The Nun
Xuan Chen
Kyle Dieleman
Modern Religion and Culture
27 February 2013
The Nun depicts the miserable story of Sister Suzanne, the girl who is forced to enter a convent and take the holy order. She experiences criminal and sexual assault in the cloisters and she cannot escape the huge cage of monastery. Dennis Diderot does a good job exploring the difficulties, cruel and mercilessness of the cloisters through the experience of Sister Suzanne, who has an adamant personality that never surrenders to the mothers of cloisters. She is forced to attend the ceremonies of the Catholic convent, torture when she has done something against the rules and harassed by the Mother Superior. The inhumane treating of the cloisters makes Sister Suzanne want to protest against the Mothers and leave the convent. The difficulty Diderot explains in the passage is that the superstition of the cloister deprives the authorities of the nuns and it shows that the holy order is higher than anyone else. The Mothers of the cloisters used some cruel rituals and the oppressed the nuns. Like in the passage when Sister Suzanne is forced to enter the convent and immediately after her parents’ agreement, she gets a crucial ceremony. She can’t hear anything, see any thing and is forced to accept the nonsense things she heard from other nuns. She feels like she is impressed by all the strict rules. “If I sneezed twice, I was dispensed from the Divine Office”. This fragment illustrates that nuns do not have the basic right to do even small things. From the contents Sister Suzanne describes, she experiences the most terrible moment of her life. She is tortured to speak for her faith in God and must keep asking for repentance. She is even soaked in water and strangled by other nuns. So Sister Suzanne feels helpless in enduring these things and she does not have the power to refuse, to end, these persecutions. Moreover, the cloister is a place that nuns must practice celibacy and ascetic.
Kyle Dieleman
Modern Religion and Culture
27 February 2013
The Nun depicts the miserable story of Sister Suzanne, the girl who is forced to enter a convent and take the holy order. She experiences criminal and sexual assault in the cloisters and she cannot escape the huge cage of monastery. Dennis Diderot does a good job exploring the difficulties, cruel and mercilessness of the cloisters through the experience of Sister Suzanne, who has an adamant personality that never surrenders to the mothers of cloisters. She is forced to attend the ceremonies of the Catholic convent, torture when she has done something against the rules and harassed by the Mother Superior. The inhumane treating of the cloisters makes Sister Suzanne want to protest against the Mothers and leave the convent. The difficulty Diderot explains in the passage is that the superstition of the cloister deprives the authorities of the nuns and it shows that the holy order is higher than anyone else. The Mothers of the cloisters used some cruel rituals and the oppressed the nuns. Like in the passage when Sister Suzanne is forced to enter the convent and immediately after her parents’ agreement, she gets a crucial ceremony. She can’t hear anything, see any thing and is forced to accept the nonsense things she heard from other nuns. She feels like she is impressed by all the strict rules. “If I sneezed twice, I was dispensed from the Divine Office”. This fragment illustrates that nuns do not have the basic right to do even small things. From the contents Sister Suzanne describes, she experiences the most terrible moment of her life. She is tortured to speak for her faith in God and must keep asking for repentance. She is even soaked in water and strangled by other nuns. So Sister Suzanne feels helpless in enduring these things and she does not have the power to refuse, to end, these persecutions. Moreover, the cloister is a place that nuns must practice celibacy and ascetic.