A Proposal, Rebecca Reed: An Escaped Nun's Story of Manipulation and Masquerade

Rebecca Reed:

An Escaped Nun’s Story of Manipulation and Masquerade

            Rebecca Reed’s and Maria Monk’s stories of their escapes from allegedly corrupt convents in 1835 and 1836, respectively, opened the door for an outbreak of Anti-Catholic literature in the form of escaped convent narratives.  Many modern scholars have analyzed the unruly actions of female characters in Rebecca Reed’s Six Months in a Convent, examining who demonstrates power in her story.  For instance, many view the novel as an instrument to expose the Catholics’ corruption, thus giving power to the Protestants.  Others debate whether men exercise control of Reed, by ghostwriting in her tale.  A few scholars, such as Nancy Schultz, analyze Mother Superior as a female antagonist (Schultz compares her to Weetamoo from Mary Rowlandson’s narrative).  Within the theme of control, Susan Griffin approaches female unruliness in Reed’s narrative from a unique approach.  She asserts that the escaped nun’s tale reveals “the fundamental weakness of the female self on which American Protestantism rests,” and that Rebecca Reed, by writing her narrative, incriminates her entire gender (105). Furthermore, Griffin argues that women who wrote escaped convent narratives had to employ various techniques to gain trust (such as having their narratives introduced by males), since they made vows to the Catholic Church and shortly denounced them. By building off of Griffin’s argument, I will explore how Reed uses her gender as a device to plead innocence and naivety.

In other words, I will explain how Rebecca Reed implements masquerade as a manipulation tool in her narrative.  I intend to implement the theory of masquerade as explained by Mary Russo in “Female Grotesques:  Carnival and Theory” in which a woman is able to put on and remove her femininity.  In addition to masquerade as a device used by Reed to manipulate her publishers and readers, I will explore the layers of manipulation in Reed’s narrative, including how Protestant male publishers manipulate Reed, the publisher’s introduction manipulates the reader, nuns and priests manipulate Reed, and Reed manipulates the reader, by paying close attention to Reed’s voice.  To demonstrate how Reed uses masquerade to gain authority in her narrative, I will explain how she displays signs of removal and repositioning of her femininity; namely, I will look for a duality in the manner she presents herself.

            My paper aims to add to the existing conversation regarding escaped convent narratives by specifically focusing on the narrative that jumpstarted their popularity, Reed’s Six Months in a Convent.  Many scholars view the female writers of these narratives as either victims or liars, but in my paper I will show how it is not such a clear-cut issue.  Due to others’ attempt to control Reed, she performs masquerade to gain control of how others view her.  Using Russo’s theory, I will be exploring femininity as a performance and a political tool for women to gain control in a patriarchal society. Ultimately, I will show that Reed gains more control over her situation than current scholars give her credit for.