St. Mary's Convent; Or, Chapters in the Life of a Nun
After spending several pages on Jeanie Selina Dammast's1 St. Mary's Convent; Or, Chapters in the Life of a Nun (1866), the Catholic journalist James Britten drily notes that "I have dealt with this story at considerable length, because it contains the stock features which characterize Protestant stories, and is, moreover, entirely free from the indecencies which often render convent fictions unsuitable for general perusal." Britten goes on, somewhat bemusedly, to observe that "[i]t is difficult to imagine that it is written seriously"--which is, in fact, the novel's unintentional effect. Britten was reading St. Mary's Convent towards the end of the century, possibly around the time it was republished in 1899 (the edition I own), and by that point it must have seemed to stagger uncomfortably under the heavy burden of its accumulated anti-Catholic tropes. It's no accident that Maria La Monaca2 can discuss it interchangeably with other convent novels of the period: among other things, I counted such mainstays of the genre as imprisoned nuns, confiscated Bibles, female Jesuits (!), forced novitiates, Biblical illiteracy, and manipulative Mother Superiors, not to mention Protestant evangelism and search warrants.3 Moreover, St. Mary's Convent draws heavily from Gothic (the innocent virgin entrapped by evil forces) and melodrama (a priest exits a room with a "malignant scowl," then "[shakes] his clenched hand" in our heroine's "direction" while vowing vengeance [31]). It's quite possibly the least original anti-Catholic novel I've read in some time, which is certainly saying something.
Nevertheless, I'd like to use it to perform a little experiment. As my (few) readers may recall, I tend to harp on the mismatch between my religious novels and theoretical positions developed from canonical works. Earlier this week, I read a quite interesting study by Andrew H. Miller, The Burdens of Perfection: On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (2008), itself an experiment in what Miller calls "implicative criticism"--a criticism that "invites [...] perfecting," instead of declaring itself fully accomplished (30). Miller argues that one of the frameworks for Victorian moral perfectionism evangelicalism's insistence on "substitutionist atonement," which "amplified the central dynamic of pefectionism in which an exemplary figure is understood to anticipate and elicit our own nature" (21). The perfectionist drive originates in "skepticism" and moves towards "second-person relations" (72)--that is, relations between me/you instead of me/they--which literature enables through such techniques as free indirect discourse and casuistry. As Miller explains, casuistry reveals the process of "other people's thinking" (105), and thus enables us to enter "into second-person relations with others" (112). In a novel, a character who imitates a positive example successfully does so not by blindly copying outward actions, but by thinking him- or herself (as far as is possible) into the other's mind. Doing the former merely results in the moral hypocrisy we associate with Dickens' stereotypical evangelicals, whited sepulchres all.
Miller's arguments involve further complexities about perspective, some of which I'll address in what follows. For now, I want to note that despite his nod to evangelicalism, the study itself is almost entirely free of evangelicals; even the Christians who wander in are, like Newman, quite ex-evangelical. To unfold his position, Miller instead turns to a sampling of canonical figures, especially Austen, Dickens, and Eliot (with assists from Browning and Newman), plus contemporary and Victorian philosophers (especially Stanley Cavell). He chooses authors already noted for their sophisticated accounts of subjectivity, their exquisite mastery of language, and their willingness to experiment with style and form. In other words, he chooses authors whose work responds well to and rewards close reading. Now, as a fan of fiction that rewards close reading, I'm not objecting to this approach; however, by seeking the Victorian story of moral perfection in works that emphasize complexity (linguistic, structural, etc.), Miller winds up with a version of moral perfectionism that itself emphasizes complexity--specifically, the complexity of close reading. Take it as read that I find Miller's readings of Eliot, Dickens, and company entirely convincing (which I do). What happens when we look at a novel that calls the close reading of other selves into question?
