Representations of Anglican Sisterhoods in Mid-Nineteenth

DIFFERENT HABITS: REPRESENTATIONS OF ANGLICAN SISTERHOODS IN MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE by Caroline Ann Lucas A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Literature, University of Sheffield April 2000 Contents Acknowledgements Summary Page Chapter 1 Anglican Sisterhoods,`Surplus Women' and 1 SuitableEmployment Chapter2 Family Duties, the Influence of Ladies and 35 the Dangers of Rome Chapter Case 65 3 Sister versus Sisterhood - The Great Convent of 1869 96 Chapter4 Representationsof Sisterhoods- Partisanand Non-PartisanFiction Chapter5 Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) 141 Chapter6 Henry Kingsley (1830-1876) 169 Conclusion 199 Bibliography 203 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful to the following for academic and professional advice, and for help with sources: Sally Shuttleworth, Clyde Binfield, Andrew Sanders, Jan Jedrzejewski, Gowan Dawson, Louise Henson, Kim Diment, Simon Gill, and to Caroline Dicker at the Lincoln Theological Institute Library. Thanks for domestic, practical, and moral support must go to: my parents, Jill and Charles Natton, Tessaand Michael Herron, Ann O'Shaughnessy,Vanessa Barker, Peter Hargreaves, Jackie Brookfield, Tracey Smith, and to Edwina Porter. Finally, I am very grateful to the Community of St Margaret,East Grinstead,especially Mother Raphaeland Sister Sarah,for kindly allowing me accessto their library and records,and to Sister Pamelaof the Community of All Hallows, Ditchingham, who told me about Sisterhoods. Summary This thesis deals with the different ways in which Anglican Sisterhoods were portrayed in fiction and journalism, both religious and secular, in the mid-nineteenth century. It examines the influence of anti-Roman Catholic and anti-convent literature on these portrayals and considers whether there was any significant interchange between Sisterhoods and the feminist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. The first two chapters deal with the founding of the first Sisterhoods by the Oxford Movement as active, charitable communities in the 1840s, and the type of women - predominately upper- and upper-middle class - attracted by the life and work they offered. The histories of one Sisterhood, and of two Sisters, one typical, the other not, are examined. Periodical articles of the time, while approving of the work undertaken by Sisterhoods - nursing and teaching, for example - with the poorest classes of society, tended to express doubts about Roman Catholic influences, and the suitability of the work for ladies. Chapterthree dealswith a court caseof 1869 in which a Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy accusedher convent of ill-treatment. The caseattracted enormous publicity and was expectedto confirm prurient speculationabout conventsput forward in anti-Roman Catholic propagandaand fiction, but insteadraised issuesabout the fitness of women for communalliving, celibacy and leadership. The casewas usedby somewriters as a plea for more secularwork opportunitiesfor women. Chapterfour examinesworks of fiction which feature Sisterhoods,or issuesconnected with them, by writers of different denominations. Chaptersfive and six deal with the works of CharlotteYonge and Henry Kingsley respectively. Yonge was a promoterof High Church values and supporterof Sisterhoods,while Kingsley was an ecumenicist who approvedof Anglican and Roman Catholic ordersequally. 1 Chapter One: Anglican Sisterhoods, 'Surplus Women' and Suitable Employment 'It maybe hard to realise the difficulty of making a beginning where nothing had previously beendone. " The nineteenth century saw a movement by women away from the private, domestic sphere into a public domain once exclusively the territory of men. The limited nature of female education and restrictions on women's civil liberties, combined with a double standard of morality governing the behaviour of men and women meant that this movement was necessarily a slow one. In addition, social and religious prejudice against, and political antipathy to, the emergence of women into public life, were frequently manifested in masculine jealousy; in men guarding what they considered to be their prerogative, and resisting female encroachment. By the mid-nineteenthcentury the patriarchalpower systemswhich had beenin place for generations were being challenged by women. Some opposition was confrontational - campaigning women, such as Josephine Butler, who fought openly injustice. against perceived male Other women - Florence Nightingale, for example - assertedthemselves by dominating or creating a specific niche. Anglican Sisterhoods, often associated with Nightingale, were started from scratch in the mid-1840s as part of the Oxford Movement's resurrection of the Established Church's pre-Reformation roots, and