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THESIS

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll’Hllllllllll

1293 01570 9946

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

The Catholic Woman's Experience in
Nineteenth Century America

presented by

Molly Gretchen Richter

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Master's History

degree in

VQLw

(hajor prot£ssor

 

 

 

{flan} 3; mi

07639 MS U is an Affinnative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

THE CATHOLIC WOMAN‘S EXPERIENCE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY
AMERICA

By

Molly Gretchen Richter

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1997

 

ABSTRACT

THE CATHOLIC WOMAN '8 EXPERIENCE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY
AMERICA

by

Molly Gretchen Richter

There have been many studies that examine women's space, from the virtues of
'True Womanhood' to separate spheres and female networks. Yet most studies of
nineteenth-century American women carry an unvoiced assumption, that being
American meant being Protestant. A sizable number of middle—class Catholic women
lived in nineteenth-century America, and their experiences cannot be assumed to be the
same as their Protestant sisters.

The peculiarities of the convent and the convent school make the study of the
Catholic woman intriguing for any feminist historian. In some ways Catholic women
had more room to maneuver than non-Catholics, producing yet another valid
expression of 'True Womanhood' This difl‘erence, combined with the largely untapped
resource of the convent archive, makes the middle-class American Catholic woman as

worthy of study as the Protestant majority.

Copyright by
Molly Gretchen Richter
1997

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although I am the only one responsible for any faults or errors in this thesis, it was
by no means an individual efl‘ort and there are many people that I must thank for helping
me, one way or another, to produce this. I would first of all like to thank the members of
my committee for their time, patience, and advice: Dr. Anne Meyering, Dr. Susan
Sleeper-Smith, and Dr. Gordon T. Stewart. They were all wonderful role models for me. I
would also like to thank Dr. Stewart and Dr. J. Morgan Sweeney for always believing in
me and supporting me.

I would also like to remember teachers from my earlier years, Mr. Helrnus and Ms.
Ellis, who taught me to love history. Thank you also too: Sr. Adrienne Adelrnarr, (Sr.)
Marge Giesken, Sr. Maria Tardani, and Sr. (Marie) Irmnaculata Eicholty, all O.P.

My friends have provided a wonderfirl network of support, encouragement, and
general thoughtfulness throughout my Master’s program. To everyone who passed
through the apartment on Hutchison Street, especially Sarah Quail (who set the example),

Andrew May, and Dominic Bradford -- my house-matesu-a big Thank-you. Closer to

iv

home Karlin Sevensma, Virginia Smolenski, Laurie TenHave-Chapman, Laurie Anderson,
and Amy Layman were faithful, supportive, and showed a surprising interest in my work.

My parents have borne the brunt of any difficulties graciously and patiently, always
urging me on, and trying to provide a stress-free environment. I am especially gratefirl to
both of them for trying to make this experience as easy as possible for me. My mother
provided much chaufl‘euring, and my father painstakingly proofed every draft of this work.

A very special thank-you to David Munro, who knew when I needed time to study,
and when I needed a break, who never questioned, and always encouraged. I am so glad
to have you in my life. I am also grateful for the loan of a treasured lap-top computer
which made archival research so much easier.

I would be remiss if I did not thank: the Interlibrary Loan Department at Michigan
State University for processing my numerous requests, Pam Luebke of the Aquinas
College Library, and Susan Gasster—Carriere of the Aquinas College Departrrrent of
French, and John Kovach and Sr. Rosalie, C.S.C. both of Saint Mary's College Archives,

Notre Dame, Indiana.

CHAPTER 1:

CHAPTER 2:

CHAPTER 3:

CHAPTER 4:

CHAPTER 5:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ........................................................................ 1
Themes in American Women's History ................................ 9
The Catholic Woman ......................................................... 17
The Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana .......... 34
Conclusion ........................................................................ 68

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 - Marital Status of Saint Mary's Graduates 1860-1900 .......................... 74

vii

Chapter 1: Introduction

This thesis examines the roles of the nun, the convent, and the convent school in
nineteenth and early twentieth century America. This is an area which is remarkably
absent from the history of women in America. In the American context Catholic women
have often been excluded in favor of studying the overwhelming majority of the
population - Protestants. Concentrating on the Midwest, I focus on St. Mary's Academy,
which became St. Mary's College, and the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Cross at
Notre Dame, Indiana. Saint Mary's is only one of a number of convents and academics
which have maintained records. Many other communities possess a wealth of information

just waiting to be examined. To examine the above-mentioned roles, I have used a

Canadian book, TM} the Veil: An Alternative to Marriage, Motherhmd, a_rrd
Spinsterhm in Quebec, 1840-1920 by Marta Danylewycz to analyze and arrange my
information on the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

During the nineteenth century the Church in Quebec became gradually ferninized.
Female orders grew rapidly in numbers and Danylewycz‘s book is an attempt to find out
why this happened. Her discussion hinges especially on the definition of gender roles and
industrialization She is especially concerned with the non-religious reasons a woman

might have had to join an order. Her goal is to prove that, basically, in Quebec, a number

of women entered the convent, not out of religious zeal, but out of a wish for personal and
professional fulfillment, a desire to not many and have children, and to avoid the economic
dificulty a single woman faced in supporting herself. This alternative choice was not only
approved of, women lost absolutely none of their femininity by entering a convent. This
was a perfectly acceptable role for a nineteenth-, early-twentieth century Québecoise.

There is no reason why these theories cannot be applied to the American context.
American society was equally concerned about women's roles, and equally affected by the
changes brought about by industrialization. Even though Catholicism lacked the base of
support found in Quebec, female religious orders and membership multiplied quickly in the
United States, and there was an identifiable and separate Catholic culture. This suggests
that Danylewycz's conclusions about Quebec may not be exclusive to that society.

Though difi‘erent in many ways, these national differences did not have a significant impact
on the sheer numbers of women moving into religious orders, and perhaps they also did
not have a huge impact on the reasons.

The feminization of the Church has its roots in France. By the middle of the
seventeenth century there were more nuns than monks or fiiars in France. Women entered
both as contemplative, passive members, and as active, lay members called devotes.
”Feminine religious life became a nucleus of real, though always discreet, strength."l By
the nineteenth century the numbers of these women had increased threefold.2 Most
American and Canadian orders originated in Europe, and therefore consideration of the

American religious experience as part of an elongated trend is important.

 

‘ Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes. Women ang Church in fienteenth—Cgm Fang.
(Montreal/Kingston: McGill Queens University Press, 1990) 5.
2 Rapley 8.

The sources consulted for this project consist of a series of microfilrned rolls of the
Congregation of the Holy Cross, and archival material at St. Mary’s College. These rolls
were compiled by convent archivist, S. M. Campion Kuhn throughout the nineteen-
seventies and nineteen-eighties and contain a wide variety of primary and secondary source
material such as personal letters, ledgers, course descriptions and advertisements for the
schools and histories of the convent and college. Although much digging is required there
was a massive amount of pertinent information here. I have also consulted several other
primary sources including three separate collections of student work, Rosa Mystica and
St. Ms Chimes literary journals and The Mother Pauline Tradition Papers, which are
essays. Unfortunately a large fire at Notre Dame in 187 8 destroyed many of the records
which would have provided much additional primary source material for a study such as
this one.

Although there is a wealth of secondary sources, authored by St. Mary's graduates
and Holy Cross Sisters, many of these are skewed by the tension which exists between
community oral tradition and historical 'fact'. St. Mary’s College campus today houses
both the convent archives and college archives, each administered and run separately. The
convent archives primarily contains material concerning the Sisters, and the college
archives houses basically everything else. Since the nineteen-seventies the Sisters who
have been charged with the archives of the college and the convent have been
professionally trained as historians. There is in fact now an armual conference entitled,
"Conference on the History of the Congregation of Holy Cross," at which papers on that

subject are presented. The works that have recently been produced on the college and the

order diverge fi'om some of the older works because of an accepted oral tradition (that has
recently been highly scrutinized) making it more difficult to construct a coherent narrative
on the history of the community.
The secondary sources that I consulted centered mainly on: American and
Canadian women's history; questions of gender, roles, and femininity; education; and
Catholicism.
Some of the terminology used in this paper will be unfamiliar. It makes more
stylistic sense to explain it here than within the body of my thesis. Some of these words
are rooted in Canadian history and Canadian society. When the term French-Canadian is
used it denotes a person whose native language is French; a fiancophone. It also often
designates someone who is a resident of the province of Quebec, a Quebecker, or in
French, a Quebecois (e). All three terms, F tench-Canadian, Quebecker, or Quebecois
automatically refer to someone who is of the Catholic religion. When discussing nuns,
Sisters, Brothers, and priests I have used terms like "religious" and "professed" as blanket-
category terms to refer to men and women who entered a religious community, which can 1
also be referred to as an order or a foundation.
The language used within this paper is in keeping with accepted terms in women's I
and gender history. I have used ‘women' and 'men' as adjectives, and have used current

buzzwords such as 'agen , 'construct', and 'informs' because they are necessary to the
understanding of the reader.
Referring to nuns can be tricky. Accepted forms of address have changed fi'om the

time of the beginning of my study, the mid-nineteenth century, to the present late-twentieth

century. Before the turn of the century women were given a new name ofi‘ an accepted list
when they entered a religious community. They also stopped using their last names. In
the early twentieth century nuns began using their last names again, and by the seventies
many no longer took new first names in religion. Throughout the whole period, many
religious women did not bother to use the title ‘Sister' or 'Mother', but simply referred to a
fellow Sister by her first name. In this study and in the bibliography I have included former
secular family names of nuns in parenthesis (especially those of the older generation) even
though they never actually used them once they were professed. This was done for ease of
reference and to distinguish them fi'om other members of their order with the same
religious name. (a community had a stock list of names, when a nun died her name in
religion was conferred on an entering postulant, a practice which makes narratives
referring only to the name in religion, confirsing.)

I have first approached the problem of writing about a group of American nuns by
examining Danylewycz's very similar study. One of the most important things for me to
assess was the extent to which Danylewycz's thesis about Canadian nuns is dependent on
the peculiarities of Quebec culture, society, and politics. As already suggested, Quebec in
the nineteenth century was primarily Catholic, the remarkable growth of Church influence,
and the virtual lack of respectable options, other than marriage, open to fiancophone
women of the upper classes were definitely major factors in the rise of female vocations in
Quebec. The main difi‘erence between Quebec and the United States was the utter lack of

options for 'respectable' fiancophone women in Quebec. The rise in vocations, and rise in

the number of Catholic women who remained single, were not, however, specific to
Quebec.

Something peculiar to the convent, and the convent school, encouraged women to
ignore the rhetoric telling them to marry and have children. Extolling the virtues of the
home was not enough to encourage all women to many and raise children. The
experience of Catholic women, American and Canadian, was different fi'om the experience
of Protestant women, especially because of the convent school. Catholic women were
presented with an additional role to choose fi'om when they came of age - that of the nun.
It was a highly respected choice which ofi‘ered economic security and the chance for
personal growth and fulfillment through various means. Nuns were usually beyond the
reproach of society, their behavior was not questioned. As such, they were able to
perform 'male' tasks, move in traditionally male areas of influence, and create a completely
autonomous community of women. The role of "True Woman" in the Catholic context
could allow a much broader spectrum of experience for the nun. Women who joined
religious orders, whether consciously feminist or not, had a remarkable amount of
maneuverability in constructing their own destinies. They had a very difi‘erent and
significant form of agency not available to Protestant women of the same time period and
should be studied on their own terms as women, and as pe0ple.

It was not difiicult to apply the conclusions of Danylewycz to the Congregation of
the Holy Cross. Similarities in vocation; teaching and origins; French, and the upper
classes, helped. Both the women who attended the convent schools of Holy Cross, and

the women who entered the Holy Cross order showed slight variances fi'om the rhetoric of

prescription. The nuns, as highly educated women provided a role model, and the
academic standards were rigorous. Students at Saint Mary's were shown that it was
acceptable to be intelligent and female. The entirely female community provided a safe
space for expression of ideas unacceptable in secular society. When they left St. Mary's
and entered the secular world, students were confi'onted with a difl‘erent set of standards
and ideas about women's roles and accepted behavior. Some married, but a significant
number remained single or joined a religious order.

Benoit Lévesque's research was referred to in Danylewycz's study as providing a
theory about women who joined religious orders. He describes the convent as
rehabilitating 'surplus' women, women without men, into society. This is only a theory, a
device for categorizing and writing, it does not explain the causes of the phenomenon of
women moving into religious orders in unprecedented numbers. The convent school
provided girls with a picture of another type of life, another option. The convent
represented a perfectly acceptable life-choice for the Catholic woman. Danylewycz's order
attracted many more women over the same period than the Sisters of the Holy Cross did.
Perhaps this is due to the lack of options for F rench-Canadian women. In the American
context women more readily remained single than entered convents. It seems that both
groups of women rejected marriage for the same reason, the strong influence of the
convent in their formative years. In Quebec the alternative was religious life. American
women had more choice, not totally blocked from a professional career they could remain
single, they could even continue with their education, they could also enter a religious

order.

The only major difference between the behavior of Danylewycz's group of women
and the Holy Cross Sisters becomes apparent in the last chapter of Danylewycz's book
which discusses Catholic feminism. It has been suggested that the Canadian woman's
entrance into religious orders drained secular society of those women who would have
normally agitated for reform and feminism. It is here, however, that Quebec and the
United States difi‘er too greatly to be compared without more extensive research into the
American Catholic experience. The power of the Church and its alliance with politicians
had an enormous effect on the late appearance of francophone Catholic feminism in the
province of Quebec. Quebec difl‘ers from the rest of Canada in this respect. Primarily
Protestant, anglophone provinces like Ontario closely parallel the development of
American feminism. The overall appearance of feminism in the United States was not
delayed significantly because of a lack of Catholic participation. Catholic women may
have been absent from reform and feminist movements because, as Danylewycz suggests in
the case of Quebec, the 'best and brightest’ women had entered the convent. Catholic
women may have also found some of the goals of feminism contrary to their own
concerns. As Catholics, many of these women were not interested in issues such as family
size limitation, fertility control, divorce, and custody law reform. Agitation for women's
sufl‘rage was not even split along gender lines in the non-Catholic community. It would be
more plausible in the American context to conclude that Catholic women entered into the

feminist movement late because its goals did not constitute an important part of their lives.