Emily, our heroine, undergoes no conversion experience. She begins and ends the novel "deeply imbued with the spirit of Protestantism" (16), and never seriously entertains any notion that Roman Catholicism is right. More strikingly, her lifelong devotion to an ailing, now-dead mother has made her incapable of detecting secrets, and this constitutes proof of her virtue. Emily doesn't register the extent of her father's perfidy until he lays it out for her in a letter. She fails to realize that the priest wishes to entrap her. When her friend Mary Theresa momentarily seems alienated from her, Emily cannot figure out why. Even after the Mother Superior, Mrs. Ellerby, has made her designs clear, Emily cannot even begin to imagine that Mrs. Ellerby might do something truly iniquitous (like slipping a sedative into her wine). In fact, one of her rare attempts to imagine another's thoughts, brought on by her father's secret interception of her letters, is put down to the sin of "pride": she began "to imagine that her aunt and cousins had ceased to love her" (28-29). And she's wrong. By contrast, her devoted but unconverted friend, Sister Mary Theresa, has to warn Emily not to tell her where she has hidden her late mother's Bible, lest she be interrogated by higher-ups (63); similarly, Mary Theresa quickly realizes that Emily must have been drugged (80).
As it happens, the novel associates Mary Theresa's skill at accurately analyzing and anticipating other minds with Catholicism. Emily's father, Captain Seward, converts because "the monks [...] had carefully noted every change and phase of feeling in their guest, and suited their plans to it" (11). Similarly, Mrs. Ellerby gains her momentary ascendancy by "pretending to enter into her [Emily's] feelings and sympathize with her" (29), while the priest pretends to be "actuated solely by an ardent desire for her spiritual welfare" (29). Sympathy itself is not the issue here--Emily speaks "sympathizingly" to Mary Theresa at their first meeting (41)--but the ability to imagine "deep" mental states is. Tellingly, Emily sympathizes with Mary Theresa because Mary Theresa relates her story, not because Emily speculates about the inner workings of her new friend's mind. We never see any sign that Emily is capable of any such thing, or even that such a skill would be admirable. To borrow a turn of phrase from Elaine Hadley, Emily and Protestantism are in the "melodramatic mode": "people are socially constituted and therefore recognizable to one another as long as they participate in sympathetic exchange," exchanges which are thoroughly "public" in nature.4 In this mode, "hidden selves" are necessarily up to no good; by the end, such selves must "both see and be seen" (31). Emily presumes that there are no hidden selves--indeed, she seems unaware that such things could be--whereas the Roman Catholic characters possess, interpret, monitor, and indeed produce such selves as a matter of course.
The novel's antagonism to deep selves correlates directly with its celebration of Bible reading. We know that the priest is bad news because he insists on engaging in difficult theological debates. Our heroine "found herself deep in a theological argument, in which, while seeing the light she seemed to be feeling her way through a thick darkness that obscured her mental vision" (19), and later finds her mind "frequently clouded" (30) by the priest's claims. Only the "unerring guide" (30) of the Bible keeps her on the straight and narrow, for the Bible itself demonstrates "the erroneous teaching of the Church of Rome" (30). Unsurprisingly, when Mary Theresa finally converts, it's the result of searching "Emily's little Bible" (112). Like many evangelical novels, St. Mary's Convent tries to detach interpretation from Bible reading altogether. Where the manmade arguments of Catholic theology produce "darkness," the divine Word deals in "unerring" and self-evident truths. Emily does not need to interpret the Bible--to locate hidden meanings or detect inconsistencies--because it means exactly what it says. The Bible, Emily tells Mary Theresa, is "the guide to all truth" (63): all propositions must be tested against the Bible, but the Bible is tested by no proposition. There are no doubts here.
Miller says of Newman that his "perfectionism invites his listeners and readers to imitate a particular, heavily burdened relation to language: a particular interpretive practice--one that turns on our abilities to convert words through our response to them, thus allowing them to convert us--on which conversion our own salvation rests" (160).5 And, to an extent, this reading of Newman covers Dammast's own intentions: Catholicism fails because it does not allow itself to be read by the Bible. But Newman admits the possibility of difficulty in Bible reading, whereas Dammast proposes only the extremes of reading a self-evident text (which "reads" you because it is self-evident) or not reading the text at all. Dammast wants the "presto!" model of Bible reading in play, which holds that there cannot be a problem if the Bible serves as its own interpreter, unimpeded by any outside interference from such pesky things as Church authority or tradition. However, her antagonism to interpretation doesn't stop there.