also created a unique role for themselves. This role did not have a masculine precedent and was, moreover, one which men were to imitate in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Sisterhoods were not only pioneering in terms of women's work, but were groundbreaking, too, as autonomous female communities: autonomous in all senses, being self-governing, free from external control and symbolizing an expression of personal liberty by the women who joined them. Although the original impetus came from the male-dominated Oxford Movement, the communities themselves were outside both the network of patriarchal power which constituted the Church of England and the microcosm of that power represented by the upper-middle class family unit. Pastanalyses of Sisterhoodshave attemptedto place them within their social context and to assesshow far they could be deemedto be part of the feminist movement of the nineteenthcentury. Becausetheir communitieswere on the whole free from direct male control, and becausethey offered women a viable and voluntary alternativeto 2 marriage or passive spinsterhood, Michael Hill considers that Sisters had an `incipiently feminist conception of the role of women'. Martha Vicinus also seesthem as an alternative to the life choices for women traditionally offered by society, and therefore as a transitional stage in the development of feminism. 3 John Shelton Reed thinks that the development of Sisterhoods `can be seen as part of a larger "silent rebellion"' against deeply entrenched traditional assumptions about women's roles and functions. However, he also considers that although Anglo-Catholic communities may have embodied some of the values of Victorian feminism they did so in such an individual, not to say limited way, incorporating much of the High Church's own patriarchal attitudes, that `it might be better to regard it as an alternative to feminism'. 5 Rather than being simply an alternative to feminism, there does seem to have been some crossover betweeen the feminist movement and Sisterhoods, albeit very gradual. The work undertaken by Sisters was groundbreaking in terms of contemporary notions of ladies' capabilities, and opened the way for similar opportunities in the secular world. The refusal of Sisterhoods to give up their work in the face of disapproval from their peers, and their continuous, if steady, expansion throughout the light for home century shed a new on women's potential working outside the . The female monastic tradition in England and Wales The newly-foundedAnglican Sisterhoodsof the mid-nineteenthcentury contradictedsensationalist British expectationsof nuns,coloured by fictional accountsof 7 the Inquisition, and Gothic storiesof conventlife in Italy and Spain. There were no English models to baseexpectations on as, following the Dissolution of religious houses in the mid-sixteenthcentury, monasticlife in England had effectively disappearedfrom public view. For the next three hundredyears organised monasticism within the Church of England (as opposedto recusantcommunities) ceased to exist. When it beganto be re- establishedit was active female communitieswhich led the way, as AM Allchin has observed,in a reversalof the accepteddevelopment of Christian monasticismwhich was contemplationfirst, activity second;men first, women second.8 The religious life re- emergedas an independentfemale movementwhich, if it was not entirely woman-led, was certainly woman-centred. Moreover, the movementwas establishedby a classof women regardedas 'redundant'in the mid-nineteenthcentury, who went on to revise and 3 re-create the concept of the religious life for women in England. They were also part, willingly or unwillingly, of a growing movement within the same class of women seeking to control their own lives and looking for interest and employment outside the domestic sphere. To do this they had to confront both Victorian expectations of female behaviour and contemporary perceptions of convent life. During the three hundred years after the Dissolution the idea of monasticism, particularly for women, was not forgotten. Indeed, very soon after the Dissolution the Bishop of Armagh, John Bramhall (1594-1663), who doubted the both the legality and benefit of getting rid of religious houses, declared, 'I do not see why monasteries might not agree well enough with reformed devotion. '9 The idea of a Protestantreligious community, althoughit was hardly monastic, was realisedin 1626when Nicholas Ferrar moved his large extendedfamily to the manor houseof Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. Ferrar founded a religious community based on the observanceof the canonicalhours, the continuousrecitation of the psalms,and the notion of serving and educatingthe poor peopleof the surroundingdistrict. The community lasteduntil

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