Contextual Documents

A short Maria Monk bio

Appendix to Monk's text (skip to page 201-ish)
Includes reviews, refutations, Monk's personal defenses, etc.  The link sticks you onto the title page, but skip to page 201 or so for the beginning of the appendix.

Further Disclosures by Maria Monk
Warning...it's long.

Affidavit by Maria Monk's Mother
According to her mom:  she's never been in a convent but was in fact driven crazy by a pencil shoved into her ear at an early age--thus not the most credible of sources.  Nice.

Another review/refutation from 1871
35 years later people, people are still pissed off.

Some background about Maria Monk and Rebecca Reed

Proposal

“This singular woman”: Mad Jane Ray and the Unruly Female
Body in Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures

Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal has often been discussed in the context of the nineteenth-century Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda novel (Ray Billington, Jenny Franchot, and Nancy Schultz,). This genre is frequently examined not only in light of the nineteenth-century religious and political climate but also in relation to issues of female domesticity and agency. In addition, Joseph Mannard, Susan Griffin, and others consider the convent novel in relation to the American domestic novel also popular at the time, arguing that the convent tale questions nineteenth-century paradigms of female domesticity. My project will engage with this body of research by examining Monk’s portrayal of mad Jane Ray. This character provides a marginal voice that confronts both the ideal of the domestic woman and the disciplinary systems of control and silence apparent not only in the convent but in culture more generally. I argue that Jane Ray’s status as an unruly madwoman, as Other, provides a space outside these systems from which to question, subvert, and eventually break them down.

My argument engages previous research on Awful Disclosures, the convent novel, and the captivity narrative, focusing on studies of female otherness, including Gilbert and Gubar’s Madwoman in the Attic and more current scholarship that addresses issues of transgressive and/or monstrous female bodies, carnival theory and the inversion of gender, transgression of place, and women’s subversive speech acts.

In today’s cultural climate, in which the problematic nature of the female body is still very much with us (as evidenced in the writings of Haraway, Halberstam, Butler, and countless other feminist and queer theorists), it will be useful to examine this older text through a more contemporary lens. Recent scholarly revisitation of this older text helps in the creation of a “usable past,” by which we can further understand historical representations of gender and thus come closer to understanding and rectifying those in our own time.

Abstract

Griffin, Susan. “Awful Disclosures: Women’s Evidence in the Escaped Nun’s Tale.”
PMLA 111.1 (1996): 93-107. JSTOR. Web. 14 Sept. 2010.

Griffin examines the proliferation of escaped nun’s tales from the 1830s to the 1850s, most notably those of Maria Monk and Rebecca Reed, in light of not only the tradition of anti-Catholic literature propagated by Protestants at the time but also the implications of the female religious renegade for women more broadly. By juxtaposing the escaped nun’s tale with the more popular genre of the nineteenth-century women’s domestic novel, Griffin illustrates how the problematic figure of the escaped nun, her status as both accuser and evidence of Catholic crimes, and the discourse surrounding her imprisonment and escape undermine the authoritative female ideal exemplified in the domestic novel. She outlines common tropes in escaped nuns’ tales, particularly those relating to supposed proof of the author’s veracity via strategies of both inclusion (maps and diagrams, interviews, depositions, corroborating articles from clergy, etc.) and exclusion (pointing to but suppressing certain supposed evidence because it is too shocking, too racy, lost, or inaccessible somehow), creating “blank spaces” (99) for the reader to construct the textual reality of the narratives. She places this common emphasis on authorial veracity in the context of nineteenth-century attitudes toward women’s evidence in the public sphere, arguing that, as female public speech and agency was at the time viewed as transgressive, women must gain the approval and backing of men before engaging in public discourse; this necessity reveals itself in the often male-dominated evidence of the nuns’ tales. However, these excessive corroborations also serve to undermine the veracity of the female speakers, as their adherence to generic tropes and conventions further fictionalizes the content of the narratives; women’s evidence, then, is both insisted upon and simultaneously discounted, further complicating the question of female agency.

In my paper, I plan to discuss issues of female transgressiveness and agency in terms of the body, speech, and writing. This article provides useful background information on the transgressive nature not only of the escaped nun’s tale genre itself but also of its authors, characters, and audiences. I plan to use this article and others like it to illustrate the complications inherent in the feminine struggle for bodily agency in Awful Disclosures, the places in which this struggle meets with resistance, and the ways in which it attempts, successfully or unsuccessfully, to overcome it.

Preliminary Bibliography

Billington, Ray. “Maria Monk and Her Influence.” The Catholic Historical Review
22.3 (1936): 283-96. JSTOR. Web. 11 Sept. 2010.

---. The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1938. Print.