Chapter 2: Themes in American Women's History

Because of the influence of industrialization during the nineteenth century,
production moved out of the home. This resulted in a change in gender roles as men
increasingly worked as wage laborers outside the home, while women acquired greater
responsibility for child rearing and for the domestic sphere. Historians attempt to describe
this gender shift by examining the rhetoric, as well as the actual experiences of women's
lives. To examine only one of these dimensions gives an unbalanced, one-sided view. Both
women's prescriptive roles, and the descriptive histories that detail women's actual
experience was largely a white, middle-class experience and audience. Some women
followed the role prescribed by 'True Womanhood,‘ while others attempted to follow it
outwardly but were aware that their situation did not fit this supposed norm. A small
minority of women ignored ideas about gender-specific roles and deliberately crossed
male/female boundaries.

Societies' reaction to women's actions and judgment of these actions was based on

women's ability to follow the strictures which governed gender roles. Above all, a woman

10

had to preserve her femininity. Women who stepped outside prescribed and accepted
boundaries were ostracized, for example, feminists were viewed as unnatural and aberrant.
A women might become highly educated or work and still be accepted, as long as she was
able to maintain her image of femininity. A brief overview of the evolution of American
women's history and its themes would provide a USCfill context for analysis. Many studies
have examined the roles of nineteenth, and early twentieth-century woman. One of the
earliest interpretive works was Barbara Welter’s 1966 article which described the ‘Cult of
True Womanhood’. Welter's article was groundbreaking, setting a trend in the study of
American women for the next three decades.

According to Welter, 'True Women' demonstrated virtues of piety, purity,
submissiveness, and domesticity.3 These respected virtues were articulated in women’s
magazines, gift annals and the religious literature of the time.4 Piety or religion, was the
basis on which purity, submissiveness, and domesticity were founded, and did not take a
woman away fi'om her proper sphere of the home.’ Purity and subnrissiveness were the
virtues which defined femininity, and it was through domesticity that woman became the
“great guardian of society against the excesses of human passions.”6 Women were
expected to remain within certain boundaries and if they did not, they were criticized

Sharply.7

 

3 Barbara Welter, ”The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Mfly 18,2 (1966): 152.
“ Welter 151.
5 Welter 153.
5 Welter 163.

7 Welter 172.

11

Even though this ideal was presented and encouraged, forces existed which
impelled change, such as movements for social reform“, westward migration, utopian
communities, industrialism, and the Civil War.9 The question is, does the descriptive
phrase, "Cult of True Womanhood" accurately portray the reality of women's lives during
this period? It may well have been the ideal, but even Welter concludes that, "Real women
often felt they did not live up to the ideal of True Womanhood; some of them blamed
themselves, some challenged the standard, some tried to keep the virtues and enlarge the

n10

scope of womanhood. This resulted in the fleeting existence of the 'True Woman.’ It is
important to ask however, to what extent did the True Woman ever really exist? Was she
simply a creation of rhetoric and certain literature 17"

Welter's ideas opened new avenues of research and provided a new language and
rhetoric. Works that followed focused on the formation and creation of the feminine, the
constructedness of gender roles, discussions of gender-segregated space, and prescribed
roles. The recognition of sex as a social category allowed for the study of women as a

definable group. This invited discussion of the social formation of femininity and the

constructedness of these man-made gender categories. ‘2

 

8 examples of 19th century American ”female" social reform include: child welfare, temperence, abolition,
mission work, working against prostitution, and teaching in Sunday Schools. for a more detailed account
of this see: Robyn Muncy, Creating a FMe Dominion in American Refog1 1890-1935, 1991. (New
York: Oxford University Press) 1994. especially chapter 1, pp. 3-37.

9 Welter 173-174.

‘° Welter 174.

1‘ This quesfion, the examination of the extent to which prescriptive literature and societal standards were
internalizedby women has been discussed frequently since the appearance of Welter's article. Two
especially useful studies on this topic are: Frances B. Cogan, All-American Girl: The Ideal of M
WMOOd in Mid-Nineteenth Cenm Amerig, (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989). and
Nancy M. Theriot, Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-Cam America: The Bigsfl' Construction
91: Femininig, (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996).

12although Welter initiated the bulk of the discussion about women's roles, the notion of sex as a category
ofsocialanalysisakintothatofraceorclassisgenerallyattnbutedtoJoanKelly. Forexample, seeJoan

12

The recognition of the humanity of role construction allows us to examine such
roles as the Cult of Domesticity, the True Woman, and the "lady," not only as roles
prescribed by " society" but as a conscious way of preserving class distinction and
stratification. ‘3

In the articulation, preservation, and function of these feminine roles a distinctly
female culture can be identified with its own space and networks. 1" Originally notions of
female culture were rigid and dependent on a dichotomy which defined the public as male
and the private as female, from which sprang the idea of separate spheres. By defining the
public as the place of history and history-making, women were then placed outside what
was considered the historical. In an efi‘ort to bring women into history, historians such as
Mary P. Ryan and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham” have turned to examining women's
presence in distinctly public, yet female, roles. The classic example has been that of the
clubwoman. Some have taken the study of the female public sphere further in examining
the creation of a historical sisterhood built on female networks and kinship. The study of
this women's culture, referred to as female institution building, is fi'equently applied to the

female-only Sister schools of the Ivy League. 16 Unfortunately most studies on genuinely

 

Kelly-Gadol, ”The Social Relations of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women's History."
Sigh; 1/4 (1976): 809-823.

'3 see Gerda Lerner, "the lady and the mill girl: changes in the status ofwomen in the age ofjackson."
Midcontinent American Studies Journal 10 (Sp. 1969): 5-15.

'4 for a discussion of women's networks in the midwest and on the frontier see: John Mack Faragher,
'Historyfromthelnside—Qrt: Writingthel-IistoryofWomeninRuralAmerica,” W 33
(Winter 1981) esp. 548-557.

'5 see Mary P. Ryan, Cradle ofthe Middle Class. The Family in Oneida County, New Yor_k, 1790-1865.
1981. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) for a discussion of a Protestant community and
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent. The Women's Movement in the Black mg
Churcha 1880-1920, 1993. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1994.) for a rare discussion of
women's culture, roles, and networks pertaining to Southern black women

‘6 for female institution building see Estelle Freedman, ”Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution
Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930,” Feminist Studies 5/3 (1979): 512-529.

13

female space and women's culture culminate with women's involvement in the feminist
movement.

Although women can be studied as a group, and as such share certain
characteristics, it is important to remember that like any other group, women are not
monolithic, there are many diverse ways to break down the study of women into
subgroups. Unfortunately the bulk of the literature has been about middle-class,
Protestant women and was deterministic as it has generally been used to explain the
subsequent growth of feminism and the women's movement. This approach is incomplete
since it does not take into account religious distinctions.

American society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries possessed a
Catholic female equivalent to the middle class women discussed so thoroughly in Mary
Ryan's Cmdle of the Middle Clags. Although these women's lives were similar in some
ways to those of middle-class Protestant women, they did not participate in first-wave
feminism as did some of their Protestant counterparts.

Historians now accept that the study of women must include differences of class,
thus, this discussion refers only to middle-class women's experience. Middle-class
Catholic women did not identify with lower class Catholic women but instead, used the
rhetoric of “True Womanhood", to consciously set themselves apart from the poorer, and
less socially acceptable 'ethnic', immigrant Catholics who were often the target of the
Know-Nothing and nativist movements. These women had more in common with nriddle-
class Protestant women, yet their shared experiences were marked by the religious

difference, and due to this religious difl‘erence they found feminism abhorrent. They did

14

not relate readily to the men of their own class and religion as adults, having been
separated fiom them during their formative years. They were in fact members of their own
distinct culture. This Catholic, middle-class women's culture was similar, yet not identical
to that of Protestant women of the same class. There were boundaries, networks, roles,
and relationships peculiar to Catholic women; an experience which deserves investigation.
Although most authors of books and articles on nineteenth-century women's

history have been concerned with Protestant women, many of these theories about roles
and femininity are applicable to Catholic women as well. Catholic women lived in the
same society and were subjected to the same rhetoric. The difl‘erence was that strong
female role models were part of Catholicism. Nuns had no children and no husband, they
lived in a totally female community, and often did work or behaved in a manner
unbecoming to the secular 'True Woman.’ By virtue of being nuns, however, they
wereviewed as 'True Woman' and therefore they had much more liberty in their accepted
forms of behavior. With this freedom they were able to lead whole and fulfilled lives.

to experience a self-supporting and self-directing female

community, such as existed and continues to exist in the

religious and lay schools of many European countries.

Experience of a female controlled and directed world is

essential, if women are to discover a sense of their own

potential for self-directing activity. ‘7
This view, that women would have been better off in discovering themselves as ‘persons’
in a gender-segregated community of learning, is a tantalizing one. Feminist historians'
discussions of female institution building attempts to describe a women's culture and

attribute its existence to a female-only space. The notion of a gender-segregated

 

'7 Jill Kathryn Conway, "Perspectives on the History of Womens' Education in the United States," Histog
22W XIV, no.1 (1984): 10-

15

community is even more applicable to the convent and the convent school, yet they have
rarely been studied or even mentioned in works of mainstream women's history.
Frequently Catholic women are simply given a nod, a quick mention, if at all, in

discussions of nineteenth-century American womanhood. Perhaps they have been
neglected because they were not the majority of the female population, and the
pervasiveness of Protestant values in the United States was taken as a given. Perhaps they
have been overlooked because their narrative from the nrid-nineteenth through the early-
twentieth century could not be represented as an ever-climbing line on a graph
representing women's radicalization which culminated in an expression of the sentiments of
mainstream feminism. Perhaps Catholic lay and religious women are seen as submitting to
a rigid clerical patriarchy.

However, the restrictions under which women within the

institutions of the Catholic Church carry on their work have

certainly been vastly overestimated by most Protestants.

The various women's orders are still very important, and within

these orders the women have unusually good opportunity to

develop special talents for religion, administration, the arts

and professions. . .A career in religion is a definite possibility for

the Roman Catholic girl.18
The opportunities open to a woman who chose a religious vocation could be, in the
nineteenth century, interpreted as better than a woman's opportunities for personal
fillfillment. The importance of the figure of Mary to female religious orders opens up
questions about the ambiguity of the supposed position and role of women in the Catholic

religion. In spite of the patriarchal power structure which controlled spiritual matters,

 

'8 Elsie Thomas Culver, Women in the World of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company,
Inc, 1967) 221.

16

female religious communities were actually independent in administrative matters and they
maintained what could be called an alternative family model in an entirely gender-
segregated space. The aim of the following chapter is to explore some of the ways
Catholic women, and religious women have been described by historians, and to
demonstrate that the middle-class Catholic woman's experiences in nineteenth-century
America ofl‘en difl‘ered greatly from the experiences of the Protestant woman, who has
long been assumed to be the model for nineteenth-century American women. Not only are

Catholic women different, it will be shown that they are worth studying in their own right.

Chapter 3: The Catholic Woman

The American Catholic woman and the American nun have been the subject of
relatively few historical studies. The most abundant secondary source material has been
produced within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church by both male and female members of
religious orders. It has also been common for religious orders to produce their own
histories. In the past very few of these works were produced by academically trained
historians. Many lack footnotes, a bibliography, contextualization within the larger picture
of American society, and are tainted by providential language. There has also been a
tendency to treat traditional oral histories of congregations as actual events rather than the
mythologized and embellished accounts that they usually become. More recent accounts
are much more concerned with relating history than proselytizing for the Catholic Church
or for their order. In the last thirty years more and more members of religious orders have
obtained graduate degrees and in addition to producing dissertations on an aspect of the
Catholic Church in America, many have written excellent histories of their own orders. In
addition, the majority of religious orders now have a formally trained archivist and or
historian on stafl‘ to assist with research.

Outside of histories produced about specific communities from within, very little
has been written about American Catholic women by either religious or secular authors.

One of the more comprehensive studies is a doctoral dissertation by Dominican Mary

17

18

Ewens, published in book form in 1978.19 The goal of the book is to examine the role of
the nun in nineteenth-century American society, and the conflicts and adaptations that
grew out of cultural conflicts between European established institutions with American
members.

This book is divided into periods of history beginning with Colonial America's first
contact with nuns, when captives were canied to Canada. Two of Ewens' underlying
themes are the actual acceptance of Catholics by Protestants, and the wide discrepancy
between the stereotypical image of the nun and the reality of nuns' lives.

Ewens published again in 1979, this time devoting an essay to the life of the nun in
America.20 Her goal was not only to portray the nuns' experience, but to, in a way,
empower them, by positing their status in nineteenth-century America as more liberated
than that of the secular woman.

Another important work on American women is Nuns and the Education of
American Catholic Womgh, 1860-1920 by Eileen Mary Brewer. Brewer looks at four
female teaching orders in the American Midwest. Though some of her ideas are not
adequately developed , her work is also concerned with the existenceiof a 'separate female
world' and with the power held by nuns with respect to lay women.

