1 Introduction
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Notes 1 Introduction 1. John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Recent Position of Catholics in England Addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory (London: Burns and Lambert, 1851), p. 1. 2. See her chapter on ‘Anti-Catholic Erotica’, in Julie Peakman, Mighty Lewd Books. The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 126–58. 3. D.G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (California: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 51. 4. Statistics taken from: Derek Holmes More Roman than Rome and Gloria McAdam, My Dear Sister: An Analysis of Nineteenth-century Documents Concerning the Founding of a Women’s Religious Congregation (Bradford: University of Bradford, PhD Thesis, 1994). 5. Robert Klaus, The Pope the Protestants and the Irish (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), p. 281. 6. One prolific preacher and writer referred to in this study was Father Achilli, a defrocked Catholic priest who capitalised on the No-Popery movement and published various ‘revelations’ about Catholic convents that helped to confirm popular prejudices. Achilli won a libel suit against Newman in 1851 for accusing him of sacrilege and sexual misconduct. 7. Dawson Massy, Dark Deeds of the Papacy Contrasted with the Bright Lights of the Gospel, also the Jesuits Unmasked and Popery Unchangeable (London: Seeleys, 1851), p. 155. 8. Henry Drummond MP, To the People of England on The Invasion (London: Bosworth and Harrison, 1859). 9. See Shirley, p. 398 where Caroline Helstone observes Rose Yorke reading Mrs Radcliffe’s The Italian. There is evidence that Charlotte Brontë was well aquainted with this genre of literature. 10. For example, Ambrosio in M.G. Lewis, The Monk, 1786. 11. D.G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (California: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 61. 12. Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, Convents or Nunneries. A Lecture in Reply to Cardinal Wiseman (London: Seeleys, 1852), pp. 14, 24. 13. Catherine Sinclair, Modern Superstition (London: Simpkin and Marshall & Co., 1847), pp. 4–5. 14. Lisa Wang, Uses of Theological Discourse in the Novels of the Brontë Sisters (London: Birkbeck College, PhD Thesis, 1998), pp. 17,146. 15. Harriet Martineau, an agnostic with a Unitarian background, found the anti-Catholic sentiments of Villette offensive. She voices her disapproval of them in an article in the Daily News, 3 February 1853. 16. Rosemary Clark Beattie, ‘Fables of Rebellion: Anti-Catholicism and the Structure of Villette’, ELH 5 (1986): p. 821. 17. Paz, Popular Anti Catholicism in Mid Victorian England, p. 63. 165 166 Notes 18. S. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 414. 19. Robert Bernard Martin, The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Brontë’s Novels (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), p. 148. 20. In speaking about the kindness of Père Silas to Lucy Snowe at her confession, Martin comments: ‘It is the first indication in the novel, or for that matter any of Miss Brontë’s novels, that Roman Catholicism may have virtues in spite of being unattractive to her.’ The Accents of Persuasion, p. 162. 21. Tom Winnifrith, The Brontës and their Background, Romance and Reality (Basingstoke Hants: Macmillan Press, 1988), pp. 49–55. 22. Irene Taylor, Holy Ghosts the Male Muses of Emily and Charlotte Brontë (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 246–7. 23. According to Lisa Wang, there are over 450 direct allusions to the Bible in Charlotte Brontë’s novels. Uses of Theological Discourse in the Novels of the Brontë Sisters, p. 31. 24. Patricia Duncker, Writing on the Wall (London: Pandora Press, 2002), p. 34. 25. Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Brontë. A Passionate Life (London: Chatto and Windus, 1994), p. 226. 26. Charlotte Brontë was surprised and hurt by criticisms of her depiction of Catholicism in Villette. She was particularly ‘upset’ by her friend Harriet Martineau’s review of the book which accused her of attacking Catholicism with vehemence. 27. Helene Moglen, Charlotte Brontë, the Self Conceived (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976), p. 218. 28. For fuller comment on the love between Lucy Snowe and Paul Emmanuel, see Robert Colby, ‘Villette and the Life of the Mind’, in Fiction With a Purpose (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1960), p. 417. 29. Annette Schreiber, ‘The Myth in Charlotte Brontë’ [sic] Literature and Psychology xvii (1968): p. 66. 30. Gayla McGlamery, ‘This Unlicked Wolf Cub,’ p. 67. 2 The Construction of an Anti-Catholic Ideology in the Nineteenth Century: Sexuality, Gender, Patriarchy and the Discourse of Fear 1. Leeds Mercury, 30 March 1850. 2. Catherine Sinclair, Modern Superstitions, p. 6. 3. The Times, 19 November 1844. 