Blair, Jennifer. “Surface Interiorities: Representing the Quebec Convent.”
English Studies in Canada 31.1 (2005): 69-95. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.

---. “The Knowledge of ‘Sex’ and the Lattice of the Confessional.”
Recalling Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural
Production. Ed. Jennifer Blair, Daniel Coleman, Kate Higginson, Lorraine
York. 173-210. Print.

Casteras, Susan. “Virgin Vows: The Early Victorian Artists’ Portrayal of Nuns and
Novices.” Victorian Studies 24.2 (1981): 157-84. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn. “Captivity and the Literary Imagination.” The
Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing. Ed. Dale
Bauer and Philip Gould. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Google Books.
Web. 27 Sept. 2010.

Euzenas, Lynn. Illicit Propriety: Protestants: Sexualized Convent Narratives, and
Pornography in Nineteenth-Century America. Diss. The Claremont Graduate
University, 2006. Proquest Dissertations & Theses. Web. 27
September 2010.

Franchot, Jenny. Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with
Catholicism. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. Print.

Griffin, Susan. “Awful Disclosures: Women’s Evidence in the Escaped Nun’s Tale.”
PMLA 111.1 (1996): 93-107. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.

Ingram, Philip. “Protestant Patriarchy and the Catholic Priesthood in Nineteenth
Century England.” Journal of Social History 24.4 (1991): 783-97. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.

Mannard, Joseph. “’Maternity . . . of the Spirit’: Nuns and Domesticity in Antebellum
America.” U. S. Catholic Historian 5.3/4 (1986): 305-24. JSTOR. Web. 11
Sept. 2010.

Monk, Maria. Awful Disclosures, by Maria Monk, of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of
Montreal, Revised, with an Appendix Containing, Part 1. Reception of the First
Editions. Part II. Sequel of Her Narrative. Part III. Review of the Case: Also, a
Supplement, Giving More Particulars of the Nunnery and Grounds. New York:
Maria Monk, 1836. Early Canadiana Online. Web. 11 Sept. 2010.

O’Brien, Susan. “Terra Incognita: The Nun in Nineteenth-Century England.” Past
& Present 121 (1988): 110-40. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.

Pagliarini, Marie. “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An
Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America.” Religion and
American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 9.1 (1999): 97-128. JSTOR.
Web. 11 Sept. 2010.

Schultz, Nancy, ed. Veil of Fear: Nineteenth-Century Convent Tales by Rebecca Reed
and Maria Monk. Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1999. NetLibrary. Web. 27 Sept.
2010.

Sullivan, Rebecca. Visual Habits: Nuns, Feminism, and American Postwar Popular
Culture. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005. Print.

Thorn, Jennifer, ed. Writing British Infanticide: Child-Murder, Gender, and Print,
1722-1859. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2003. Print.

A weird old movie I saw years ago featuring nuns eating acid, shooting heroin, blackmailing people, etc. Seems oddly applicable.

Some stuff I've found so far...

Billington, Ray.  "Maria Monk and Her Influence."  The Catholic Historical Review 22.3 (1936):  283-96. JSTOR.  Web.  11 Sept. 2010.

Thanks, mom!

Wow, you can really tell from this guy's tone that he's writing in a Catholic publication.  He's pretty scathing about the Protestants and their propaganda (maybe with good reason, but still).  Also, given how early this was written, it's possible that not all of the controversy had died down yet and the Catholic church still had some residual pissed-offness about the whole thing.  Either way, this source gives a pretty useful summary of all the early reviews and interviews and discussions in Catholic and Protestant papers within the first couple years of Awful Disclosures's publication.  In particular, he mentions an interview with Maria Monk's mother in which case she says that Maria Monk was a wild kid and a crazy adult, was actually in a mental institution, not a convent, in Montreal, and that her baby was that of her lover and not a lascivious priest.  While this sounds more plausible than the convent story, I like to think that if I were to ever run into trouble my mom wouldn't throw me under the bus like that.  Thanks Mom.

Griffin, Susan.  "Awful Disclosures:  Women's Evidence in the Escaped Nun's Tale."  PMLA 111.1 (1996):  93-107.  JSTOR.  Web.  23 Sept. 2010.

Places Awful Disclosures in context of proliferation of escaped nun tales at the time; as it turns out, most of them (Awful Disclosures included) were hoaxes designed to create more anti-Catholic panic than there already was (because clearly there wasn't already enough mad religious fervor going on).  All the corroborating stuff (the exhaustive appendices, supporting articles, etc.) becomes a trope used in more or less all of these tales.

Mannard, Joseph.  "Maternity . . . of the Spirit":  Nuns and Domesticity in Antebellum America."  U. S. Catholic Historian 5.3/4 (1986):  305-24.  JSTOR.  Web.  11 Sept. 2010.

