Escaped Nuns

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Attitudes Toward Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Maria Monk

Just five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery sold over 20,000 copies. By “escaped nun,” Maria Monk, the book provided a shocking exposé of convent life, from licentious priests to tortured nuns to infanticide. Despite Maria Monk’s unveiling as an imposter, her book went on to become the second bestseller before the Civil War, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Far from representing a curious aberration, Monk’s book was part of a larger phenomenon, involving riots, propaganda, and politics. The campaign against convents was intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and in particular the role of women in the republic. At a time when concern for “female virtue” consumed many Americans, nuns were a barometer of attitudes toward women. The veiled nun stood as the inversion of the true woman, needed to sustain the purity of the nation. She was a captive for a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a “white slave,” and a “foolish virgin.” In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers, both male and female, crafted this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns and women more broadly in America.

The Role of Women in Early English Nonconformity

1983 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Greaves
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Full Membership ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Early English

The involvement of English women in the radical Protestant movements of the 1640s and 1650s has attracted the attention of a number of modern historians. The hub of such studies is Keith Thomas's provocative 1958 essay, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” which focuses on the expanded role of women in these groups and on the way in which sectarian views indirectly undermined the patriarchal family. More recently, Dorothy Ludlow has studied female preachers in this period, insisting that they were not fanatics but sober women with a distinctive sense of Christian calling who claimed full membership in the Christian community. The more well-known women, such as Anne Hutchinson and Mary Cary, have been the subject of recent studies in their own right. For the period after 1660, Pamela Volkman has examined the contrasting ways in which male and female converts to the sects were depicted, noting that women were more likely to be accused of emotional volatility, immorality, or even insanity than were men. These studies have progressed to the point that we are in no danger of overlooking the role of women in English Nonconformity in the mid-seventeenth century.

scholarly journals “So many foolish virgins”: nuns and anti-Catholicism from Maria Monk to the Know-Nothings

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Second Best ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Maria Monk

This dissertation examines opposition to nuns and convent life in America as it was expressed through vigilante violence, propaganda literature, and party politics. While nuns may seem like an unlikely target of hostility, a vast cohort of Americans singled them out as a serious threat to the republic. Between 1830 and 1860 anti-convent propaganda, including Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu by “escaped nun” Maria Monk, flooded the literary market. Monk’s work warned of a Catholic conspiracy in the United States through the cloister, depicted alleged horrors of convent life, and cast nuns variously as masculine tyrants, foolish slaves, and whores. Investigators quickly unveiled Maria Monk as an impostor, but her book became the second best-seller after Uncle Tom’s Cabin before the Civil War, and it has never gone out of print. In order to “protect” American women from the nun’s life, mobs stormed convents from Massachusetts to Maryland. By the 1850s, suspicion of nuns became formally politicized by Know-Nothing legislators who established “Nunnery Committees” for convent investigations. Although the Civil War quieted the outcry against nuns for a time, the campaign against convents had far-reaching implications. Members of the second Ku Klux Klan relied on anti-convent propaganda to buttress their positions, and common stereotypes of nunsâ€"first evident in nineteenth-century convent narrativesâ€"have also persisted in popular culture. This dissertation argues that the campaign against nuns and convent life was a much greater part of nineteenth-century American popular culture and politics than previous historians have recognized.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Maria Monk ◽  
People Today

Nuns in popular media today are a staple of kitsch culture, evident in the common appearance of bobble-head nuns, nun costumes, and nun caricatures on TV, movies, and the stage. Nun stereotypes include the sexy vixen, the naïve innocent, and the scary nun. These types were forged in nineteenth-century convent narratives. While people today may not recognize the name “Maria Monk,” her legacy lives on in the public imagination. There may be no demands to search convents, but nuns and monastic life are nevertheless generally not taken seriously. This epilogue traces opposition to nuns from the Civil War to the present, analyzing the various images of nuns in popular culture as they relate to the antebellum campaign against convents. It argues that the source of the misunderstanding about nuns is rooted in the inability to categorize these women either as traditional wives and mothers or as secular, career-driven singles.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 215-222
Author(s):  
Lenuta Giukin
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
European Studies ◽  
Evolution Of Consciousness ◽  
Republic Of Moldova ◽  
Contemporary State ◽  
State Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Republic

This introduction offers an overall framework for the eight articles in this issue of the Journal of European Studies, which focus on Romanian identity and consciousness. It looks at the general history of Romania and the Republic of Moldova to show the evolution of consciousness over a century, since the formation of ‘Great Romania’ in 1918 to the present day. Aspects such as collective memory, migration, the change in the role of women, the crisis of the contemporary state, education and religion, as well as an overall crisis of patriarchy within a globalized context are discussed based on the analysis offered by the authors in their articles.

