Catholicism as a Literary Motif in Julia Pardoe's The Nun

Sheryl A. Allen.     © Sheryl A. Allen, 2002

Julia Pardoe was still relatively young when The Nun, A Poetical Romance, and Two Others was published in 1824. Considering that she was twenty when the work was published, she must have written it while still a teenager. "The Nun" is a fairly conventional poem of the time; it is a typical example of Gothic Romanticism, wildly imaginative, sentimental, and melodramatic. It is rather safe to assume that Pardoe had an Anglican background and was thus influenced by the anti-Catholic prejudice so prevalent at that time. The anti-Catholic sentiments in "The Nun," Pardoe's apparent ignorance of Catholic doctrine, and the unoriginal and rather vapid text, all point to an author who was both very young and inexperienced as a writer, as well as prone to follow the trends of the day. Her later travel writings, novels, and poems show much more depth, research and clarity of thought.

Julia Pardoe was born in Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1804. She was the second daughter of Major Thomas Pardoe, an English officer who served at the Battle of Waterloo, and his wife Elizabeth. Pardoe began to write in childhood and published a volume of poetry in her early teens. A novel entitled Lord Morcar of Hereward: A Romance of the Times of William the Conqueror was published in 1829.

Fearing that Pardoe's recurring symptoms of illness might lead to tuberculosis, her family began traveling to warmer climates such as Portugal and Turkey. These travels eventually inspired the type of writing that would make Pardoe quite well respected. She would later become recognized as "one of the most knowledgeable and influential English interpreters of Turkish life" (DLB 295).
While her regard for Catholic Portugal was rather condescending, her appreciation for the Islamic culture of Turkey is quite evident in works such as The Beauties of the Bosphorus. This 1838 work which was reprinted in 1854 under the title Picturesque Europe, includes such detailed and lyrical descriptions as:

The true charm of Bosphorus, as I have already remarked, lies in its
endless variety of perspective: it is like a garland, woven by the hand of
of beauty, of which each blossom is brighter that the last; not a rock, not
a tree, not a tower, could be displaced without injury to the whole. (152)

This text includes engravings by the illustrator W.H. Bartlett. Both he and Pardoe traveled extensively throughout that region, and so the resulting combination of rich prose and detailed artwork enabled Pardoe's Victorian readers to feel as if they were being magically transported to those exotic regions of the world.

Subsequent trips to France and Hungary continued to produce travelogues. Many of these works mixed in comments about politics and society as well. "Later scholars have credited Pardoe with being one of the originators of the positive view of Hungary held by many English people in the nineteenth century" (DLB 297).

Pardoe never married and, after having lived in London for sometime, she returned to live with her parents in 1842. Many works of fiction appeared during this time including The Confessions of a Pretty Woman (1846), Flies in Amber (1850), The Jealous Wife (1855), and The Rich Relation (1862). She continued writing nonfiction as well, such as Louis the Fourteenth, and the Court of France in the Seventeenth Century. This six volume work was published in 1846. One of the most pleasing features of these works is the casual narrative style employed by Pardoe. As she stated in the Preface:

We are not about to offer to our readers an historical record of the century
of Louis XIV., as the term would be understood by statesmen and politicians;
for we shall pass lightly over the campaigns, the battles, and the intrigues of
the several European cabinets, upon which a firmer hand than our own has very
recently been employed in this country. Our aim will simply be to display more
fully than has yet been done the domestic life of the "Great Monarch," and to
pass in review the wits, the beauties, and the poets of his Court. (viii)

Pardoe died in London on the 26th of November, 1862. Although British reviewers generally admired Pardoe's work, there was also the inevitable criticism, such as the rather negative comment that appeared in 1873 in the Woman's Record: or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women from the Creation to A.D. 1868. "There seems to us something wanting in her writings; her works of fact want historic truth in details, those of fiction want impassioned truth in sentiment" (DLB 298).

Which brings me back to "The Nun." I agree that this piece does, in fact, lack "impassioned truth in sentiment." Briefly, it is the story of a young woman named Adelina who is forced by her father Azo to leave behind her betrothed Norman and instead enter the convent of St. Clare. Adelina's mother was supposed herself to have entered the convent as a young woman, but when she and Azo fell in love, the two decided to assuage their guilt by promising God that their first-born would instead become a nun in place of the mother. Adelina, therefore, takes her vows, has her hair cut, and dons the habit. Yet she cannot forget Norman, and the two secretly meet one night. After being discovered by the Abbess, the young lovers are condemned to death by fire. The poem ends with a description of the wind caressing and blowing away their ashes.

