot deceive God.’ I told him nearly all that had passed between Mary Francis and myself. He said that Mary Francis was not a fit subject for any order, and they were obliged to send her away; that she was deranged, and I had done very wrong in listening to an insane person” (140).

Nineteenth century “separate sphere” ideology (a system that defines a male sphere that is "public” or one concerned with government, trade, business, and law as well as a "private" sphere, encompassing the realm of home, family, and child-rearing) in congruence with True Womanhood (a system in which a set of virtues heightens a woman’s value) stems into what was considered a woman’s private “sphere” and what Catholicism deemed secret, and by when and whom information was dispersed. Is it as simple as private equals “good” and public equals “bad” for women? If this serves true, then women serve merely as tools, in which men of power can manipulate to carry out and reach their own incentives.
“She wrote a letter to my father, of the contents of which I was then ignorant, but have since learned it contained offers of two or three quarters’ schooling, free of expense. My father says he treated it with contempt; and his answer by the bearer was briefly this: ‘he wished me to have nothing to do with the institution; that my friends would prefer my going to a Protestant seminary.’ At my next interview with the Superior, she however told me, my father had become reconciled to my remaining with them two or three quarters; after which time, he would inform them whether he could consent to have me stay there longer, as a teacher of music” (69).
Aware of her father’s initial negation to the church, Reed’s desire to remain submissive and not give way to her own curiosity, neglected to inquire the veracity of the message. The Bishop was aware of the lack of teacher’s within the convent (thus, providing incentive to manipulate the girls’ interest in officiating their vows to the order) and, although only implicated by the text that the Superiors had orders to bring in new instructor‘s amongst the women, they remained dutiful in assuring the task was accomplished by whichever means necessary. Total submissiveness required unquestioning obedience.

In 1520, Martin Luther felt it his duty to denunciate the Roman Catholic sect and expose the injustices in which he was witness to. Whether, partly or entirely fiction, Rebecca Reed’s narrative strove to achieve that same purpose. Convents not only serve as institutions of spiritual and mental growth, but also as spiritual factories that contained research, writing, and other sources of information. When the convent at Mount Benedict in Charlestown, Mass was finally burned down by a fierce group of Protestant men, not only was that gate of information closed, but the women, in a sense, got their voices back. The novel, although emits a discrepancy of veracity, gave light to the individual stories of those who were finally liberated.

Inadvertently, Protestant men proved a double standard during the commencement of the Mount Benedict riot. If a woman did not comply with the duties she was expected to fulfill as “an angel in the house” and genteel wife, she was held in contempt and reprimanded by the same patriarchal society that validated her initially. Cohen states:
“One or two other scraps of evidence suggest that local Protestant men may have not only wanted to protect or liberate the convent women but also to discipline them. In part, the motif of female captivity simply provided members of the mob with a convenient excuse to vent their ethnic and sectarian prejudices. Yet one suspects that it may also have signaled a deeper reluctance to acknowledge that American women might actually prefer the unconventional ‘separate sphere’ of Mount Benedict to the patriarchal households in which most of them had been raised - or even to the newfangled ‘separate sphere’ being carved out by many antebellum women in their own homes” (163).
The very reasons Reed chose to join the convent initially (seclusion, and escape), were the reasons why many women later left the convents.

By the end of Reed’s narrative, however, she successfully managed to escape the convent after realizing that the ideals she had adopted upon entering were mere misconceptions, or rather illusions. Those very illusions which she initially believed to sustain her happiness, ultimately dampened her quest. Thus proving that submission to secrecy within a patriarchal system denounced women’s inherent ability to live. No person, groups or institutions posses the cardinal right to dictate to any individual, despite their creed, sex, race, social status, etc to deprive an individual of their fundamental right to pursue happiness, liberty and peace.