4. See Robert Lee Wolff, Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (New York: John Murray, 1977), p. 30. 5. The Times, 15 November 1844. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. Notes 167 11. Ibid. 12. Anon., Intercepted Letters of a Romish Priest (London: Hall and Co., 1852), p. 3. 13. Ibid., p. 3. 14. Ibid., p. 5. 15. Ibid., p. 5. 16. Ibid., p. 6. 17. Ibid., p. 6, footnote 2. 18. Ibid., p. 11. 19. Rev. Michael Hobart Seymour, The Talbot Case (London: Seeleys, 1851), pp. xvi–xvii. 20. Ibid. 21. The Times, 31 March 1851. 22. This was taken from the court report in the Times, 31 March 1851. 23. The Jerningham family was one of the ‘old’ aristocratic English Catholic families. 24. The Times, 1 April 1851. Law report, Court of Chancery Lincoln’s Inn, 31 March. 25. Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, Convents or Nunneries a Lecture in Reply to Cardinal Wiseman (London: Seeleys, 1852), p. 10. 26. Ibid., p. 25. 27. Ibid., p. 17. 28. Ibid., p. 22. 29. Ibid. 30. For an example of how this idea developed see Stead, ‘Maiden Tribute’ ‘The Brothel Keeper’, in Pall Mall Gazette (London: 1885). Ronald Pearsall, The Worm in The Bud (London: Pimlico, 1969), p. 350 states: ‘The exploitation of young girls is the most repellent aspect of Victorian sex’. In Ivan Bloch’s Sexual Life in England (1938 edition) a woman in the West End is reported as saying that ‘In my house you can gloat over the cries of the girls with the certainty that no one will hear them besides yourself – a statement confirmed by other sources.’ 31. Seymour, Convents or Nunneries, p. 35. 32. Ibid., p. 39. 33. This is particularly evident in the Heldivier and Talbot cases cited earlier. 34. John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England: Addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory (London: Burns and Lambert, 1851), p. 88. 35. Ibid., pp. 112–17. Later in the century, during the 1860s, Newman again came under fire from the Evangelical wing of the Protestant Church for his close association with the Brompton Oratory. This oratory was at the centre of certain reported ‘scandals’ including the case of a young girl called Eliza McDermott whose mother claimed she was lured into a convent against her family’s wishes. This was reported fully in the Daily Telegraph in 1865. The Brompton Oratory was also put under suspicion by Alfred Smee, writing to Sir George Grey through the medium of the Evening Standard, who cast serious doubts over the private burial grounds at the oratory. 36. Ibid., pp. 83–4. 168 Notes 3 Forgive Me Father: The Sacrament of Confession as a Means to Control and Debauch Young Girls and Women 1. Quotation by ex-Roman Catholic priest Blanco White printed on the cover of The Indelicacy of Auricular Confession as Practised by the Roman Catholic Church: Correspondence between Hon. George Spencer and Rev. W. Riland Bedford (Birmingham: William Hodgetts, 1836). 2. Jules Michelet, Priests Women and Families (London: Charles Edmonds, 1846), p. 47. 3. Ibid., p. 47. 4. Ibid., pp. 47 and 49. 5. See Kate Flint, The Woman Reader 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 36. 6. For this reason, many biographies of worthy women were circulated in the nineteenth century, along with numerous tracts and pamphlets. 7. Letter from Bedford to Spencer 1 July 1836. The Indelicacy of Auricular Confession, p. 6. 8. A Catholic devotional book particularly used by penitents preparing for confession. 9. Letter from Bedford to Spencer 1 July 1836. 10. Rev. Andrew Thomson, A Course of Lectures on Popery, Delivered in Edinburgh 1851 (Edinburgh and London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1851), pp. 265–6. 11. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, pp. 138–45. For a more detailed discussion of this, see Kate Soper’s essay ‘Positive Contradictions’, in Caroline Ramazanoglu, ed., Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions between Foucault and Feminism (London: Routledge, 1993), chapter 2, pp. 29–50. 12. See Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady Women, Madness and English Culture 1830–1980 (London: Virago, 1987), chapter 3. Managing Women’s Minds. 13. Ibid., p. 77. 14. The Roman Catholic Confessional Exposed: in Three Letters to a Cabinet Minister (Dublin: Philip Dixon Hardy, 1837), letter 2, pp. 35–6. 15. Rev. Charles Brigham, The Enormities of the Confessional (London: Richards, 1839), especially pp. 3–4. 16. Ibid., p. 5. 17. Rev. John Armstrong, Preface to The Confessional, its Wickedness. A lecture given at the town hall Brighton, 5 September 1856 (Brighton: Edward Verall, 1856). 18. J.G. Millingen, Mind and Matter, Illustrated by Considerations on Hereditary Insanity and the Influence of Temperament in the Development of the Passions (1847), p. 157. Quoted in Kate Flint, The Woman Reader 1837–1914, p. 57. 19. George Spencer and William Riland Bedford, The Indelicacy of Auricular Confession as Practised by the Roman Catholic Church (Birmingham: William Hoggets, 1837), p.