In St. Mary's Convent, there are no secrets from the reader. We know that Captain Seward, the priest, the monks, the Mother Superior, and several of the nuns are all bad, duplicitous people. We know when they're being strategic and when they're being cruel. We know when Emily gets things wrong. We know that her Protestant lover and his family haven't disowned her. We overhear Mary Theresa's profound despair. We hear the female Jesuit's story about deceiving a Protestant family, but we don't see the deception in progress. The closest we get to a secret is a letter Emily receives from her father (55), which temporarily sends her into a catatonic state, but even its contents are revealed just a few pages later (62). (Emily's mental breakdown seems to correspond to the moment of secrecy, as it were.) Even then, though, Emily's moment of collapse is proportional to the horror of the news. By contrast, Miller, analyzing Dickens' "narratorial withdrawal" (66) in Hard Times, notes how it "increases the air of uncertainty and adds to our sense of distance--though it cultivates our own wondering before her [Louisa] as well" (66-67). Dammast has absolutely no interest in sparking "uncertainty" or "wondering," and aligns every form of uncertainty with evil. Emily gets into trouble (for a few months, anyway) because her simplicity renders her incapable of interpretation; the narrator demonstrates the existence of "hidden selves," then makes it unnecessary for us to read "into" them. We don't need to engage in close reading--in fact, we're being discouraged from doing so. Reading to the end merely confirms the rightness of where Emily was at the beginning.
Now, I'm not arguing that Miller is wrong--quite the contrary, in fact. We can still see some signs of his understanding of moral perfectionism in Mary Theresa's story: she begins in a state of existential despair and alienation ("not one to whom I can open my heart" [46]), develops a friendship with Emily, and finally converts to Protestantism and marries (both on the last page). Second-person relations in action, clearly. However, the answer to her problem does not involve the careful interpretive strategies and identifications laid out in Miller's work. It's not even clear that it requires Emily, except as a vehicle for transmitting the Bible. Instead, the only workable solution is to read the Bible--which, again, requires no external aids and involves no interpretive difficulties. (For that matter, the novel doesn't present the Bible as a repository of figures to emulate, but as the authentic source of doctrine.) And, as it happens, we are not asked to watch her conversion unfold. Again, it's the "presto!" theory of Bible reading: you read the Bible, and boom! you're Protestant. As a didactic author, Dammast does her best to eradicate everything that Miller celebrates in Eliot or Dickens. Aileen Fyfe notes that Christian scientific publications "limited the range of interpretations open to the reader, by making it more difficult to read an infidel message against the Christian tone," and Dammast's novel engages in similarly self-protective strategies.6 To go back to Miller's own words, the novel endorses the "conclusive" (30), not the "implicative."
My point, again, is not that Miller is incorrect. (Arguably, this blog post is doing exactly what Miller asks me to do with his book!) And depending on where you look, some non-canonical authors might approximate what Miller finds in Dickens and Eliot, while others run even further away. I am arguing that this particular evangelical novel--as cliched as it is--not only defies the narrative techniques that Miller identifies, but actually singles them out as potentially dangerous. This, then, is a very different understanding of moral perfectionism, featuring strategies and assumptions that (rather painfully) conflict with what academics (even those professedly not engaged in aesthetic evaluation) are trained to seek and respect.
1 In all likelihood, Dammast is the woman discussed in this genealogical thread, given that she had earlier published as Jeanie Selina Reeves and was, indeed, Irish.
2 See Maria La Monaca, Masked Atheism: Catholicism and the Secular Victorian Home (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008), 100-04.
3 Dammast may have been thinking about Charles Newdigate Newdegate's energetic campaigning to have convents subjected to official scrutiny, as Newdegate had been on the warpath since the early 1850s. See Walter Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982), 62-73.
4 Elaine Hadley, Melodramatic Tactics: Theatricalized Dissent in the English Marketplace, 1800-1885 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 31.
5 Which is, incidentally, how the theologian Wesley Kort defines "scriptural" reading. See "Take, Read": Scripture, Textuality, and Cultural Practice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
6 Aileen Fyfe, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 264.