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.