Turning to the Canadian literature on Catholic women we find a much richer and
larger body of works. One of the earliest was "Les Communaute's Religieuses et la
Condition Féminine" by Micheline Dumont-Johnson who unabashedly states that "...le

cadre des communautés religieuses féminines a constitué la premiere manifestation d'un

 

‘9 The Role ofthe NE in Nineteenth Centm Americh, (New York: Arno Press, 1978).
2° Mary Ewens, 01>. ”Removing the Veil: the Liberated American Nun," in Women of 5m ' . Rosemary
Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin,eds. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.) 255-278.

l9

"2‘ Whether they were self—proclaimed feminists or not, Dumont-

féminisme québecois.
Johnson sees Quebec religieuses as participating in an acceptable form of female protest.
Protest, because they turned their backs on marriage and procreation, and acceptable
because the role chosen was still an undeniably female one.

The work that brings together many of the themes and goals discussed above is
also set in the Canadian context. Its well-articulated theories about the Catholic
experience, and female roles, culture, and sisterhood are based on studies of two
specifically Canadian orders, yet the questions asked and the conclusions reached are
relevant to the American setting.

Taking the Veil: in Alternhtive to Marriage, Motherhfla and Spinsterhood in

Quebec, 1840-1820 is an expansion of Marta Danylewycz’s doctoral dissertation,

 

published posthumously by her friends and colleagues. In it she delineates the nuns'
experience in the province of Quebec, and primarily in the city of Montreal, by closely
examining two female religious orders, the Congregation de Notre Dame, and the Sisters
of Miséricorde.

The Congregation de Notre Dame was founded by a French woman, Marguerite
Bourgeoys in 1653, during the early years of the colony of New France. Unlike most
French orders of the time it was never a cloistered community. The Congregation de
Notre Dame was always a teaching order and grew to have schools across Canada in the
form of academics, boarding schools, écoles ménagéres, a normal school, a women’s

college, and parish schools.

 

2‘ Micheline Dumont-Johnson, "Les Communaute's Religieuses et la Condition Feminine," Recherches
W XIX. 1 (1973): 79-

20

The Sisters of Mise'ricorde are a much more recently established group. They
evolved out of the work of Montreal widow Rosalie Cadron-Jetté who had been taking in
unwed mothers and their infants. At the urging of the Bishop of Montreal, Ignace
Bourget, Cadron-Jetté and a fiiend, Sophie Desmarets founded a religious order in 1851
to continue this work. The order briefly provided the service of midwifery, until Rome
ruled against that line of work for religious women in 1860; but it continued to provide its
‘house of refugee' women. By the 18905 the community had become financially secure
and began to professionally train its sisters as nurses, hospitals administrators and lab
assistants.22 By looking at these two very different orders Danylewycz was able to see a
spectrum of experience representing one-fifth of the total female religious population of
Quebec.”

Danylewycz choose to study the period from 1840 to 1920 because of the reversal
of the trend of stagnation in the growth of religious orders. There was also a growth in
the number of European based orders which established branches in the ”New World"?
In Quebec this began not only the rise of women’s religious vocations, but the growth of
religious leadership in education and the social services, and the concurrent weakening of
lay influence in those areas.25 The growth of the Church was the result of multiple forces at

work that occurred not only in Quebec and Canada but in most industrializing ‘Western’

 

22 Marta Danylewycz, Takihg the Veil: An Alternative to Marriage, Mghemgi grid grammar in
thheg, 1840-1920, ed by Paul-Andre Linteau, Alison Prentice, and William Westfall (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1987) 20.

23 Danylewycz 2. My review of Danylewycz's work will concentrate on sections pertaining to the teaching
order of the Congregation de Notre Dame as my own research involved a teaching order

2‘ Micheline Dumont-Johnson, "Les Communautés Religieuses et la Condition Feminine,” Recherches
Wane: XIX. l (1978): 86.

2’ Dammit-Johnson 17.

21

nations. These forces were industrialization, the glorification of the home, the growth of
female education, and the emergence of feminism.

Danylewycz's first chapter examines the religious, social, and economic factors
which led to this increase in religious communities and vocations in Quebec.26 During the
nineteenth century something happened which, she argues, was peculiar to Quebec, “. . .the
Church was able to become the dominant social and cultural institution in French
Canada.”27 This growth in the power of the Church was the result of two things: the
personal figure of Mgr. Bourget, Bishop of Montreal, and the truly peculiar political
situation of Quebec.

The role of the clergy in Quebec was a unique one. Unlike many "Western",
industrializing nations, the clergy had an enormous influence over the people of Quebec.
Priests held extremely elevated and revered positions within the community. The clergy
also had a significant influence in the political arena, and frequently instructed Catholics
how to vote. They were also passionate speakers on the subject of F tench-Canadian
nationalism and the preservation of the French-Canadian culture.

The clergy were responsible for injecting devotional exercises into popular culture
and for erecting visible reminders such as cathedrals, shrines, and the cross on Mount
Royal, to increase popular piety.28 Along with this the Church venerated the image of
Mary and the Immaculate Conception. The image of Mary was used by the Church in

much the same way nineteenth-century United States theologians lauded the Cult of True

Womanhood.

 

26 Danylewycz, Taking the Veil 20.
27 Danylewycz 22.
2‘ Danylewycz, T&' g the Veil 39.

22

In Chapter Two Danylewycz puts forth the idea that it was possible for a woman
to seek social mobility through marriage or through the spiritual life of a vocation. In
order to comprehend this choice and what women were choosing between, the world for
women outside the convent must first be understood. This was a time of limited economic
opportunity, land scarcity, and migration. Thus many Quebeckers adopted a more prudent
attitude towards marriage, marrying later than they had in the past.29

Limited white-collar 'fenrinine' positions did exist such as teaching, omce work,
clerking, and nursing, but women in these positions were treated worse and paid less than
blue-collar workers or their male equivalents, ”Although they were better educated and
often came from a higher social class than women in service and manufacturing, they

1130

earned less than their supposed social inferiors. They were also often forced or
expected to quit upon marriage, and certainly upon the birth of the first child?1

The most viable employment option for a woman who wished to support herself
was teaching. The salaries did not vary greatly fi'om urban to rural areas and it was the
only option which ofi‘ered a pension. Even so it was assumed by school administrators
that women teachers were single and without families to support and therefore did not
deserve the higher salary accorded to male teachers.32 This problem of inequality was

compounded by the presence of religious teachers in the school system.33 Members of

religious orders were expected to and did work for next to nothing upsetting the whole

 

’9 Danylewycz 52.
3° Danylewycz 58.
3‘ Danylewycz 57.
32 Danylewycz 58.
33 Dumont-Johnson 89.

23

labor system by devaluing the job. Nuns and brothers were cheaper and also stayed in a
position longer than lay teachers.”

Teaching presented a welcome alternative to the women of the nineteenth century
whose other paid job options included domestic service, mill and factory labor,
dressmaking, and prostitution. It was an acceptable profession for a respectable young
woman and afl‘orded some social standing. Another positive aspect was that "Teaching
was the only career open to women that led to a pension."35 It was also one of the only
paid careers open to the educated woman. It was not, however, a common choice for the
French-Canadian woman.

Francophone institutions with teacher training courses opened their doors to
women much later than did anglophone institutions?6 Fewer positions were Open to
secular instructors in French language schools for two reasons: French Canadians were
predominantly Catholic, thus most religious instructors were concentrated in the French
language schools, public or private, leaving few job openings for the secular teacher.

Unfortunately teaching, as stated, was not much of a career option for fiancophone
women. Although it was possible to obtain a position as a teacher without graduating
fi'om a normal school, figures indicate that the proportions of normal school graduates are

very similar to the proportions of actual teachers in the census and educational reports.37

 

3‘ Danylewycz, Tgigg the Veil 60.

35 Cross, 218.

36 There were three teacher training (Normal) schools in the province of Quebec in the 19the. The
francophoneJacques CartierinMontrealandLaval inQuebec, openedin 1856. Theydidnotaccept
women until 1899. In contrast the anglophone McGill opened in Montreal in 1856 and accepted women
in 1857. source: Louis-Philippe Audet, Histoire de l'ensei ement au 2 tomes. (Montreal: Holt,
Rinehart ct Winston, Ltée, 1971, Tome 2, 1840-1971) 31. and D. Suzanne Cross, "The Neglected
Majority: the Changing Role of Women in l9th Century Montreal," Histoire Socials/@211 111$ g 12
Nov/nov. (1973): 217-219.

3’ Quebec Sessional Papers, 1869-70, 8-12, and 1870-71, 23.

24

Norrnal-school graduates dominated the profession. Francophone universities, and thus
the professions, were not open to women until the turn of the century (unlike anglophone
institutions). There were limited options for the upper- or middle-class French Catholic
woman who wanted to maintain her respectability. Only a very small number of
fiancophone women became teachers or nurses, most married or entered convents.

For those women who wished to remain single and needed to be self-supporting, or
women who wanted careers, there were few easy options that did not involve financial or
economic hardship or relocation. Therefore there was little to dissuade women from
entering convents. "Almost everything, on the contrary, seemed to favour their movement
into convents."38 Secular society ofl‘ered middle and upper-class francophone Catholic
women little room for social mobility or self-fillfillment outside marriage. "What could an
ambitious woman do except seek social mobility through marriage or spiritual life"?39 If
marriage wasn't desirable, that lefi one Option- the convent. It is also possible that
education in convent schools stimulated and developed girls' intellectual and spiritual
desires, awakening urges that may not have been able to be satisfied in secular society. In
order to reconcile their aspirations with the secular realities facing women in Quebeeois
society some women may have been encouraged ". . .to stay in the convent to develop
further their spiritual and intellectual capabilities.“0

Danylewycz asserts that unlike other North American or European societies, no
one in Quebec questioned the right of convents to exist or women's choice to enter thenr,

"On the contrary, women were consistently reminded that the 'heavens were their

 

’8 Danylewycz, Thgng the Veil 70.
39 Danylewycz 70.
4° Danylewycz 117.

25

domain""u and that religion was their specific calling. Danylewycz interprets this

encouragement as a green light for women to enter convents.

Danylewycz's next chapter examines an increase in vocations fi'om inside the
convent; a ground-up approach which uses the life histories of women who became sisters.
In the past historians have stressed the motivation of personal religious afiinnation and the
importance of "providence." Fewer women attributed their religious vocation to
providence in nineteenth-century Quebec, and instead, vocations presented an alternative
to "...placement en service domestique, a l'e'migration dans les re'gions de colonisation, a
l'exil aux Etats-Unis, et méme au mariage."‘12

In fact in the case of teaching nuns, the constraints of traditional, physical maternity
were replaced by a liberated, spiritual maternity. Teaching nuns played the role of mother
to many children without ever giving birth. The appellation 'mother' often meant both
parent and teacher, the lines between the family of birth and the family of the convent
boarding school were blurred. Danylewycz also sees teaching nuns as gaining social
prestige and material reward for their conrrnunity.43 Due to community desire for prestige
and recognition, a form of elitism about teaching grew. "The Congregation felt obliged to
make rank distinctions between its teaching and non-teaching sisters, thereby undermining

the impression that all nuns were of equal worth. . "‘4 Therefore Danylewycz sees entrance

into an order with a teaching vocation as, in part, a selfish, pride-motivated activity,

 

4' Danylewycz 70.

‘2 Dumont-Johnson 91.

‘3 Danylewycz, Taking the Veil 75.
4" Danylewycz 77.

26

"...women in nineteenth century Quebec hoped to satisfy their social needs and aspirations
as well as their spiritual yearrlings.""5

Danylewycz presents two hypotheses in order to explain womens' rising vocations.
The first hypothesis was advanced by Benoit Levesque in Dénault's Elements pour une
sociologie des communautés religieuses au @ébec. Levesque sees religious orders as an
efi‘ective way of integrating growing numbers of 'redundant' women who avoided the
traditional family role. "By subnritting to the power of the priest and to the religious
integration of the Church, these women were restored to overall society.” The figure of
the priest provided the necessary male authority figure that every women must be linked
to, in order to be non-redundant. The second hypothesis was advanced by women's
scholars and sees the expansion in terms of women's intellectual and social aspirations,
"...arguing that the organization of convents by women was a manifestation of incipient or
"surrogate" feminism. "‘7 Danylewycz favors the second hypothesis since Levesque had
wrongly assumed that priests had control over nuns. Though they had spiritual pull,
women governed their own temporals. The second hypothesis is important because purely
spiritual factors for entrance into a convent must be balanced by social factors as well. A
focus on the spiritual alone ". . .places convent women outside history"48 by denying their
humanity. It seems that the best approach is a combination of both hypotheses.

Convents, in general, offered a range of choices in terms of type; a chance to

reconsider unlike marriage; skills-whether one stayed or not; a vocation; the chance to

 

‘5 Danylewycz 83.
‘5 Danylewycz 85.
‘7 Danylewycz 84.
48 Danylewycz 87.

27

reject marriage; positions of power regardless of class background; rewards for good
work.49 Although it is unfair to claim that all nuns found convent life equally satisfying,
". . .through their commitment to religion, convent women developed a unique lifestyle that
melded prayer and devotion to privileges that were generally denied secular women. "50
These 'surplus' women who might have had a marginal existence as spinsters otherwise
were given a place in the community through their work-not marriage. In Quebec
religious life represents a unique expression of femininity and an alternative path towards
female self-realization. Danylewycz has argued that in New England this 'surplus' of
women became the 'cradle' of agitation for women's rights.51 This sufices for Protestant
New England, but what about areas of the United States with Catholic communities?
Chapter Four of Danylewycz's book examines the role of the family and its
relationship to religious institutions. Families were a means of recruitment, relatives who
had entered religious institutions provided an example to children, "Women in religious
communities facilitated the movement of younger generations of lay relatives into religious
life. All of these interactions served to create in Quebec a society in which the spheres of
secular and sacred, private and public, were distinct and separate only to the outsider.“2
To have a child in religion was an honor for the whole family, not only was it certain that
the economic filture of that child was secure, families believed that their own chances for

salvation had improved significantly. 53

 

‘9 Danylewycz 105-106.
5° Danylewycz 108.
5‘ Danylewycz 109.
‘2 Danylewycz 129.
53 Danylewycz 112.

