Rhetorical Analysis of Six Months in a Convent: “Introduction”
The audience of Rebecca Reed’s narrative would have been the educated public, especially those involved in the Catholic or the Protestant Church, since her story explores her conversion from Catholic to Episcopalian and threatens to reveal dark secrets of the convent. However, the introduction, written by the committee of publication, serves to capture her voice and bring male authority to the story. Implicitly, the author uses Reed as a vehicle to express negative opinions of the Catholic Church and defend the Protestant religion. While attempting to appeal to the reader’s emotions and logic, the introduction to Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent reveals conflicting motives and questionable authorship, possibly tainting the ethical appeal of the novel.
The introduction is claimed to be “some preliminary suggestions by the committee of publication” (1). Not uncommon to the time, a man precedes the story of a female to defend her character and authenticity. First, the speaker compares Reed to a prominent male religious figure, Martin Luther, probably in an attempt to gain authority for Reed. By drawing parallels between Reed and Luther’s writing, Reed’s story gains more credibility, due to Luther’s gender and the fact that his writings had power and a great following (after all, they led to the Reformation). Along similar lines, the author prints a list of testimonies from well-known men in the community who attest to Reed’s “unexceptionable morals” and integrity, along with names of men and women from surrounding towns who also confirm Reed’s character (41). The author suggests the readers can trust Reed as a credible source in her narrative. Furthermore, the speaker attempts to defend Reed’s integrity and credibility by appealing to the reader’s emotions. At one point he reminds the readers that Reed is “an orphan” (31), and quotes Reed’s self description of “defenceless female innocence” (30). One should note that Reed’s words are still a degree removed from the reader in the introduction, because they are in a letter that is inserted into the man’s discourse. The author carefully works to strip away the validity of Judge Fay’s assertion that Reed caused the Ursuline Convent riots by revealing places where Fay had misquoted her (30-31). Quickly the story becomes one man’s version of Reed’s words against another man’s account of her words…Reed’s own voice still has not been directly presented.
Moreover, the letter from Judge Fay that is interpolated in the introduction (which the author attempts to refute) alludes that Reed’s words “may undergo considerable pruning and purgation to suit the views of the publisher” (26). While Rebecca’s letter states that her words will not be altered, Fay’s accusation does raise the question, is there a male ghostwriter involved in telling Reed’s tale? While the speaker claims to be defending Reed because she is an upstanding lady who does not deserve to be blamed for a horrible crime, implicit motives seem to surface when he suggests that accusing Reed with the destruction of a convent “requires a credulity not surpassed by that which enables a devout Catholic actually to believe in the identical transubstantiation of a wafer into the flesh of the Savior!” (28), thus belittling a fundamental belief of Catholicism—their communion practices. This leads up to a section that questions the motives of Catholic schools and practices, during which he neglects to reference Reed for six pages (when his purported purpose is to defend her). Thus his authority is shaky—what is his true motive for defending Reed? Furthermore, the authority of Reed’s narrative is called to question before it even begins: will it really be her voice? Or do the publishers alter her voice?
As Reed’s story opens, she begins to tell her story from the beginning. Despite possible contortion from a male ghostwriter, Reed’s words manage to adopt an innocent tone, and she pleads ignorance (59). She appeals to the reader’s emotions as she describes the ways in which the nuns ostensibly manipulated her. Upon learning that she was contemplating a conversion to Catholicism, they would embrace her “in the most affectionate manner” (62), give her books that presented Catholicism as the “only one and true religion” (61), and even comment on the delicacy of her hand, comparing it to a pancake (55). Looking back, Reed explains in a footnote that this type of flattery was meant to “draw the inexperienced into their power, and make them converts to the religion of the Pope” (55).
Therefore, the front materials of Six Months in a Convent establish a conflicting message. The male speaker in the introduction presents language that appeals to emotions, logic, and ethics, but he does so in a manner that subjects the reliability of his motives to question (and thus the motives of Reed, with whom his identity is now intertwined). He uses Reed’s story to expose the Catholic Church as a mysterious institution that unlawfully transcends human authority. While he originally portrayed himself to the readers as a noble man attempting to defend an innocent lady, his motives shift and leave the reader with a clashing sense of purpose for Reed’s narrative. Is it to defend the name of a girl unjustly committed of a crime, or to slander the Catholics?