While that makes for a tragic love story, the poem does, in fact, lack the originality and authenticity that would have, in my opinion, made for a more substantial piece. As a literary theme or motif, the term "secret love" was widely used throughout literary history. According to the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Motifs, this theme was especially common in the nineteenth century, and it was utilized by such diverse authors as John Keats, Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edmond Rostand (1154). A sixteenth century author who employed this device was, of course, William Shakespeare. The tragic mode of "The Nun" in many ways recalls that of Romeo and Juliet. The desperation of the young lovers, the circumstances beyond their control, the risks they are willing to take, and their ultimate demise, are all very familiar.

Again, according to the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Motifs, "death" was also a popular motif during the nineteenth century. A professor of English literature at Lancaster University, Michael Wheeler writes, "Evidence of the Victorians' obsessive interest in death is as widely available in the imaginative literature of the period as it is in the theology" (25). Death is, after all, a profound mystery, and so it naturally stirs the poetic imagination. Pardoe infused "The Nun" with many instances of death and dying. Not only are the young lovers put to death at the end, but Adelina's mother is dead, and Norman's father dies during the exact "hour the maiden takes her vow" (28).

It is not the lack of originality in "The Nun," however, that disturbs me as much as the lack of authenticity in regard to the Catholic Church, as well as the blatant anti-Catholic bias. Gothic fiction writers frequently utilized Catholic ceremonials and practices without examining the truth of actual Catholic doctrine. According to Anselm Cramer, the librarian and historian of Ampleforth Abbey in York, there was a small Catholic community in Beverley in 1824; however, those, like Pardoe, who were of the upper class and belonged to the Anglican establishment, tended to ignore the existence of their Catholic neighbors. It is quite likely that Pardoe desired the "damp cell" of a cloistered convent as an appropriately gloomy setting for her tale of medieval woe, without seriously considering the reality or appropriateness of such a dark description (63).

But then that was typical of Gothic writers. Sister Mary Muriel Tarr, in her doctoral dissertation entitled "Catholicism in Gothic Fiction," summarized it thus:

Catholicism, for eighteenth-century writers, had its roots in
a vague past. The dogma underlying its practice was not generally
understood by writers of Gothic fiction. Opportunity of becoming
familiar even with details of its ceremonial was rare in eighteenth-
century England. The solemnity of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
and the ritual for the administration of the Sacraments, then, since
they were shrouded in "obscurity," were rendered terrible to the mind
and became prolific sources of the sublime. (113)

She further states that Catholic materials served to establish settings, to supply characters, to motivate action, and primarily to create a sense of wonder, melancholy pleasure, divine horror, and even religious awe (120).

Pardoe's Abbess certainly creates a feeling of "divine horror." She is described as "commanding awe, and cold respect" (54). Pardoe also writes that "every winter that had pass'd, had left her colder than the last" (55). In the poem, Pardoe gives the Abbess the unrealistic authority to condemn and execute the young lovers. Not only would an Abbess not have had that type of power, it is unlikely that such a severe punishment would have been handed down in the first place. Sister Tarr again writes, "Nuns in Gothic fiction move about utterly unhampered by any strictures of reality!" (82). "A haughty manner and a grave countenance are the traits by which the typical abbess in Gothic fiction is most easily recognized" (67). "Nor are abbesses in gothic fiction averse to deeds of cruelty" (67).

In his introduction to The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism, G.R. Thompson states that medieval images and motifs are used by late Romantic writers to define a negative or positive relationship to God (2). I would argue that "The Nun" clearly illustrates Pardoe's negative relationship with the Catholic Church. Mary Heimann, in her Catholic Devotion in Victorian England, writes, "Catholic spirituality either fascinates or repels most outsiders" (1). "Since it is the winners who write history, we ought not to be surprised that the old Catholics have been portrayed in unflattering terms […]" (8). When Adelina takes her final vows, Pardoe writes that "Adelina now is wed to a living grave" (33). How unflattering can you get?

Heimann also speculates as to why Catholic devotion in English literature is "only given the occasional chapter or subsection in scholarly works […] before being passed over […]" (3). She theorizes that the "first reason is that the subject concerns the most intimate and, to the historian, elusive phenomenon of man's spirituality. The nature of belief in the supernatural and the range of human religious feelings can never be identified with certainty, let alone categorized or quantified with any pretense at precision"(3).
The second reason is more complex and involves the "divergent behaviour and views of English Catholics" due to the "dissection of its church membership into distinct, and often contrasting, sub-groups, whether ethnic, political, or, […] social" (3).

Finally, as Paula Feldman notes in the introduction to British Women Poets of the Romantic Era, there are "certain motifs and symbols that women of that time period were drawn to" (xxviii). Although Julia Pardoe wrote near the end of the Romantic Period and into the Victorian Age, her poem "The Nun" is a good example of the motif of Catholicism, one that was utilized by other women writers of both periods. It would be interesting to explore whether or not Catholicism, as a literary motif, was employed differently by women poets, as compared to men. Would Wordsworth's Abbess, for instance, have been so cruel?