28

The introduction to convent life began early for young girls, long before a woman
made the final decision to enter an order or not. Many young middle- and upper-class girls
were sent to be educated in various schools stafl‘ed by nuns. In the form of parish day
schools and boarding schools, young girls were exposed to this life-path alternative to
motherhood. Many young women spent their early years in a gender-segregated, female
environment. "In effect, convent schools, which flourished in this period, also promoted
the ideologies of religious communities as surrogate families, as well as presenting young
girls with the role model of the nun and her varied accomplishments. "54 Boarders lived a
similar life to that of the nuns with a tight schedule emphasizing prayer and devotion. Not
only did they live comrnunally, their social life was entirely group-oriented. Many schools
had cultural and literary organiutions, girls wrote and performed plays and published
literary joumals.” Girls lived in close proximity to their teachers, enabling them to admire
the nuns and form special fiiendships, "School girls became acquainted with the ways of
the convent through their boarding school experiences. Some also came to admire and
love their mentors and began to identify with their life's work. "56 The sisters were not
unaware of the influence they had over girls.

It was not only the girls of pious French Canadian families who were sent to
convent schools. Ofien children of vehement and noted anti-clerics were also enrolled.57
This patronage had nothing to do with religion; convent schools were often the best

schools available, and they produced well-educated, well-disciplined young women in an

 

’4 Danylewycz 116.
55 Danylewycz 117.
56 Danylewycz 118.
57 Danylewycz 122.

29

excellent situation to contract a good marriage. The Congregation de Notre Dame's
convent schools, Villa Maria and Mont.-Ste.-Marie were leading educational institutions
that trained the daughters and firture wives of the province's elite.58
Boarding schools also provided reliable and necessary childcare services. Often
students in attendance were orphans or left with only one parent. Children such as these
were sent to boarding schools because "Nuns created a second home for the young, thus
sharing with parents the responsibility of rearing daughters."59
The Church and the family were intertwined in this strange symbiotic relationship.
"During the second half of the nineteenth century the goals of an expanding Church and
the needs of families intersected, making the convent boarding school a viable
institution. "60 Although there was conflict, this relationship continued strong into the
twentieth century.
Danylewycz's concluding chapter chronicles the rise of francophone feminism in a
region that often difi'ered greatly and lagged behind other industrialized nations.
In light of the argument that during the latter half of the
nineteenth century religious life opened the door for some
women to a variety of educational and social opportunities that
women in other societies attained through the women's
movement, it is necessary to ask what efi‘ect this possibility had
on the development of a feminist consciousness among
francophone lay women in Quebec.61

Danylewycz thinks that the slower movement of feminism in Quebec was inevitable

because the option of religious life ofi‘ered a partial solution to the problems which women

 

5” Danylewycz 122-126.
59 Danylewycz 127.
6° Danylewycz 130.
5' Danylewycz 133.

30

agitated against elsewhere. In addition, the paths of insertion into the system that
Protestant women followed - charitable and philanthropic work - were already occupied by
religious women and controlled by the Church in Quebec. The Church in Quebec provided
and outlet that other North American women found through the feminist movement, which
in Canada included agitation for women's right to higher education, equality before the
law, and the right to vote. Some branches of feminism in Canada were also interested in
fertility control, family size limitation, divorce and child custody law reform."2

It is important, therefore, to understand the relationship between two groups of
women in Quebec - nuns and lay francophone women. Lay women occupied a marginal
place in social services as compared to the representation of the religious community and
of Protestant women.63 Those who began to be politicized around the turn of the century
were the privileged few, and they questioned the nuns' dominance in the area of charitable
work.“ This feminism differed greatly from non-francophone, Protestant feminism,
Quebec women's reactions were situated clearly within the tradition of Catholicism,
producing a 'Catholic feminism' unavailable to Protestant and Jewish women. The early

women of the church and the Virgin Mary were celebrated and glorified. Nuns were

 

'52 It is difficult to make a blanket statement about feminism in Canada, or even in Quebec in the
nineteenth century. As with many other issues there were divisions along the lines of language and
religion alone. Although what we might call 'mainstream' feminism, that identifiable in other Western
nations, was present in Quebec with the foundation of the National Council of Women in 1893, it tended
to manifestitselfinamuch more conservative forminQuebec Oftenratherthanstressing equality
between the sexes, Quebec feminism stressed the conrplementary nature of male and female roles.
Francophone Catholic women did not have the same liberty of expression as Protestant women as they
always risked the hostility of a vocal clergy. Many feminist reforms such as fertility control and family
size limitation, interlinking issues, were effective much earlier in predominantly Protestant and
anglophone Ontario than in Quebec. The average size of the family began to decline much earlier in
Ontario andmore quicklythanthat inQuebec.

‘3 Danylewycz 134.

6‘ Danylewycz 136.

31

pointed to as evidence that voting would not corrupt women. After all who could be more
moral or beyond reproach than a nun?

'Catholic feminists' soon realized that they could not work against nuns and expect
any success, so they began to ally themselves with the religious orders. This made the
Church and politicians nervous; multiple efl‘orts were made to divide nuns and lay women.

The Congregation de Notre Dame was willing and able to respond to the demands
of these middle-class women, many of whom were former students. "The challenge lay
women put forward to religious women has been overlooked by historians in the past
because its discovery and analysis are only possible in the context of a women's history
that makes religious women and their lay counterparts the focus of study. "‘5 There needs
to be more historical emphasis on religious women as women, and as active participants in
the creation of history.

This reliance on religious women for services had put lay women at a political
disadvantage, yet the existence of religious women also provided the method and impetus
for questioning male dominance amongst middle-class Catholic fiancophone women.

The lives of these sisters demonstrate the fact that convents
ofi‘ered an alternative to marriage and motherhood (and
"spinsterhood") in a society that valued women chiefly as
procreative beings. Under the protection of their vocations,
women pursue life-long careers, wielded power, and, on occasion,
entered the public sphere. In the final analysis, entering a convent

could well mean overcoming the disadvantage of being a woman in
a man's world.“

 

‘5 Danylewycz 158.
6‘ Danylewycz 159-160.

32

Any discussion of nineteenth and twentieth-century Quebec needs to be situated in
the province's rather peculiar historical context which was responsible for producing the
bifirrcated society of modern times and the divisions along language and religious lines not
found elsewhere in North America. The uniqueness of Quebec can make comparison with
other societies difficult. In addition to a culture and an educational system divided by
language, Quebec society was also divided by class. There was no direct equivalent to St.
Mary's students in Quebec, as most anglophone Catholics were of the working class. The
middle and upper-class patrons of convent schools were almost entirely fiancophone.

Therefore, Catholic and Protestant women did not share the same experience in
either nineteenth-century Canada or the United States. In Quebec some avenues of
employment open to Protestant women were virtually closed to Catholic fiancophone
women. In both Quebec and the United States, however, the experience of the convent
school and the option of a religious vocation offered Catholic women a different choice,
neither marriage nor spinsterhood, yet still an expression of femininity within the bounds of
prescribed female roles. "Within the religious community, however, it was possible for
women to rise to positions of great authority and responsibility that had no counterpart in
the Protestant community. "67 The convent in Quebec attracted many of the women who,
in a Protestant society, would have been vocal feminist activists. Religious communities
not only drained the fiancophone community of those women most likely to support the
feminist cause, they also lessened the avenues of protest due to their monopoly in the

social services. This alternative expression of femininity represented the first expression of

 

6’ D. Suzanne Cross 220.

33

Québecois feminism, while at the same time it stifled secular fi'ancophone feminist

movements.

Chapter 4: The Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana

The position of Catholicism in the nineteenth-century United States was by no
means as elevated as it was in Quebec. The institutions of Catholicism defined nearly
every aspect of Quebec society, and directly afi‘ected all but a small Protestant and Jewish
minority. However, even though Catholicism was not nearly so pervasive in the United
States, it still played a significant role, and many of Marta Danylewycz's conclusions about
women and Catholicism are equally relevant in the American context.

Most histories of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States are
based on an assumption that being American meant being Protestant. Certainly one cannot
wish to deny the vast size and influence of Protestantism in the United States, but it was
also not the only option. In addition to a rnlrnber of native-born Catholics, the nineteenth-
century United States became the home of many Catholic immigrants from Ireland,
Canada, Italy, and the Germanic countries. Often it is assumed that all these Catholic
immigrants were of the blue-collar, 'laboring' class; however, "Not all women of immigrant
background lived in poverty and squalor. In the higher circles of immigrant and Catholic

families women enlarged their sphere in the same fashion as had their native-born peers. "68

 

‘3 Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From genial Times to the m (New York: Franklin
Watts, Inc., 1983) 156-157.

34

35

Nuns performed the same social service and benevolent activities as Protestant women.
Nanatives about nuns have, however, perpetuated a stereotypical image of nuns and
Catholicism. Nuns are not known to historians as women who identified with the
experiences of other women. Any history of nineteenth-century American women should
also explore the experience of American nuns.

Historian Mary Ryan writes of the need to look for past evidence of women's
power and autonomy. In doing so, historians have been able to find that, "Within
segregated female spheres and women's networks they [historians] have discerned
evidence of the ability of women to maximize their fieedom and exert considerable social
influence. "‘9 Within the segregated space of the convent school women also formed these
same sort of networks and in addition, women who became nuns were able to act in some
similarwaysreservedto malesinsecularsociety.

European religious orders thought of America as a vast field for missionary
endeavor. Between 1790 and 1920, 119 European orders established foundations in the
United States, eight Canadian orders established American branches, and 38 American
orders were founded.70 In 1822 there were 200 nuns in the United States, in 1920 there
were 88,773."1 This growth is remarkable similar to the growth witnessed in the province

of Quebec during the same time period.

 

”MaryP. Ryan, "ThePowerofWomen'sNetworks: ACaseStudyofFemaleMoralReformin
Antebellum America," Feminist Studig 5 (Spring 1979): 66.

7° Eileen Mary Brewer, Nuns ' of American 1i Wom 1860-1920 (Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1987) 13.

7' Brewer 15.

36

These orders were necessary to meet the needs of immigrant Catholics.72
Catholics wished to provide education for their own community because they feared
Protestant influence and secularism in the public schools.73 To stafi‘ these schools
American bishops needed the services of teaching nuns.

American mms were almost exclusively teachers at this time, which presented
problems for orders with European origins. The constitutions and rules of these
communities were nearly entirely European in origin The majority of European orders
were cloistered, meaning that was were greatly restricted in movement and contact with
the outside world. These restrictions were simply not practical in North America This
resulted in a cultural clash "Many sisters whose rules required adaptations for American
conditions fell into the umrsual pattern of strained relationships with European superiors,
bishops, and priest-directors."74 Religious of European origin were generally quite
inflexible and were fiequemly pitted against the more recent native-born (American)
arrivals to the order in a struggle over whether or not to adapt the community to the
American setting. Ofientimes these tensions seemed to threaten the existence of the
community.

Another contrast to the European experience was the way in which religious orders
were financed. In Europe they were established and maintained through royal grants or

endowments fiom wealthy patrons. In the United States ms were much more personally

 

72MaryEwens,O..P 'RemovingtheVeil: theLiberatedAmericanNun," tum Rosemary
RuetheraudEleenorMcLaughlineds. (NewYork: SimonandSchuster, 1979) 257.
’3 F. Michael Perko, s. 1., ed., Hangmg the Next more: gatherig mm“ Schogh, 1830-1980
(NewYork: GarlandPublishing,Inc., 1988) 68,243.
7‘ Mary Ewens, on, The hole gfthe Nun in Nineteenth m America Diss. University ofMinnesota
(NewYorlc ArnoPress, 1978) 211

37

responsible for financing their orders and participated in a variety of money-making
activities, including spimring and sewing for neighbors and college boys, raising their own
food and working their own farms, as well as printing and binding journals and prayer
books.75 The vocational aim of these orders, however, was usually intended to be teaching
and "...the vast majority of American nuns were teachers, profession of vows most often
meant joining the teaching profession."76

Between 1840 and 1910 the mlmber of Catholic academics in the United States
went fi'om 47 to 709.77 Although the all-over growth is significant, growth in the Midwest
is ' y noteworthy because "With few rivals in the educational field, the sisters'
schools were welcomed by both Catholic and Protestant. "78 Often the only option for a
quality education was a Catholic academy. Both Protestant and Jewish girls attended
Catholic academies. Children of prominent families attended because they were the best
schools available in many areas outside the urban Northeast."9 The sisters were careful to
respect the fieedom of conscience of non-Catholic pupils, often releasing them from Brble
and Church history courses, and forbidding them fi'om joining the religious sodalities.
These acadenries were the equivalent ofthe elite schools ofthe East, training girls to
become Catholic gentlewomen.

In order to better understand the experience of the American mm and the influence
of the convent school, it is necessary to examine an American female religious community

and its school in-depth Although some of the details may vary, Saint Mary's

 

7’ Ewens 67.
7‘ Casey 30.

7’ Brewer 15.
’8 Brewer 16.

’9 Ewens, "Removing the Veil" 269.

38

Academy/College, of Notre Dame, Indiana did not difi‘er greatly fiom the other various
convent schools and neither did the Sisters of the Holy Cross, the women responsible for
it. Education was ofl‘ered to girls and women from the age of five through high school
completion. The majority of students were of the Roman Catholic faith but students of
other faiths attended convent schools which were often the best schools in outlying areas.
Many of these schools had European origins, like Holy Cross, and therefore the curriculum
was more classical than the new American vocational, in form Courses stressed not only
the arts and humanities but also science and mathematics. Competition was a key
characteristic encouraged amongst students. A concern for physical as well as spiritual
well-being was expressed by the mandatory physical education classes. While many
convent schools boarded students in some accepted only day students, some schools, like
St. Mary's were a mix ofboth. The teachers in the convent school were predominantly
professed sisters, often a product of the very same school. While the teachers (sisters)
sometimeslivedinthe sarnequartersasthe students,theyalsooftenhadnearby, but
separate quarters. At St. Mary's the students and sisters started ofi‘sharing facilities and
when firnds and space permitted, the students were given their own residence. Whole
families and generations of fanrilies attended schools stafl‘ed by the same order, there were
fiequently male and female equivalents such as Notre Dame and St. Mary's.

