the monstrous nun, part I: a history of confinement

part of the feminist horror curriculum:

“Women act counter to all the laws of submission when they remove themselves from availability.” Lauren Groff, Matrix

What is a nun? What is she doing? What do her days look like? I’m sure most of us today would not know how to answer those questions. Life behind convent walls have a concrete air of mystery. And it was just as much the case centuries ago. What are these women doing by themselves, separated from society, with no men around?

Nuns have fascinated the imagination exactly because of their inaccessibility. Women living on the margins of society have always been considered suspicious. Even if nuns are technically existing within the system, they have historically enjoyed a level of autonomy beyond that of most other women. In fact, since they are adhering to the role given to them by their fathers, brothers, priests and rulers, their removal from society (from men) only becomes more intriguing and problematic.

Pietro Aretino’s The Secret Life of Nuns, dating back to the 16th century, is a wildly fictionalized, highly sexualized, account of what supposedly happens behind the walls of convents. It simultaneously shows how the mystery of nuns feeds the wildest fantasies, while also providing an actual social commentary on how Venetian women were unwillingly locked away to submit to a strict religious life.

Why wouldn’t nuns fascinate us? Anything hidden, anything secret, is bound to intrigue us. That’s why secret societies, cults, conspiracies, have always been at the forefront of the collective imagination. What is happening behind closed walls? And how infuriating it is, for a society ruled by, and made for men, to be kept away from the communities ruled and organized by women.

part two will dive more into the horror element of religious women and will be free to all subscribers. coming March 18th!