Argues that part of the reason Protestants were so against convents is that they kept women from being in their "proper place":  home, barefoot and pregnant.  Interestingly, Protestant men and women objected to convents for different reasons:  men because it was horrible and unnatural to keep women away from the great joys of male company and childbearing (ha!), women because they wanted alternatives:  Protestant schools and seminaries that admitted women, etc.

Pagliarini, Marie.  "The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest:  An Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America."  Religion and American Culture:  A Journal of Interpretation 9.1 (1999):  97-128.  JSTOR.  Web.  11 September 2010.

Similar to Mannard (although a little more thorough, and a lot more current), discusses anti-Catholic literature as largely stemming from Catholicism's undermining of the "cult of domesticity"; hence the stereotyping of Catholic priests as depraved sexual madmen and nuns as innocent, deceived victims.

Much, much more to come, but here's a start.

Rhetorical Analysis

Awful Disclosures is the first-person narrative of Maria Monk, a nun in Montreal in the early nineteenth century.  The novel recounts her childhood experiences with religion, the misinformation that led her to the convent, the horrors that occurred there (corrupt priests, totalitarian nuns, suppression of speech, gang rape, infanticide, imprisonment, and torture, to name a few), and her subsequent escape.  The veracity of these events is unclear, as is the “real” identity of the novel’s author; however, the implied author, the Maria Monk of the narrative, presents herself as a misunderstood victim, drawn into the convent under false pretenses and later accused of fabricating the whole experience as an anti-Catholic propaganda piece.  Indeed, in the front materials, Monk’s primary purposes seem to be first to persuade her audience to believe her account and second to incite them to take action against the Hotel Dieu Nunnery and against Catholicism generally.

One can infer that Monk assumes her audience to be primarily non-Catholic and unaware of the true inner workings of convents.  In the preface she addresses “the world” (although “the world” in this case more or less means the British, Canadian, and American public, the English-speaking world) to trust in the truthfulness of her tale; she also addresses the British government to take political action:  “I would also solemnly appeal to the Government of Great Britain . . . and ask, whether such atrocities ought to be tolerated, and even protected, by an enlightened and Christian power?  I trust the hour is near, when the dens of the Hotel Dieu will be laid open, when the tyrants who have polluted it will be brought out, with the wretched victims of their oppression and crimes” (5-6). 

Monk conducts these appeals to her audience in a number of ways.  First, she appeals to the audience’s fear, conceding that while her story is almost “too monstrous to be believed” (1) and racy enough to corrupt the innocent minds of young readers, parents should be warned of the dangers of convents lest their children be taken in as she was; she then invokes the reader’s pity, lamenting the fact that no one had warned her as she now warns a public who refuses to believe her, despite her terrible circumstances:  “While there was a hope that the authorities in Canada might be prevailed upon to bring the subject to a legal investigation, I travelled to Montreal, in a feeble state of health, and with an infant in my arms only three weeks old.  In the face of many threats and dangers, I spent nearly a month in that city, in vain attempts to bring my cause to trial” (5).  She continues in this vein for almost two pages, using her victimhood as an emotional appeal.

However, this is not her only persuasive tactic.  The preface also cites copious corroborating evidence from others to lend truth to her account, in particular a review “furnished by a gentleman well qualified for the purpose” (1).  This is also alluded to on the title page, half of which is spent outlining the appendix:  “Revised, with an Appendix, Containing, Part 1.  Reception of the First Editions.  Part 2.  Sequel of her Narrative.  Part 3.  Review of the Case.  Also, a Supplement, Giving More Particulars about the Nunnery and Grounds.  Illustrated by a Plan of the Nunnery, &c.”  The illustration appearing directly after the title page, a two-page map of the convent, serves as further evidence toward the truth of her account:  the first page contains a map of the convent, the grounds, the neighboring Congregational Nunnery, and the surrounding block, pointing out features like the “Very High Wall” around the grounds and showing in dotted lines the supposed underground tunnel from the seminary to the convent as well as Monk’s route of escape.  The second page features a smaller version of this map next to a large drawing of the front of the convent.  The specificity of the drawings (street addresses, building features, etc.) invites the reader to go investigate firsthand if he or she is in doubt about Monk’s truthfulness.  Also, the imagery of confinement (the high perimeter walls, the imposing front entrance to the convent with its walls and dense trees) cannot help but be associated with prison.  This penal imagery extends into the beginning of the novel, as she refers several times to the nuns as “inmates.”

Overall, while Monk’s explicit purposes in writing this novel are clearly those of personal vindication and bringing the Hotel Dieu Nunnery to justice, it is implicit in the front materials that this book exists as an anti-Catholic tract designed to undermine the principles of Catholicism and the morality of its followers.