A group of educated women living and working together might get ideas angled in feminist directions what are they to do? A convent could look like a women’s utopia, but one that relied on men to survive. But to the fertile imagination, there’s an inherent tension in there, so it’s no surprise storytellers love to poke at it. The sisters’ decision-making power is limited by men.ĭoes this precisely describe what it’s actually like to be a nun? Not necessarily, and not all the time. A convent is ultimately watched over by a man. The sisters can perform certain kinds of religious duties and devotion, but the most important offices of the church - saying mass, performing sacraments - are still reserved for men, whose gender makes them eligible to be stand-ins for Christ himself. Universal Picturesīut, of course, the larger hierarchy in which the convent exists is one dominated by men. Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 drama Black Narcissus is a classic of the nun-movie subgenre. For some, it could look, at least from some angles, like a place to go if you simply didn’t want to deal with men anymore. Most of her daily interactions would be with other women. A woman who wanted to become educated could enter a convent. For centuries, it was a place for a woman who didn’t want to marry or had no prospects to find respect and a future (or, more darkly, for a woman to be hidden away by her family). A convent is, from one perspective, a kind of haven. What kind of power, exactly, does a nun wield? Having taken vows to pursue a life devoted to religious service as Christ’s bride, she is revered and set apart.
And though nun stories fall into all kinds of categories, from horror and romance to drama and comedy, they usually draw on the same dramatic tension: the inherent potential, whether or not it’s exercised, for women in organized religious orders to pose a threat to male-dominated religious hierarchy.
The woman in the wimple has long fascinated filmmakers and storytellers, but of late the interest seems to have kicked into hyperdrive - and not just with this weekend’s release of Paul Verhoeven’s characteristically wild Benedetta, or Lauren Groff’s lauded novel Matrix, or the recent FX series based on Black Narcissus.
Riddle me this: When is a nun not just a nun?