Upon closer examination of St. Mary's we will see that as with the groups studied
by Danylewycz, these were a uniquely well-educated group of women. Separated fi'om
the world and fi'om men these women grew up confident in a nurturing, all-female

environment. They were called upon to study subjects such as Greek, Latin, advanced

39

mathematics, and physical education which were largely absent from the normal public
school curriculum for young women Many strong ties were formed amongst the students,
with the school, and with its faculty. Graduates found time to visit St. Mary's, as they had
the schools of the Congregation de Notre Dame, with their bethrothed, and their children.
Their weddings and firrther education were announced happily in the school paper, as was
the entrance ofsome into religion Attendence at a convent school seemed to be a family
afl‘air and so was the profession of a religious vocation. Many young women were
influenced by aunts and sisters, or by teachers with whom they had developed a strong
fiiendship.

On Aug. 1840 five men of the diocese of LeMans, France made religious vows that
formed the Congregation of Holy Cross.“0 One ofthese men, Father Edward Sorin went
on to become a key figure in the order, and was instrumental in founding the Holy Cross
Sisters. Father Moreau, founder of the brothers of Holy Cross saw his new religious
congregation as having two branches, one male, one female. He had gathered around him
'pious girls' as domestic workers, and in 1841, four ofthese women became the first Sister
Marianites of Holy Cross.‘n This same year a request fiom Bishop de la Hailandiere of the
diocese of Vincennes, Indiana, was put forth, calling for missionaries to his 'pioneer'
diocese. In response to Hailandiere's request Father Sorin set out for America with six
brothers. The Holy Cross men were given a choice of two rural sites near Vincennes to

settle on, and they chose one called St. Peter's.82 They wished to begin a college for men

 

”Sr. M. GeorgiaCostin, C.S.C., Pri ' '- A ‘ ‘ fthe 1841-1893
(Notre Dame: UniversityofNotreDamePress, 1994) l.

mtheSistersoftheHolyCrosswereoriginallycalledMarianites,thenameoftheorderclnngedinthe
UnitedStates. CostinZ.
”Costin3.

40

there, but since there was already such a college in the Vincennes area the bishop ofi‘ered
them another site, at South Bend.83 They established themselves on the new property
called Notre-Dame-du-Lac and in 1843 they were joined by three priests, a brother, and
four sisters.84
The sisters lived a harsh life at first, sleeping on straw in aloft above the chapel.85

They were formed into their own governing council and one of their first decisions that
year was to create a library, "This was, after all, a fledgling college, so, not to be too far
behind they decreed a convent library into existence on Dec. 2, though they had no more
books than they had had postulants a few months before."86

Everything went smoothly for the little comnnmity until the Holy Cross order
wished to establish a novitiate for Sisters at South Bend. This presented the problem of
having two female novitiates in one diocese, as the Sisters of Providence already had a
foundation at Sainte-Marie-des-Bois (Terre Haute)." Bishop de la Hailandiére felt that
the diocese would not be able to support more than one novitiate and forbid the opening of
an additional one for Holy Cross.

The problem was solved in a most unique way. South Bend is located just over the
Indiana-Michigan border, and was therefore close to the border of the diocese of Detroit,
under the jurisdiction of another bishop. The community found the bishop of Detroit

willingtosupportafcmalenovitiateinhisdiocese,soanovitiatewasfoundedatBertrand,

 

‘3 Costin4.
8‘ Sisters ofthe Holy Cross, W Centenary Chronicles ofthe Sisters ofthe Holy Cross 11
(Paterson, NJ: SaintAnthonyGuildPress, 1941) 9.

“Costins.
‘7 Sr. M Rita areneman) C.S.C., ASm 0me him: Fmthe Ms orhg @gm’onflthe

mgthemgrg 1855-1905 (Notre Dame, IN: TheAveMaria, 1905) 23.

41

Michigan, just six miles north of Notre Dame. The sisters moved to Bertrand in 1844 but
left a substantial number of their community behind at Notre Dame to do the manual work
for the priests, brothers, and students.88

This brings to light the confusion as to what the original purpose of the sisters was
to be. Was it missionary work with the Indians, keeping house for the priests at Notre
Dame, or providing education? There has been great conflict and debate over this later in
histories of the community, perhaps the original intention will never be known, in any case,
in actuality, the Sisters performed all three tasks.89 One suspects that the original purpose
of the female community of Holy Cross was to provide education, the other two simply
evolved over time. One of the earlier constitutions of the congregation, found in archival
material dating from Bertrand days, states under Nature, Object Means and Government of
the Congregation, "...to secure the sanctification of its members by the practices of the
Religious life and the Christian of female youth, by the foundation and direction not only
of primary and boarding schools, but also of industrial schools, orphan asylums, and
hospitals. "9°

It would seem logical to assume that the primary aim of the comnmnity was to
teach, having sisters do the menial labor at Notre Dame may have developed due to one of
several reasons. It was traditional for French female communities to divide their members
into choir, or upper-class, and lay, or lower-class ms. The choir nuns of the Marianite

order would have been teaching nuns while the lay nuns would have done the menial labor

 

‘8 Sr. M. Campion Kuhn, C.S.C., ed, sgt_e' rs ofthe Egg gm microfilm Roll 33.

‘9 Sr. Maria Concepta (McDermott) C.S.C., W (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1965) 165.

9° Kuhn, Roll 33.

42

of the congregation.91 Since the Marianites and Josephites (male religious of Holy Cross)
were originally part of one Congregation, these lay nuns would have been charged with the
menial labor of both branches. The Marianites were unprepared to begin their work as
teachers immediately, and so perhaps all the Sisters worked at the same sort of tasks until
the order was ready to open their intended school. Another possible cause for confusion
as to the original purpose of the Marianites lies in the dificulties of financing a religious
comnninity in nineteenth-century America. Many orders took in laundry and sewing for
payment. Some started 'cottage industries,‘ and some grew and sold their own food. Saint
Mary's owned farmland (separate from Notre Dame) until the latter part of the twentieth
century, they may well have taken in laundry and sewing for the neighboring community as
well as for the Holy Cross Brothers and their school.

When the Brothers had barely settled in, Fr. Sorin wrote to Fr. Moreau about the
necessityofthe SisterskeepingaschooLbutalsooftendingtothelaundryandan
intirrnary.92 Apparently the men could cook, but they could not handle such things as the
clothes room, laundry and infirmary.93

In these ficntier times location was everything. In the 1830-40's Bertrand was
actuallymoreaccessrbleto therest ofthe countrythan SouthBend, receivingregularmail
delivery. It was located for easy lake travel and had stage coach access to the Sauk
Trail.94 The order slowly attracted postulants, but life was hard. The Sisters at Bertrand

shared the laundry tasks with the Sisters remaining at Notre Dame. Lacking their own

 

”ltkmxnommwbngmiscm-bamddisfincnmpemismdafiamemmdmemammm
NonhAmericnitisassumed,however,thatsuchadistinctionwouldnothavelastedlong.

9‘ Costin, 359' less Sm’rit 6.

”Cotton“ 7.

94Meoerrnottns.

43

transportation they walked the six mile distance between the two settlements daily and
rinsed the laundry in the St. Joseph River.95 In 1847 a branch was established at St.
Laurent, Quebec, and in 1849 at New Orleans.“5 By the fall of 1848 the sisters were able
to open and begin instruction at St. Mary's Academy, teaching orphan girls and the
daughters of local farmers, merchants, and professionals.” Having embarked on their
mission of teaching, the order took preparation of teachers seriously sending some of its
teaching ms to study at Notre Dame under private tutelage, and also with other female
orders.98

At this time the woman who really did the groundwork to make St. Mary's into the
institution that it later became, arrived. Neal Gillespie had been a student, and was now a
young priest and instructor at the male college at Notre Dame. His sister Eliza and his
mother came to visit him on their way to Chicago where Eliza was to join a religious
community. Upon seeing the academy at Bertrand she changed her mind and joined the
Sisters of the Holy Cross. She became known as Sister, and later Mother, Angela in
religion. Sister Angela Gillespie was always committed to the higher education of women
Under her, the procedures of the Academy were codified, and teaching was further
professionalized. She was even responsible for authoring her own textbooks to meet the

needs of the school. By the end of 1855 the academy had 60 boarders and 30 Sisters.99

 

”MW 8.

9‘ Heffernan 57-58.
9" Costin 40.
9' Costin. mew 49.

99Ccctin89.

44

Though the school was doing well, Bertrand's favorable geographical position had
begun to decline. The town now found itself off the principal routes of transportation. 10°
In 1851 the Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan Railroad completed its Chicago line
through South Bend. This brought increased enrollment to Notre Dame but the pupils of
St. Mary's were now obliged to travel to Bertrand by an additional stagecoach ride. By
this time the community's nemesis, Bishop de la Hailandiere had been replaced by a much
more cooperative and stable bishop. These factors all combined to make South Bend a
better location for the Sisters to have their Academy. 1“ Land was purchased by Fr. Sofia
and St. Mary’s Academy and the Sisters novitiate were moved to a location just opposite
the Brother‘s foundation at Notre Dame.

Though the Sisters did face some anti-Catholic prejudice they also made many
friends in the predominantly nonoCatholic community. A Protestant judge of South Bend
helped the order out legally, incorporating the newly transplanted Academy before it
opened for the 1855-56 school year. 1” A charter had also been issued in 1855 which
allowedthe Academytograntcollege degrees, makingitthefirstlegallyauthorized
Catholic college for women in the United States. “’3

Unfortunately the Sisters were now caught in a power struggle between Moreau
and Sorin. In 1857 Fr. Moreau wished to separate the Marianite sisters (temporally) from

the priests and Brothers of Holy Cross. 1“ This was accomplished successfully, but Sorin

 

 

.S. -' ' -2-
GuildPress, 1944) 126.
‘°“ McAllister 134.

   

45

was hurt and angered and this touched ofi‘ a series of power struggles and conflicts in
which two prominent women of Holy Cross, Mother Angela and Mother Augusta, were
caught. Fr. Sorin looked upon this autonomy for the sisters as 'unseemly rebellion' The
vocation of the sisters as teachers was omcially confirmed by Moreau.105 The sisters'
constitutions were to be revised after the tenrporal separation, and the sisters were
organized into four provinces: France, Indiana, Canada, and Louisiana All the above
actions were opportunities for the two men, Sorin and Moreau to battle against each other.
The sisters also wished to separate from the French Marianites. Though there was
a novitiate in Indiana, the ultimate control and authority still rested in LeMans, France.
This presented many problems for the American Sisters, mostly related to the length of
time required for communication with the Motherhouse, which often took up to seven
weeks. 1°“ Other female orders which had been founded in Europe, such as the Sisters of
Providence, had already separated fiom their Motherhouse. “’7 Separation was by no
means a radical move but a logical outcome of the North American situation. At this point
90percentofthe SisterswereeitherAmerican-bomorhadenteredtheorderintheUnited
States, and the community had a distinctly American character. 1°“ Sister M Georgia
Costin, historianand authorofmanyworkson St. Mary'sgoessofarastostatethat
”American women religious were much more likely to accept responsibility and voice their
conclusions than their European courrterparts..."‘°9 making them seem less like the

stereotypical Catholic following orders and more like women who thought for themselves.

 

‘°’ McAllister 142.

‘°‘ Costin, 11mm 149.
”7 Costin 70.

‘°‘ Costin 161-162.

‘°9 Costin 141.

46

In 1861 the Indiana branch of the Holy Cross sisters asked to be independent of the French
motherhouse. Mothers Angela and Ascension traveled to France for the annual chapter
meeting to plead their case. The French Sisters would not hear of a separation and sent
Angela home. Ascension, as a French citizen, was kept in penance for her actions."° Fr.
Sorin smuggled secular clothes to her and paid for her return passage to the United States.
Despite French opposition, permission to separate was eventually received from the Holy
See in 1868,111 and the separation was completed in 1869.112 This change had been
heartily supported by the majority of the Sisters, only two left, going to Canada. "3 Afier
this separation the Sisters were placed under the authority of the Bishop of Ft. Wayne, and
they were known fi'om then on as the Sisters of the Holy Cross, not Marianites of Holy

Cross. 114

Sorin again disrupted the peace ofthe community in 1872'by proposing the
formationofanadditionalfemalebranchtobecomposed oflay Sisterswhowouldbe
responsible for the domestic duties of Notre Dame."’ He was unsatisfied with the number
of sisters he was getting fi'om St. Mary's to perform the domestic labor at Notre Dame,
the formation of his 'own' order of sisters, would solve this problem The Sisters at St.
Mary's were upset and angered over Sorin's ideas about starting an additional novitiate and
order of Sisters, so they appealed to the Bishop of Ft. Wayne for help and waited patiently.

Fr. Sorin founded a new order at Notre Dame anyway. It did not take Church oficials

 

"°Costin 199.

“1 Sisters ofthe Holy Cross 10.
“ZKuhn, Roll 7.
113Costinzo7.

“‘Kuhnnoll 7.

“5 Mammal.

