Proposal

Proposal
Leslie Cordero
Dr. Lisa Logan
AML 4101
Nov. 26, 2008

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


Emerging in a time of counter-reformation, Rebecca Reed’s narrative of Six Months in a Convent closely resembles a similar treatise written by Martin Luther in 1520, in which he adamantly, yet persuasively, exposes occurrences affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church dealing with several abuse scandals and declaring a necessary reformation in the church. Consequently, Luther was excommunicated and “delivered unto Satan for the destruction of his flesh.” Therefore, as a woman raised in Protestant antebellum America, who shared close ties with the Roman Catholic church – both constricted within a patriarchal system – did Rebecca Reed neglect to fulfill the duties of true womanhood or was she, in fact, subservient of a patriarchal society? In this paper, I will demonstrate how the pressure of safeguarding information and constricting novices, superiors and other women in Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent defined them – against their own instincts – as “patrons” of the patriarchal hierarchy.

The preface defines what is private and public in congruence with the church’s intentions, how they set about in accomplishing their goals, and how the [Protestant] public viewed them. 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. What Six Months in a Convent successfully depicted was the general idea of equality amongst women. When young girls chose to enter the convent and adopted their “St. Mary’s,” they relinquished their personal stories, their voices. Therefore, submitting themselves as a class of women to a long-reigning patriarchal hierarchy. When the burning of the convent took place in August of 1834, many of those women got their voices back. They were liberated from the oppressive dictatorship of Roman Catholic authority.

This paper will attempt to convey how the 19th century “separate sphere” ideology in congruence with True Womanhood, 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/good, public/bad for women? Essentially, I would like to consider how these relationships are prevalent in modern society and to what extent “secrecy,” as an American cultural bystander, has been implemented into the country’s workmanship within a patriarchal system.