To 1750

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American History ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
The Republic

IN THE LATTER part of the nineteenth century, east coast city dwellers in the United States had difficulty repressing a sense of their own persistent cultural inferiority vis-à-vis London and Paris. At the same time a great many old-stock Americans were dismayed by the stream of immigrants coming to these shores whose diversity called the future cohesion of the Republic into question almost as seriously as the issue of slavery had done in the decades before the Civil War. In such a climate of opinion, the unabashed provinciality of Frederick Jackson Turner's (1861-1932) paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered at a meeting of the newly founded American Historical Association in connection with the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892), began within less than a decade to resound like a trumpet call, though whether it signalled advance or retreat remained profoundly ambiguous....

The Role of North Korea in China’s Civil War: The Soviet-led North Korean Assistance to the CPC in the Northeast Theater, 1946-1948

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
Tomer Nisimov
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Communist Party Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
The Republic Of China ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract Previous studies of China’s civil war have concentrated on different aspects and causes leading to the Communist victory and focused on political, economic, and military explanations. Few studies, however, have examined the features of foreign intervention and assistance to the Communist Party of China and their contribution to the latter’s success. Sino-Soviet relations and cooperation during the war have received the attention of several studies, but the role of North Korea in the war has remained obscure. As information regarding North Korea’s actions during China’s civil war remains largely inaccessible, few studies have debated the question of whether North Korea had ever deployed its forces in China’s Northeast in order to assist their Chinese comrades. Relying on military and intelligence documents from the Republic of China, this article shows how by the time of the Soviet withdrawal from China’s Northeast, the USSR had become resolute about turning North Korea into a militarized state in order to protect its own interests in the region and assist the Chinese Communists.

10 Evolution and Gestalt of the Italian State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattarella Bernardo Giorgio
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
Marked Rise ◽  
The Republic

This chapter presents an analysis of Italy's administrative history. It looks at the historical development of Italian public administration and administrative law in Italy beginning from the nineteenth century. The chapter then proceeds to the first half of the twentieth century, focusing primarily on the policies of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, which saw a marked rise in changes and developments within administrative law. Also of note during this period was the role of administrative law during the era of fascism in Italy. The latter half of the twentieth century would mark a departure from this period, focusing mainly on liberal administrative law and the Republic. Finally, the chapter turns to the features of administrative law in the twenty-first century, before closing with some concluding remarks on the features peculiar to Italian administrative law.

scholarly journals Afterlives of the Republic of Letters: Learned Journals and Scholarly Community in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116
Author(s):  
Floris Solleveld
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Changing Role

Abstract What happened to the Republic of Letters? Its history seems to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. And yet, in the nineteenth century, there still existed a community gathered in scholarly societies, maintaining a transnational correspondence network and filling learned journals. The term indeed becomes less frequent, but does not go entirely out of use. This article traces the afterlives of the Republic of Letters in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigates texts that attempt to (re)define the Republic of Letters or a cognate, the wider diffusion of the term, and the changing role of learned journals in that period. While most attempts to reinvent the Republic of Letters failed miserably, they indicate a diagnosis of the state of learning and the position of scholars in a period of transition, and in doing so they contradict an ‘unpolitical’ conception of the Republic of Letters.

Financing Antebellum Importers: The Role of Brown Bros. & Co. in Baltimore

1971 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin J. Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
International Banking ◽  
International Commerce ◽  
The World

The House of Brown was a major international banking firm during the nineteenth century. The leading banking houses such as Baring Brothers and the Browns facilitated the flow of goods throughout the world by providing a range of services vital to international commerce. Mr. Perkins examines the manner in which the firm did business in a large American port on the eve of the Civil War.

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