47

long to close the order, which was found to be uncannonical and was closed by1890 at the
insistence of Rome.116 Then in 1903 the school changed its name fiom St. Mary's Academy
to St. Mary's College.117

For the purpose of this paper, the history of St. Mary's will stop here as only the
early part ofthe twentieth century will be discussed. A deeper look at the composition of
St. Mary's Academy; its curriculum, extra-curricular activities, and students; will
demonstrate the similarities and difi‘erences between St. Mary's and the Congregation de
Notre Dame. The students themselves came fiom families who were well ofi‘; who could
afi‘ord both the tuition and the loss ofan unpaid domestic helper, and who felt that it was
important to educate a daughter as well as sons. Mothers, daughters, and female cousins
ofien attended the same school. The convent boarding school was also a favorable option
,combining child care and education, for the families of orphaned children. High academic
standards and a broad curriculum were shared by the schools of both orders. Sodalities
and academic societies were as popular at the Congregation de Notre Dame's Villa Maria
and Mont.-Ste.-Marie, as they were at St. Mary's. Graduates at both schools kept in touch
with each other and with former teachers through correspondance. Many graduates also
visited their alma mater anually.

As in many convent schools the curriculum at St. Mary's was academically
rigorous, though the schools was unique among female academics in its ability to grant
degrees which it had done since 1855. Completion of the highschool program was judged

to be the equivalent of three years of a liberal arts college course. To acquire a bachelor's

 

“‘Kuhnaoll 32.
n7thoughithadbeenempoweredtograntcollegedegr'eessince 1855

48

at St. Mary's one had to complete only one additional year beyond the four-year high
school program. ”8 Unlike many of the non-Catholic female acadenries, a St. Mary's
graduate was required to complete two years of Greek, four years of Latin, and six years
of a modern language. “9 Successful completion of the classical languages made a St.
Mary's girl eligible to attend a secular university if she wished. Courses ofi‘ered at St.
Mary’s included:

Church history and dogma (for Catholics), Philosophy, Ethics,

Psychology, Logic, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Astronomy,

Geology, History (Ancient, Medieval, and Modern), Mathematics,

French and English History, Creative Writing in Prose and Verse, English

Literature, Greek, Latin, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Voice and

Instrumental Music with Theory and Composition. 12°

St. Mary's ofi‘ered decorative and ornamental arts courses as well, but they were

what we would term today "elective courses. " Unlike many Eastern female seminaries and
ladies' academies, St. Mary's girls were held to a strict academic standard for their
diplomas. They were required to complete not only the "feminine" liberal arts courses, but
also a battery of science courses, such as Geology, Botany, Chemistry, Physics, and
Physical Geography. The curriculum for St. Edward's and St. Mary's difl‘ered on one point
only, St. Edward's required its students take a course entitled "Military Drill." The
similarities between the curriculum of the Notre Dame preparatory school for boys, St.
Edward's Hall, and St. Mary's, is evidence that there was no distinction made between the
intellectual capabilities of the sexes. The desired vocations and life-paths are another

story altogether.

 

"allanonIWCCandless F5 LA 9. ' °. ' .1. n I . . « -LLL" ' ‘41”. or I) ,"L‘
_ .. : 1879-1949 (Notthamc, IN: SaintMary'sCollege, 1952) 38.

 
 

49

St. Mary's girls had reason to believe that life held something beyond that of
motherhood for them because of their education at the Academy. It would not be easy to
play the role of the "True Woman. " Their worldview did not facilitate transition to the
home.

Young women became part of female networks at St. Mary's. Through
membership in societies, sodalities, the alumnae association, and visits to the campus,
women remained part of these networks alter graduation. Female academies often had
clubs such as reading or literary societies, musical and writing groups, as well as sodalities
or religious organizations. Sodalities were a unique feature of Catholicism. They were
organizations devoted to religious figures. Most fiequently they were devoted to Mary,
Mother of God. Unlike evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism did not adhere to a literal
interpretation of the Bible, and incorporated tales such as the Assumption of Mary, which
were not part of the Biblical record. 121 Mary can be seen as a symbol of wisdom, power,
andhumanity. Sheisinterpretedintwoways, astheantisermalvirginandasMaryofthe
people, or the earth mother. 12 Mariology ofi‘ered a difi‘erent example from the Protestant
tradition as a strong role model to Catholic women

There were many other female saints available as role models for these young
woman, represented at St. Mary's in the names of extra-currirarlar organizations. These
included: St. Catherine's Society; St. Teresa's Literary Society; St. Agnes' Literary

Society; the Children ofMary Sodality; the Sodality of the Holy Angels; the Rosary

 

121 Rosemary Radford mm, Mg; Fggfig’g Fae g the Chm (Phrladelphra' ' : The Westrmnstcr’
Press, 1977) 70.
1” Ruether 58.

 

50

Society, and St. Luke's Art Society. '23 Membership in sodalities was reserved for St.
Mary's Catholic pupils, however, membership in societies was open to anyone. Every
student belonged to at least one organization.

Graduates from St. Mary‘s frequently returned to the school for visits, most often
at commencement time, even prior to the formation of the alumnae association. The visits
of the 'old girls' were spoken of fondly in the school's primary literary publication, $11111
mm, as were their marriages, birth of children, entrance into religion, or
attainment of additional degrees. Visits were most fiequent in the few years after
gladuation,theygrewlesssoastimewent on, and afterthewomenmarried. Asmostof
St. Mary's student body was from the region, the midwest, one or two visits a year were
made with little dificulty.

Another way for graduates to keep in touch with their former schools was through
alumnaeassociations. St. Mary'sAlumniAssociationwasfoundedin 1879, makingitthe
seventh American college to have a women's alumni association. 12" The membership
consisted of the graduates in the Academic, Music, and Art courses. Throughout the early
years ofSt. Mary's Alumnae Association it was associated with the person ofMarion
McCandless. Marion McCandless graduated fi'om the BA. course in 1901 and was active
throughout her life in the afi‘airs of St. Mary's. She never married and in her later years she
built herselfa residence on the grounds of St. Mary's. Because of her lifelong afiliation

with the College she was asked by the Mother Superior, (Sr. M. Madeleva Wolfi), to write

 

m W Vol. v, no.2, Oct. 1896, 22 and Vol. v, no.3, Nov. 1896, 33-34.
‘2‘ Kuhn, Roll 33.

51

a history of the alumnae association; this boolg published in 1949, is a prime source for
information on St. Mary's.

After the formation of the alumnae association, there were biannual alumnae
'receptions' at St. Mary's. Festivities usually lasted several days and consisted of
presentations and elaborate dinners. They were a means of connecting the women to their
educational past, to enjoy the company of old fiiends and educated women, and to, as
many put it, "come home. " Students formed incredibly strong and close friendships at
convent schools that lasted throughout their lives. 12’ Attendance at a convent boarding
school was difi'erent fi'om that of other schools, ”In the convent boarding school warm
fiiendships between teachers and pupils grew rapidly. The school was a little world,
somewhat remote fiom the great world beyond its gatesm's The influence of the convent
school stayedwithawomanfortherest ofherlife, "Not untilwe have lefithe scene ofour
school-life do we realize how strong has been the influence of our early surroundings”?
At anytimeawomancouldreturnto St. Mary'sand madetofeelimportant forbeing
something other than a wife or mother. 'St. Mary's girls' had a strong sense ofloyalty and
afi‘ection for the school and remained connected to it throughout their lives.

While in attendance at St. Mary's, pupils not only had their choice of academic
societies, they also often wrote and produced plays, exhibited artwork, and gave musical
recitals. Many academies also published literary journals, and one piece of student work

that survives fi'om St. Mary's is the student-authored literary journal, SW.

 

12"’seeCar'rollSmith-Rosenberg,"'l'heFemaleWorldofLoveanrlRituzll: RelationsbetweenWomenin
Nineteenth-CenmryAmerica," Sim 1/1 (1975): l-29. foradiscusm'ononfemalefriendshipsofthe
191116.

mMcCandlessll.

‘27 W "l'heInfluenceofSurl'oundings" byLenaBrady,'99,Mayl898, 130-131.

 

52

Begun in 1892, the journal was aimed toward parents. It was produced in conjunction
with English classes and supervised by teachers. Its intent was to promote the
advancement and elevation of the girls' literary taste. 123 The journal published both literary
and artistic work. As a rule each issue had a piece devoted to an author or work of
literature, a scientific piece, poetry, and artwork. Often the fall months included an
account of the travels the girls had taken in the summer. Every September issue listed all
the new postulants and novices and detailed the ceremony. In addition to these pieces
produced by the students, there would often be a surmnation of a presentation or speech,
or the content of speeches would be produced in their entirety. Visiting speakers included
local officials and authors, but most often they were visiting priests and bishops. Ofien St.
Mary's received similar journals fi'om other schools, ranging from the Notre Dame
Sm to the Univergty‘ of Ottawa Review . These journals, often from male schools,
were reviewed, usually quite harshly. Reviews were also included of magazines such as

Catholic World, The Atlantic Monthly, M, Scribners' and Blackwggd.

 

Looking at the journal, Saint Ms Cmmes' , provides one of the best insights into
the mentality of the school and its students. Published for parents and reviewed by the
nuns, the girls could not write of things which were unacceptable. Contrary, unbecoming,

and radical opinions would be censored for this reason. It is reasonable, therefore, to

 

assume that the opinions expressed within Chimes, represent the students, the teaching
nuns, and what the nuns thought the parents would find appropriate.
It is curious, therefore, that the opinions on women, women's roles, women and

higher education, and women and worlg expressed in the priests' speeches presented

 

WW Vol.1, no.1. Sept. 1892. 1.

53

verbatim in Chimes, do not necessarily match the opinions expressed by the students.
Opinions put forth by students on these topics, and the pieces of others' work chosen in
summaries, allow for flexibility in the 'prescribed' role of Catholic woman.
Father Spalding, a fi'equent speaker and visitor at St. Mary's, probably best

represented the opinion of the clerics when he asked in:

What is the best education for woman? That which will best

help her to become a perfect human being, wise, loving and

strong. What is her work? Whatever may help her to become

herself. What is forbidden her”? Nothing but what degrades

or narrows or warps. What has she the right to do? Any

goodandbeautifirlandusefirlthingsheisableto do

without hurt to her dignity or worth as a human being. 129
Spalding's method of posing questions yet not dignifying them with a specific answer says,
on the surfilce, nothing, and yet implies everything. The choice of words to describe
woman and women's roles: good, beautiful, useful, wise, loving, and strong, was a careful
one. It reinforces both the Church's views on woman's place and American society's views
as a whole. The Church had appropriated the jargon of "True Womanhood.” Women
weremeanttobemorally superior, stronginspirit, character,andfaith;tlmsalwaysgood
and loving. The idea of woman as wise comes fi'om the Catholic image of Mary.

That which Spalding says a woman is not to do is to damage her dignity, and
worth, to degrade, or warp. Therefore engaging in the unnatural push for suffrage or the
feminist movement would degrade and damage a woman's dignity. Remaining single,
pursuing education in "feminine" areas, and acquiring a job like teaching, would allow a
woman to be good and wise, without contesting male authority or male areas of

dominance.

 

WW Vol. 111, no. 11, July 1895, 121.

54

Cormnencernent speeches and formal addresses were characterized by such
ambiguities. Male authority figures encouraged behavior which would easily be
categorized as fitting the traditional women's history narrative of "True Womanhood."
Female students, while not contesting convention outright, attempted to maneuver within
this prescribed role. The question that carmot ever be fully answered is, did the strong
role model of the nun and the aggressively competitive and intellectual curricuhlm
encourage students to question society's dictates about women?

A fi'equent theme was the 'womanly' woman, though this had various degrees of
expression. Bishop Richter of Grand Rapids felt that ". . .a womanly woman is one to
whom the art of arts is that of making the home happy"130 and therefore a wife should not
be chosen for her beauty but for her kitchen accomplishments. The St. Mary‘s girl was out
of luck in this department. There was not a home economics course at the school and the
girlswere only homeduring abrieftimeinthe summer. Authoritiesfeltthattherewas
more to a woman than culinary skills. Women were to be concerned with moral and
intellectual culture to become the ”...highest ideal of Christian and cultural
womanhood. ”13 ‘

Women were supposed to be chaste, noble, mild, and to possess 'sweet reason' , to
exude faith, hope, and love. They were also to be instrumental in the progress of the
race. ‘32 To be successfill, women were not supposed to amass wealth but to "...acquire

knowledge, to cultivate a true heart, to develop love for duty, for righteousness, for good,

 

WW Vol IV. no- 8. Ami! 1896- 93-
131 W (Father Zahm) Vol. v, no. 11, July 1897, 138.
132 W (Spalding) Vol. 111, unit, July 1895, 121.

 

55

and to strive after these things."l33 Clearly as late as 1897, the virtues of purity, piety,
submissiveness, and domesticity were equally lauded by the Catholic Church as by the
Protestant majority.

Even so, Spalding felt that women should be more than wives or household
drudges. He found the contempt for the single woman savage and barbarous. 13‘ He also
showed surprising insight into the plight of women in the home:

To tell them they are the queens of the home...is an

insult to their intelligence. . .and at home women are,

for the most part, drudges. What need is there of a

hollow phrase when the appeal to truth is obvious?135
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for them, the majority of St. Mary's girls would
never find themselves in the position of having to do housework themselves, but would
rather hire domestics. Bishop Ireland, in the same year, encouraged women to work in
their homes, in charitable work, and in religious work. St. Mary’s graduates were more
likely to behave as their Protestant counterparts did in terms of volunteer and charitable
activities.

