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Appreciating One Woman’s Life: Understanding Dawns Slowly
In my misspent youth, and to the dismay of my parents, I was fascinated by religions, especially all things Catholic. I was too shy to actually go into a Catholic church, but I loved seeing nuns walking about, with their long black skirts and veils. The local library had a book with photos of nuns in all the American orders with a description of their habits, and notes on their particular callings — as nurses, teachers, contemplatives. I must have checked out that book six or seven times.
When I misbehaved, my stepmother’s mother, who lived with us and didn’t like me, would threaten to send me to a Catholic school — those nuns know how to make kids toe the line. But somehow I never saw the inside of a Catholic school until I lived in San Francisco, and was asked to give a talk about Jewish holidays to an all-girls high school.
I discovered Monica Baldwin’s autobiography, I Leap over the Wall at a used book store for 25 cents. The Signet edition had a rather lurid cover, typical of the 1950s, with a nun’s veiled head in black and white, glancing sideways at a young woman in modern dress.
Monica Baldwin, the niece of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, had entered a strict contemplative convent in Belgium shortly before the beginning of World War I. The Great War was marked for her mainly by the scarcity of certain necessities (notably soap), and by the convening of the sisters in November 1918 to sing Te Deum to mark the end of the fighting.
In October 1941, she left the convent, having become quite ill, realizing that she did not truly have a vocation to religious life. She returned to London during the Blitz, discovering that those relatives and friends who had most disapproved of her going into the convent, now expressed their disapproval of her return to “the world.” Her autobiography, with its detailed descriptions of the life of a pre-Vatican II nun, was written in part to answer the questions and correct the misconceptions she encountered among her relatives and acquaintances. I admit to being rather put off by learning that her convent had a class structure: she was a “choir nun” since her family had paid a “dowry” when she entered. The nuns who did most of the household tasks were “lay sisters” who had entered without dowries. In Edwardian-era Europe, this arrangement probably seemed quite natural.
I must have read I Leap over the Wall three of four times (along with her novel, The Called and the Chosen) before it dawned on me that she was writing about why she was not a nun. I often wondered after that if she would have remained in religious life if the changes of Vatican II had occurred sooner, but then, after the Council, nuns became much less fascinating to me, and indeed, the Catholic Church went through quite a crisis of vocations, with brothers, monks and nuns leaving the monasteries, and fewer men and women entering religious life.
Once I understood what Monica Baldwin was really writing about, the second side of her book became even more fascinating. This was the story of a woman who had lived a very sheltered life for some 25 years in an enclosed convent, who was suddenly thrust into the chaos of wartime Britain.
She had to have a crash course in popular culture, being quite unfamiliar with popular authors, radio personalities, politicians, and sports figures.
She had to purchase clothing (what is this brassiere thingy? …oh), get her hair trimmed in a modern and comfortable style, and get used to making noise when she walked about a house. Her nunly ways of walking quietly would often startle people when she entered a room without their realizing she was there.
Most challenging of all was finding suitable employment, there being little need at the time for manuscript illuminators. Some of her jobs proved to be disasters — the interview at a company that apparently didn’t exist; the backbreaking farm work that many women took on as men were called up to the army; and the embarrassment when she worked in one town, of asking why so many women there had these strange frontal protrusions? She was told that they were all pregnant and had been evacuated from the bombed cities.
Eventually, her dowry was returned to her, and she bought a cottage in Cornwall, where she wrote her books and could reflect on her astonishing range of experiences.
Looking back on my reading of her story, I came to appreciate both sides of her life. I wish I could have met her.
Published in Group Writing
Fascinating, something completely new to me today, thank you for making my lunch break!
And in the old days, the abbesses would have all been from royal families.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under July’s theme of Understanding. We still have a couple of openings if you would like to share an understanding with us. Or, you can write about Will in August, where there are not only plenty of openings, but @brianwolf was added a list of his own ideas for the theme.
My ex wife had two sisters in the convent. Both dropped out. The first one became a flight attendant and married almost immediately. She had four children and was divorced after 25 years . She is very bitter. The other one was trained as a lab technician and did that for a few years. She joined a dating service and made the mistake ( very naive) of divulging that she had been a nun and implying she was a virgin. A Pakistani fellow was her first and only date and attempted to rape her. She fought him off and went back to the convent the next day, habit in hand. She died at 40 from leukemia.
As ever, LittleMy, a fascinating reflection; from the outside looking in, as it were. My mom’s older cousin entered a now-closed [aged-out] convent of Benedictines in her hometown – and, in my mom’s word, blossomed. She was there for 60+ years (minus sabbaticals to care for her aging parents) until she died: “old and full of years”.
Sounds a bit like The Nun’s Story.
A truly sad case that happens in reality, related to this one, perhaps?
Christians are called to be “in the world but not of the world.” When our priests, monks, and nuns try to be “of” the world, that is when their numbers decline and people leave.
I’m Catholic and never saw priests in collars (outside of Mass) or nuns in habits until I took a trip in my twenties.
Actor Alec Guinness gravitated to Catholicism after playing a priest in a movie. While walking toward the set dressed as a priest, a young boy — a stranger — took his hand and walked with him. Guiness was struck by that incredible trust.
A noticeable consequence of doing aggiornamento (engagement with the world) prior to/without the corresponding aprofundamento (deepening of theological self-understanding) that the Council Fathers *expected* would occur first or simultaneously. This rushed implementation is a uniquely North American – if not to say Western – trait, sadly…
I actually read this book (the paper back) as a young teenager. I have no idea where I would have gotten it; I’m sure our small high school did not have it. I, too, was fascinated to know what the lives of nuns were like, as there were very few around in the small up-state NY community where I grew up.
Over the years I have met quite a number of nuns — Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Buddhist. The one thing that sets them all apart in my mind is their quiet joy — this is the true spiritual fruit of religious life. It makes me very sad to think of nuns who are unhappy, or who leave the religious life and are bitter.
What I also realized from my conversations with nuns is that every way of life is truly a “vocation”: whether it is raising a family, or living as I do in a small, Jewishly religious community in Israel. We all struggle with the same things: learning patience, fortitude, commitment, maturity, love, and courage. Learning not to lie, even to ourselves, being able to ask forgiveness, and to forgive, forbear, and accept… Really, the different ways of life are not so very different in the end — the cycle of holy days, the days of rest, the marking of life events from birth to confirmation/bar mitzvah to marriage or commitment to celibacy, to maturity to death.
I think the key to all of it is to realize that we cannot be centered on our own happiness only. One thing I truly regret about the feminist movement is that in emphasizing the need for women to assert themselves, the movement forgot about the value of sacrifice — not becoming a “martyr” to one’s family, but realizing that we can give up something of ourselves for others without losing ourselves in the process. I know, achieving a good balance is not easy, but it is the essence of religious life.