Convents and conspiracies: a study of convent narratives in the United States, 1850-1870 Catherine McGowan Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2009 2 Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed by me and that the work carried out is my own and has not been submitted for any other degree or other professional qualification. Catherine McGowan 5 May 2009 3 Acknowledgements There are many people to thank for the unstinting help I have received since 2002 when I embarked on this project. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance I have received from the British Association for American Studies. The Peter Parish Award enabled me to travel to the United States and spend three weeks carrying out research in Washington D.C., New York and Boston. I have visited numerous libraries during the course of this study and have received enthusiastic assistance in all of them. I am especially grateful to the staff of the Edinburgh University Library and the National Library of Scotland for their invaluable and sustained help. I would like to thank the many people I have met through the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh since I first joined the department as an undergraduate who have given me helpful comments and encouragement. I am forever grateful to my supervisors, Professor Frank Cogliano and Owen Dudley Edwards, whose enthusiasm, wisdom and patience made this experience tremendously rewarding, both academically and personally. My various employers throughout this experience (TSO Scotland; The Royal Lyceum Theatre Company; Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland; National Museums Scotland; and Alzheimer Scotland) have been extremely supportive and I would like to thank them for their understanding. Many friends helped to keep me going throughout researching and writing this thesis and my sister, Margaret, assisted in many ways, not least by invaluable proof reading. My biggest debt though is to Michael Thomas, whose unfailing love and support made this project possible. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to Mum and Dad, with love and thanks. 4 Abstract In recent years, historians studying the United States in the mid-nineteenth century have made increasing use of popular writings to identify attitudes and beliefs. One genre of writing which has been largely overlooked by scholars of history is the convent narrative. These texts criticized convents and claimed that American nuns suffered imprisonment and abuse. Numerous examples of this genre, including both avowedly fictional novels and purported real-life autobiographies, were published in the United States between 1850 and 1870. Detailed study of these works uncovers a rich seam of evidence of popular attitudes to a range of political, religious and social forces, including republicanism, Catholicism, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, slavery and the role of women. This study analyzes and compares the themes, ideologies and techniques found in these texts. It will relate these to their wider context, and will examine the role the texts played in transmitting and reinforcing the beliefs and opinions of their authors. Close study of the narratives reveals that their authors were primarily concerned, not with the religious implications of convents and Catholicism (although these did alarm these authors), but, first and foremost, with the safety and stability of the American republic. The creators of convent narratives believed that the republic was under siege from anti-republican forces working to undermine the American way of life on a number of different fronts. These concerns are manifested repeatedly in the convent narratives. Where previously this genre has been overlooked by historians, except as a straightforward manifestation of lurid and sensationalistic anti-Catholic nativism, this study analyzes the deeper ideals and ideologies which these documents reveal, and establishes a basis for further exploration, 5 both of the convent narrative genre in itself and of popular and populist literature in general. 6 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 8 Medieval and renaissance anti-clericalism 19 Reformation propaganda 22 Reason, revolution and disbelief 24 Popular anti-Catholicism 25 Literary antecedents 30 Conclusion 37 Chapter 2: American convent narratives 39 Convent narratives before 1833 39 American convent narratives of the 1830s 43 American convent narratives 1850-1870 48 Chapter 3: Women, families, convents, and the American republic 61 The ‘Cult of True Womanhood’ 67 The Republican Mother 70 Recent historiography 80 Women and Catholicism 81 Women and sexuality 94 Women, writing and reforming 106 Women and work 113 Conclusion 118 Chapter 4: Immigration and economic change in the convent narrative 121 Immigration 123 The Changing Economy 142 Urbanization 152 Conclusion 157 Chapter 5: The political context of the convent narrative 158 Revolutionary republicanism 163 Political paranoia and conspiracy theories 168 The ‘Catholic conspiracy’ against the United States 173 The conspiracy in history 181 The conspiracy in the present 186 Foreign corruption 199 Conclusion 203 Chapter 6: The role of religion in the convent narrative 205 Theological differences between Protestantism and Catholicism 209 The ‘Catholic menace’ 228 Protestant insecurity 232 Conclusion 239 Chapter 7: The convent narrative in the context of social reform 240 The structure of the reforming narrative 246 7 The reformers 261 Republicanism in the reforming narratives 267 Conclusion 278 Chapter 8: Conclusions 281 Bibliography 286 Figure 1 – American convent narratives 58 8 Chapter 1: Introduction Now, a slave for life, I could have no will of my own, I must go at bidding, and come at command. This, I am well aware, may seem to some extravagant language; but I use the right word. I was, literally, a slave; and of all kinds of slavery, that which exists in a convent is the worst. I say, THE WORST, because the story of wrong and outrage which occasionally finds its way to the public ear is not generally believed. 1 Life in the Grey Nunnery of Montreal (1857), attributed to Sarah Richardson and subtitled ‘an authentic narrative of the horrors, mysteries, and cruelties of convent life’ is one of several exposés of forced incarceration and abuse in convents published in the United States between 1850 and 1870. 2 Historians have paid little attention to these texts, even though they are fascinating documents which offer extremely valuable insights into the religious, sectional, economic and political divisions which existed in the United States in this period. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the ideologies of the people who created these texts and to relate the narratives to the wider context in which they were written. It will be argued that far from merely expressing anti-Catholic bigotry, these texts were part of a nation-wide project – a movement to defend the (still new) republic from perceived threats; threats which were religious, political, social, economic and cultural. The convent narrative formed part of a continuum of ‘revolutionary’ activity which had assumed a (paradoxically) defensive and even reactionary form by 1850. The convent narrative genre first ‘flowered’ in the United States in the 1830s, when several exposés were published. However, this thesis will focus on those 1 Sarah Richardson, Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal (Boston: Damrell & Moore, 1857), 25-26. N.B. extracts from primary sources are given with their original spelling throughout. Words such as labour/labor were spelled in varying ways in the United States in this period. 2 For the convenience of the reader, the dates of works cited will be given in the body of the text throughout the thesis. 9 published between 1850 and 1870. This is because the many narratives published in this period have received hardly any scholarly attention. Such work as has been done on the convent narratives tended to focus on the earlier texts while the later works have received hardly any scholarly attention. While some narratives were written after 1870, there were fewer of them. In addition, the social, economic and political climate changed rapidly after this date. While 1850-1870 also saw many changes, most significantly those associated with the Civil War, in the context of the convent narrative it represents an identifiable period of time which provides a useful demarcation in chronology and a manageable amount of material. For this reason, this period has been chosen as the focus of this thesis. The Catholic church established a number of convents in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. They were principally educational establishments. Critics claimed that they cultivated well-off middle-class Protestant parents, both for their money and for the chance of making converts, while excluding poor Catholic children. This was in the context of a bitter dispute over public funding for Catholic schools (see below, 192-196, 228). While the schools at the centre of this controversy were different in nature from the convents, being parochial elementary schools rather than ladies’ seminaries, which the convents resembled, the convents were still associated with the arguments against Catholic education. Opponents of monasticism believed that American convents subverted the republic by encouraging anti-republican Catholicism, by reinforcing class and social divisions and hierarchies, and by perpetuating the perceived ignorance and anti-republican values