Education was encouraged but in an open-ended manner. There was no distinction
between men's and women's education, standards, and knowledge, yet the goal of women's
education seemed to be to become a better influence in the home, a better example to one's
children. While men's education led to career opportunities. A small number of women

were recognized for their professional achievements in teaching and literature but the

political woman was chastised, as being in danger of losing something 0 " sacred power of

 

133 W (Spalding) Vol. VI, no. 4, Dec. 1897, 46.
134 5%!!! Q4335 thmes Vol. III, no.11, July 1895, 123.
‘3‘ 9mm 123-

56

the wife and mother." '36 A woman was no longer confined to the home doing needlework,
but encouraged to be a public figure in the form of a teacher, nurse, or doing charitable or
volunteer work. Yet these public roles fit a certain definition; they were never a threat to
male power and they did not contradict the image of the "True Woman. "

Clerics had an advantage over other authors expounding on the subject of Tme
Womanhood; they could claim the authority of God when speaking, asserting that God
wanted this or that. This religious tone also added another moral element in encouraging
woman to dedicate herself to God, or to live a God-like life. The aim of the higher
education of women was to ". . .develop the human being for the greatest good of humanity

”137

and the greatest glory of God. The only way to be certain of true happiness was to
yield fully to God. Perhaps this was the great appeal of the convent. In entering the
convent most women were fulfilled both spiritually and personally.

Many of these speeches and commencement addresses were not printed intact but
summarized and commented upon by student authors. These young women focused on the
idea of Christian womanhood, the idea of women as keepers of the country's conscience,
and education of women. They were also careful to focus on the long tradition of the
Church's openness to the cultivation of women's talent and abilities. There was never
anything derogatory to women and nothing was printed which discouraged particular
forms of behavior or encouraged participation in professions. This is not positive proof
that opinions debasing women were deliberately excluded, yet the speeches recorded in

their entirety, made by the same men, oflen had such negative content.

 

‘3‘ film 123.
‘37 W (Most Rev. 1.1. Keane, DD.) Vol. XVI, no. 2, Oct. 1908, 16-17.

 

57

These student-authored pieces provide important information about student
opinion. The male-authored pieces speak to the expectations and accepted behavior of
women; student-authored pieces ofl'er a difi‘erent perspective. Student-authored pieces
speak to the actualities of the student's experiences and opinions. The majority of student-
authored pieces focused not on education for intellectual and moral cultivation, but rather,
for employment. "The question-'What are you going to do with your education?’ would
then resolve itself into-"What are you going to do with your life?‘ For education should
mean life..."138 Young women did not choose to take male jobs out of maliciousness, but
for reasons of self-fillfillment, and self-worth. Women sought occupations out of choice,
not necessity, a choice not to waste her talents but to assert her independence. ‘39 Even a
student as forward-thinking as Mary Harrison would not allow herself to sound too much
like a feminist. She concluded the aforementioned piece with an afirmation that women's
true fields were domestic, social, or church work, asserting the ". . .refining influence of
women..." and the greater magnification of all these things which would be achieved
through educating women. “0 Harrison herself never married.

In a school with a curriculum as rigorous and challenging as St. Mary's it is not
surprising that there was a strong work ethic amongst its students. According to Chimes

studies were taken seriously and were quite competitive. Laziness, especially, was looked

 

down upon, as Agnes Ewing Brown wrote, "I think that any girl who neglects to work in

an Institution like this must have the attribute of laziness abnormally developed. "“1

 

"8 W2. Vol. X. no.3, Nov. 1901. 36.
‘3’ Saint Ma's Chimes (Mary Harrison, '99) Vol. VII, no. 11, July 1899, 143-144.
“° Chimes 144.

1‘“ gm; My: Chimes (Agnes Ewing Brown, '98) Vol. VI, no. 2, Oct. 1897, 20.

58

Brown was another St. Mary's alumnus who never married. A cousin of Mother Angela,
she capitalized on her intellectual abilities and received a B. Lett. in 1898 from St. Mary's
and later an M.A from the University of Michigan. Other women graduates did not use
their education as Brown did and were heard to rue their lack of domestic preparedness:
I know the argument to be contrary, I used to write about
it myself, and believe it too; but that was before the serious

days settled down upon me, when I would gladly have
exchanged my small birthright of Latin and Greek for the

ability to make one single, respectable mess of anything half
so good as pottage.142
Women at St. Mary's were in a protected and exclusive enviromnent. Notions of

intellectual attainment and professional achievement sprang up amongst students and were
fostered by the challenging, competitive environment. Some women, however, were
unable to reconcile an academic background with the demands of homemaking. Perhaps
this is the reason that so few American convent-educated women married; and that some
entered convents themselves. In Eileen Mary Brewer‘s study of four nridwestem convent
schools she found that only approximately 50 percent of graduates married. "3 Amongst
the alumnae of St. Mary's there was a large number of never married graduates, but not
nearly so high a percentage entered religious orders as in the groups studied by

Danylewycz. There was no easy way to achieve any sort of agreement between the

 

preparation of their early life with the expectations imposed by a home and family. E
The alternative of the convent was a highly respected one in the Catholic

community. "Marriage, motherhood, or worldly achievement never could surpass the

 

WW Vol. v1. no.1. Sept 1897. 7.

“3 Brewer 115.

59

supreme honor of choosing religious life." 1“ Convent schoolgirls, such as those at St.
Mary's, celebrated the reception and profession of postulants and novices in their
publications. The September issue of Saint Mm's Chimes always contained a detailed
description of the ceremony, the names (original and in religion), and the origins of those
women who professed themselves in the Holy Cross order. Conring of age in the convent
school, this option was constantly before Catholic girls.

It is helpfirl now to turn to a discussion of those women who did choose the
convent, the women who entered the Holy Cross order”, to try to discern why they made
this choice, and to examine how it was both an accepted yet alternative expression of
femininity and allowed women increased opportunities for personal fulfillment outside
marriage and motherhood. Profession of a religious vocation was not a magical
experience, the women who entered convents had their peculiar strengths and limitations.
Emrance into a convent was, in part, another, if you will, occupational choice for women.
Usually these women were more religious than most, yet their faith was not childer or
blind. Entrance into a religious order was and is a serious matter. The postulancy and I ..
novitiate are as much a period of trial as one of preparation and learning. A woman was i I A

generally a postulant for six months to one year, a novice for one to two years, she did not

make her final profession until She had spent many years with her community. The

 

convent was considered "...a highly esteemed alternative to marriage.""’ Nuns were able
to exercise real power as teachers and administrators. This must have been a stimulus for

women to join a religious order in addition to religious and professional motivations.

 

144 Brewer 98.; see Table 1 in Appendix for figures on St Mary's
“5 Ewens, "Removing the Veil," 259.

60

No other women in America so firlly controlled their own
destinies or lived in a world so radically separate from men
as did the nuns. The convent provided an extraordinary
alternative for those dissatisfied with the options available
to women outside society and might partially explain the

absence of middleclass Catholic women's reform movements. ”6

Choosing religion meant, for the educated woman, escaping the responsibilities of the
household, family duties, and marital strife (or perhaps just marriage in general). The
convent provided women with scope for meaningful fulfillment through service to others
and the Church. In 1850 there were 1,375 nuns in the United States, by 1900 there were
40,000.” Regardless of the political and structural differences between Quebec and the
United States, the same remarkable boom in convent membership occurred during the
same period of time.

Sisters were not consciously feminist and would have scorned the term. They
rarely questioned male authority. Yet "...they managed to construct a separate female
world for the ostensible purpose of spiritual sustenance and church work."148 Nuns were
able to construct the female community as an alternative family model so wished for by
women's historians. 'tr

At a far deeper level than their politically active Protestant
counterparts. . .marry Catholic women thoroughly yet
unintentionally rejected male domination by choosing to
live in an all-female society. Nuns provided their

female co-religionists with examples of productive, E 1
happy lives without the benefit of husbands and family. “9 ,

 

 

 

“'5 Brewer 124; note the incredible similarities here between Brewer and Danylewycz
”7 Ewens, "Removing the Veil,” 272.

1“ Brewer 136.

“9 Brewer 136.

61

Many women who joined the Congregation of the Holy Cross had themselves been
educated at convent schools. One such woman was Mother Angela. 15° Born Eliza
Gillespie, her family was well-to—do and connected politically. As a girl she attended a
Dominican convent school and later graduated with high honors fiom Georgetown
Visitation Academy in Washington DC. Like many Holy Cross sisters she was a highly
educated woman for her time. It was the opinion of her parish priest that, "Elia should
never marry; I do not know a man who is her mental superior.“l That may well have
been the reason she chose to stay single, and eventually committed herself to a life of
religion.

She taught at an Anglican Female Seminary but was not fully happy as a Catholic
in a Protestant school. She could have stayed at the school, she had been ofi‘ered the
principalship, or married one of the many men who courted her. If she stayed at the
seminary she would contimle to work in an environment that was not of her own faith, if
she married she would have had to give up teaching. The convent represented a way to
make a career of teaching, while immersing her in her own faith.

Like many religious, she was not the only professed member of her family. Her
younger brother, Neal, had proceeded her into religion by entering the Holy Cross order of

Josephite Brothers. She was a woman of wealth and intelligence, rather than stay in

 

A 1".

'society', she used this wealth to expand the financially strapped order, and she used her 3
intelligence to convert St. Mary's from a small, backwater school, to a well-known and

respected institution of female instruction. By entering Holy Cross she had a much larger

 

‘5° b.1824-d.1887
‘5‘ McAllister 6o.

62

impact on Catholic women and was able to achieve a much greater degree of personal
fillfillment than if she had remained in the secular world.

Mother Angela was not the only woman of means to enter the Holy Cross order.
Mathurine Salou was born in France to bourgeois parents.152 She too was educated before
entering the French Marianites. She became known as Mother Ascension and held many
administrative positions in addition to teaching after she came to America in 1848. It was
she who was most severely punished when the American Sisters wished to separate fi'om
the French Marianites. Kept in France in penance for her actions she was forbidden to
return to the United States and her position as directress of a Holy Cross school in
Philadelphia.

Although it was Father Sorin who provided the money for her passage and secular
clothing to disguise her retreat, as a Sister Marianite she was not required to answer to
him Father Sorin was both her confessor and her fiiend, but he had no temporal
command over the Sisters. This belonged to the French Motherhouse. By leaving France,

Ascension was overtly disobeying the will of her superiors. She felt she was answering to

 

a higher power, that her presence in America would better serve the order than remaining r
in France.

This is the perhaps the most extreme example of defiance in the annals of Holy
Cross, it is an illustration that the nuns could resist hierarchical authority. They did not is

follow blindly. Ascension was never criticized by her American confiéres. The
Motherhouse did not choose to do anything to firrther punish her and the American Sisters

achieved their independence soon after. This is an example of a strong-willed, dedicated

 

"2 b. 182641901

63

woman willing to do anything for the good of her order. Luckily she was not punished
and her name is remembered reverently at St. Mary’s. ”3

Another example of a woman willing to risk both punishment and character
defamation for the good of her order was Mother Augusta. Born Amanda Anderson in
1830, her widower father sent her to a convent school believing that he could not raise a
girl. As one of many nuns who worked as a nurse during the Civil War, Mother Augusta
came upon two orphan children, a brother and a sister. When she was transferred back to
St. Mary's she brought these two children with her and became their benefactor. Basically,
however, She was their mother. Most teaching nuns mothered children in the classroom
and dormitory, Mother Augusta actually became a mother to these children in the strictest
sense of the word, she raised them and was responsible for their every need.

Unfortunately Mother Augusta, as first Mother General, was the sister awkwardly
caught in the middle of Frs. Sorin's and Moreau's feud over Sorin's plans to establish a
second, manual labor novitiate. Augusta was sent to Utah to teach in 1875. Many feel
this was because of her opposition to Sorin. It was a touchy situation. In fact, Catholic
author, Maurice Francis Egan, while writing on the history of the order, stated "She
[Mother Angela] was succeeded as General of the Congregation, by Mother Augusta, now
living in Washington, whom a wise etiquette forbids me to praise. “"1“

Mother Augusta had, in fact, resigned in 1884 over the problems with Sorin.

When the truth of the story became known of Sorin's deliberate persecution of her and

uncannonical establishment of an order, her resignation was refused and Sorin was

 

‘53 Sisters of the Holy Cross, Pioneers a_nd Btfl ders Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
III. (Hammond, IN: W.B. ConkeyCompany, 1941.) 28-31.
15" Sar_nt' Ms Chimes Vol. VIII, no. 11, July 1900, 147.

mm

 

 

 

64

reprimanded. When the offensive novitiate was finally closed she reflrsed to support the
petition of numerous priests to have it reopened. She was perfectly within her rights, she
did not answer to them in matters governing her community. In her later years Mother
Augusta said, "I have asked God for only one thing; What I have had to sufl'er does not
count...I have asked Him to fix my Sisters so that no man can ever lay his hand upon them.
I have asked nothing more. He has done all I asked. "1” One wonders if Mother Augusta
knew what sort of feminist implications her statement would have. The priests only had
power over the Sisters in spiritual matters as their confessors. The Sisters were a
completely autonomous female community in terms of administration and governance.

Another orphaned sister was Sister M. Charles Borromeo. 15‘ Born Joanna Flynn,
She and her sister Alice were brought over fi'om Ireland by their uncle. The girls' uncle
also paid for their tuition at St. Mary's, Bertrand. Joanna attributed her vocation to the
example and fiiendship of Mother Angela, and she followed her sister Alice into the order
in 1856.157

Many Holy Cross Sisters had been pupils at St. Mary's. A very few of St. Mary's
Protestant pupils entered religious orders. Alida Fuller was sent to St. Mary's by her
father, a judge, when her mother died.158 While at St. Mary's she converted to
Catholicism. Her father did not originally support her decision to join the Congregation of
Holy Cross upon her graduation fi'om the Academy and she was forced to return to his

home in Michigan. Once she was home, she arranged to send her personal items back to

 

1” Sisters of the Holy Cross, Sugrior Genegls 104.

‘5‘ b. 1833-d. 1890.

'57 Sisters of the Holy Cross, W 41-54.
'5‘ b. 184541903

 

 

 

65

St. Mary's and then traveled there herself on the pretense of attending a party. Instead she
entered the novitiate. Her father pursued her trying to force her to leave with him. He
eventually agreed to her choice and she became Sister Lucretia. Both a niece and a
nephew later converted to Catholicism. '59

Alida Fuller showed remarkable comage. Until marriage, a woman's father could
exercise total control over her. She risked a great deal in defying her father, luckily he
proved to be more concerned for her happiness and welfare than her religious choice.
Alida definitely did not behave like the submissive "True Woman" in declaring her
vocation. For whatever reason, she acted in her own self-interest, by choosing a life of
religion, she chose a life of fulfillment.

Women who entered religious communities oflen strayed from societal standards
for women's roles. As the sisters handled all their own finances, several sisters were
required to enter the very male world of business and finance. In the nineteemh century
this was the work ofMother M. Aquina. Born Emma Kirwin in 1852, her father was a
doctor. Orphaned early, she was placed with the Sisters of Mercy by her guardian. She
did both the high-school and post-graduate (college) course at St. Mary's and received her
BA in 1879. She was a multi-talented woman, active in the alunmae association and

responsible for organizing the first Normal course at St. Mary's. She was especially

 

known for her business acumen and was paid the high compliment that "...she entered into
business transactions with the shrewdness of a financier and reached decisions with the

directness of a man."160 Mother Aquina moved in the world of business without much

 

”9 Sisters oftheHoty Cross. W 71—82.
"° Sisters ofthe Holy Cross, W163, 155-168.

66

reproach or criticism because of her status as a nun. She did not pose a threat to
businessmen and was thus allowed to enter an arena almost completely monopolized by
men. Her position as a nun guaranteed her femininity, and she was therefore permitted to
step outside regular female roles.

Another factor influencing women to join religious orders was the special
fiiendship that sometimes grew up between students and teachers in the convent school.
Eva Wolfl' was born in \Vrsconsin in 1887 and attended St. Mary's. While there she
became good fiiends with her English teacher, Sister Rita (Hefl‘ernan). Eva excelled in
English and because of similar interests and abilities the two became very close. Sr. Rita
was a published author, of verse, and She had also published a history of the community, A
Stog of Ffly’ Years . It was by reading this history that Eva Wolfl‘was convinced to join
the Congregation of Holy Cross. She became Sister Madeleva in religion.

Sister Madeleva was also part of a new generation of sisters who studied at secular
universities for advanced degrees. She received and MA fi'om Notre Dame, and a Ph.D.
from the University of California at Berkeley, both in English Literature. Like her mentor, ,
Sister Rita, she also became a published author, writing several volumes of verse, and an ]

autobiography. It is this autobiography that really shows the character of this woman who

 

became a Mother General. Although she was obviously a religious woman, that was not
her only trait; her religiosity did not define her as a person. .4

The chronicle of my threescore years and ten is

not a story of a nun on her prie-dieu. It does

not move in an atmosphere of pink and blue devotions.
It is quite fi'ee fi'om devout aspirations. Aspiration and
inspiration may be implicit. I hope that they are. ‘61

 

"‘ Sr. M Madeleva (Wolfi) C.S.C., My First 531% Years (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1959) xi.

 

 

 

67

Reading Mother Madeleva's autobiography gives the impression that she was an
intelligent, dedicated student, a tough administrator and businesswomarl, a dutifirl
daughter, a talented author, and a beloved teacher and fiiend. She was also a nun.

Like the Congregation de Notre Dame in Quebec, many Holy Cross sisters were
convent-educated themselves, of a well-to-do background, and came from a family with a
tradition of entering orders. Convents provided a family to all women, and were especially
attractive to orphaned or motherless girls such as Mother Aquina and Sister Charles
Borromeo. They allowed a woman an education, a vocation, and power in administrative
positions and over the creation of new generations of Catholic women. Nuns were able to
'mother' without bearing children. The example of Mother Augusta who raised two war
orphans is unique, but many students formed strong student-teacher attachments, like
Sister Rita and Mother Madeleva (Eva Wolfi). Convent school girls were away fi‘om their
families nearly all year, save two months in the summer. In light of this, it was the nuns,
not their families that truly raised these girls.

Many times the woman who entered a religious order had other options in terms of
life-choice, but the best personal option appeared to be religious life. Though devout and
pious, ms were also human. There were many outside factors which influenced a woman

to enter a convent, religiosity was by no means the only one.

 

 

Chapter 5: Conclusion

No woman stated explicitly, "I entered religion to become actualized as a women"
OR "I entered religion to escape the patriarchy and find myselfa career," but these
conclusions can still be drawn from sources concerning religious women and their
convents. All choir nuns had white-collar 'careers', many had more than one. In addition
to teaching, nursing, or administrative duties, some were noted artists, scientists, and

1‘2 These were careers that were most likely

authors. One nun was an auto mechanic.
denied them had they remained in secular society. Nuns were a highly educated group of
women, yet they were not ostracized like some feminists and female social reformers.
Although there is no evidence for overt feminism in the convent or convent school
there was a tension between the prescriptive ideal of women articulated by priests and
Brothers, and the opinions of female students and ways in which nuns constructed their
identities. Students and teachers were concerned with exhibiting correct female behavior,
but they were more interested in careers and scholastic excellence. There were articles in
Saint Ms Chimes which extolled the virtues of careers, and of a religious vocation but
there were never any articles which praised motherhood or expressed a bunting desire to

get married. This can be interpreted as a tacit acceptance by women, but not a

 

“2 Sister Maria Assunta Werner, C.S.C., ed, The Momer mane imam mm (Notre Dame, IN:
St. Mary's College, 1993) 14.

68

 

 

 

69

wholehearted agreement, with ideals of nineteenth-century domesticity. Women of both
religions played their expected roles, that did not mean that they agreed with them.

Although some experiences were similar for Protestant and Catholic women, the
articulation of roles and standards of behavior difi‘ered for Catholic women compared to
the Protestant 'norm.‘ One cannot simply read texts dealing with theory and American
women's history and blindly apply them to Catholic women. The majority of American
women's historians do not even acknowledge Catholic women in their work but we should
not assume that Catholic women did not matter, did not constitute a large enough group
for research, or generally had life experiences comparable to Protestant women. Any one
of these three assumptions would be grossly inaccurate. To say that they didn't matter is
dismissive; to say that they didn't constitute a large enough group for study is untrue,
because a few studies have already been done, and the source material, largely untouched,
is certainly there. It has been one of the goals of this thesis to demonstrate that middle-
class Catholic women are worth studying, and that their experiences did differ from that of
Protestant women. Due to convent schools there was, in fact, a more accessible and more
easily identifiable female space, network, and culture for Catholic women than for
Protestant women.

Because the Catholic experience was difl‘erent, we cannot simply apply theories
based on Protestant women to Catholic women. Theories such as 'True Womanhood,’
'Irnperial Motherhood,’ and 'Real Womanhood' afl‘ected Catholic women, but they were
not the only acceptable female role. Catholic women, especially those who attended

convent schools, not only had their mothers for role models, they also had the Catholic

 

 

 

70

mm, who showed them that they did not have to marry and have children to become a
woman. Entrance into a religious order was a perfectly acceptable expression of
femininity. Nuns were supposed to imitate the life of Mary, what could be more maternal?
Female saints ofl‘ered still further models.

Remaining single and supporting oneself in a feminine profession such as teaching
was another acceptable alternative. Salaries may have been low, but it was not altogether
impossible for a single woman to make a living as a teacher. Women who became teachers
entered a world where the educated opinion of the time felt that women teachers were
ideal, because they were women. Teaching was women's 'true profession.‘ Teaching was
by no means the only acceptable career, fields which did not stray fi’om accepted, female
standards of behavior, such as the liberal, fine, and performing arts, as well as nursing,
were viable alternatives to marriage for some women.

The alternatives to marriage open to American Catholic women were much greater
than the alternatives for Quebecois women. There will always be difl‘erences when taking
a theory out of one society and applying it to another. These difi‘erences do not preclude
the many similarities or the value of the comparison. Quebecois women entered convents
to avoid marriage, to guarantee economic security, to have a career, and for reasons of
personal fulfillment. American Catholic women entered convents for these same reasons,
but they also remained single in large numbers. “3 -

The example of strong, seemingly independent women who were nuns and the
experience of the American convent school produced many never-married convent

graduates. Some came fiom wealthy backgrounds and did not have to work, some

 

"3 please refer to appendix

 

t!

 

 

71

continued their education at co-educational or Eastern female schools, and some entered
the female professions. The end results were played out difl‘erently in Quebec and the
United States, but the 'radicalizing' experience of the convent school produced many
women ready and able to challenge conventions about women and marriage.

In some respects Catholic women had more room to nraneuver than did Protestant
women. They grew up with examples of strong women, and were taught to respect them.
These women were respected by men, women, Catholics, and even some Protestants. The
convent and the convent school were safe spaces for female expression. As long as a
woman remained at the convent, lay or religious, she was not bound by the standards of
secular gender roles. Graduates of convent schools who returned to secular society were
once again subjected to the same standards of gender roles as were Protestant women.
Those who did not choose motherhood needed to choose feminine professions to remain
acceptable examples of womanhood.

Women who entered convents were fi'eed from this distinction. They could not
directly disobey their superiors or break their vows, but they could ignore societal
standards on what was 'wornanly' behavior, and what were female roles. By becoming a
nun, a woman, in a way, removed herself from social scrutiny. She was a nun, so of
course she was feminine. As long as she did not break the rules of her community, her
behavior was socially acceptable.

There was only a small window of opportunity for this sort of Catholic women's
agency in the United States. Decline in financial support and attendance caused many

Catholic female academies and convent schools to close in the 19405 and 19505. There

 

 

 

 

72

are now very few left in the 1990s. With the growth of the feminist movement, the
convent was no longer the only socially acceptable place where a woman could challenge
notions about gender roles. Perhaps it is no longer as important for women to have a
gender-segregated space in which to come of age and to express themselves. '6‘

Female vocations declined in the twentieth century when the Vatican became more
strict about duties which nuns were allowed to perform, and began to monitor their
behavior much more closely. This presents an interesting paradox because of increased
numbers of female religious who are self-identified radical feminists and vocal activists.
The appearance of outspoken women could be reactionary to the tightening of Vatican
control, but it makes a search for past roots to present trends all the more interesting. It is
important, however, to be careful not to apply twentieth-century feminist ideas and
standards to nineteenth-, early twentieth-century women who would have been appalled at
the term. Discussing female agency is one thing, but it must be done in accordance with
the standards and accepted roles of the time period. We cannot force our opinions and
judgments on women of the past.

The vast amount of records and personal papers retained, and sometimes
catalogued, by female religious orders represents a wonderful historical research
opportunity, an untapped resource. It has been customary in religious orders to assign
record-keeping as an obedience. Annual reports are abundant, though their value varies
with the thoroughness of the author. Most congregations have written their own histories,

but these are oflen limited to 'Great Women's' history or flawed by their hagiographical

 

““radiearreministsstinbcheycthatscparate,segregatedfcmalcspaccisnccessary,thcmorepopularand
accessible liberal feminism is dedicated to achieving male-female equality, gender/sex-segregated space
wouldbecontrarytothegoalsofequality

 

'-
4.

 

 

 

73

intent. There are many other options open for further research. The initial class
distinction in orders of European origin lends itself to class analysis. This sort of analysis
might address questions like: What were the respective percentages of lay vs. choir nuns?
Did one group have more control than another, or did they have equal voices? Were the
different distinctions dependent only upon level of education at the time of the postulancy,
or was it truly a distinction based on class of origin? How and when did this change as
congregations became Americanized?

Another avenue for further research would be an analysis of the language nuns
used to refer to themselves, and to other women. Was there a difl‘erence, and how did the
language used conform/or not to ideas about 'womanly' women, and 'True Women?‘ In
addition, the study presented could be expanded to encompass more than one American
order, as well as Catholic women who did not attend Catholic academies and convent
schools. The study of women and Catholicism in America has long been the domain of the
Catholic Church. Many theses and dissertations have been written on this subject by male
and female religious. It is time to integrate works like these into the mainstream of
American women's history. Women's historians have long made distinctions based on race

and class, they should also make distinctions based on religion.

 

 

APPENDIX

 

 

 

APPENDIX

Marital Status of Saint Mary’s Graduates 1860-1900

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\kmu' Shufle hdanfied Thurred 'Toufl 'Toufl
Religious Order Single Graduates

1860 4 2 0 4 6
1863 0 2 0 0 2
1864 l 2 0 1 3
1865 l l 1 2 3
1866 2 3 1 3 6
1867 l 3 0 l 4
1868 3 6 8 ll 17
1869 3 l 2 5 6
1870 4 5 3 7 12
1871 2 4 3 5 9
1872 3 7 l 4 11
1873 0 9 1 l 10
1874 5 5 1 6 11
1875 2 8 1 3 11
1876 5 6 0 5 11
1877 2 11 l 3 14
1878 5 5 l 6 11
1879 5 2 O 5 7
1880 4 5 0 4 9
1881 5 ll 0 5 10
1882 0 4 2 2 6
1883 2 8 0 2 10
1884 3 2 0 3 5
1885 1 4 l 2 6
1886 0 6 0 O 6
1887 4 11 l 5 16
1888 6 5 2 8 13
1889 5 15 0 5 20
1890 0 6 1 1 7
1891 3 9 1 4 13
1892 3 7 l 4 11
1893 1 8 0 l 9
1894 0 10 0 0 10
1895 2 15 0 2 17
1896 2 8 l 3 11
1897 3 10 0 3 13

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1898 2 6 l 3

1899 7 5 O 7 12
1900 2 7 O 2 9
table 1

*source for information in table 1: Marion MeCandless, Lanuly Portgits: Historv of the Holy

Cross Alunmae Association of Saint Mary’s Collgge, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1879-1949 (Notre

Dame, IN: Saint Mary’s College, 1952) 453-456.

75

 

“‘8

 

 

 

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