The film industry seems to be passing through yet another phase of ‘nunspoloitaion’ movies.
From the infamous The Nun in 2018 to Benedetta (2021), Prey For The Devil (2022), and The Nun 2 (2023), to this year’s Immaculate and The First Omen, the schlock bandwagon has not stopped. As is now becoming usual in such movies, nuns can be seen as sadists, sexually repressed, hysterical, and/or possessed (rather too easily, one thinks) by the Devil – or even all of those at once.

Nunsploitation films are not new of course, and date back to the 1950s, with Black Narcissus (1947) leading the way.
(To be fair though, there have been touching and serious pieces about nuns too, especially 1986’s Therese, which is an artwork in itself).
In fact, nun movies are so frequent that, curiously, they are becoming the fare of sociologists – who see in them another way to understand men’s fears of women.

Anti-clericalism

Surprisingly, Margaret Rope, who entered a Catholic ‘enclosed’ convent in 1923 when she was aged 41, would not have been totally unused, even in her own age, to the prurient attention given to nuns.

At the time, on mainland Europe the anti-clerical movements, even in Catholic countries, were not kind to nuns; while in Protestant England, the popular feeling was one of horror – why, went the call, would parents allow their daughters to be locked up in such grey, cold institutions….with only women for company (!)… and no chance to raise a family? (The last point being the most telling).
However, in mainstream England of that period, Catholic nuns were not particular objects of interest in themselves: but… they were the corrupted handmaidens of those most devilish of creatures… Jesuit priests. In the popular mind, Jesuits were cunning, deceptive and manipulative, being in an amoral pursuit of English souls and power, for the greater end of the Papist world religion. (One of the most amazing conspiracy theories of the time was that the Jesuit Order was behind the 1912 sinking of the Titanic…).

1890s

However, there was also a less hysterical interest in the vocations of nuns from an unexpected quarter – literary writers.
The ‘realist’ novelist George Moore wrote ‘Evelyn Innes’ and ‘Sister Teresa’ (1898): the first depicting a contemporary opera singer attracted to the life of a convent, the second when she enters it as a contemplative nun. These books are neither for nor against the idea of a women’s vocation, and outline the power of the idea as well as its apparent strangeness.

Meanwhile, with its strange and exotic forms, Catholicism also attracted the Aesthetes in England; and the chief ‘nun poem’ to come out of the movement is surely Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration (1891) by Ernest Dowson, who wrote it aged 24, just three years before he converted to Catholicism. It’s a dreamy poem imagining the lives of the nuns in a remote mountain convent – where they are calm, sombre, fulfilled.
One of the poem’s verses stresses though that there are still small sensations to be had – dim light, fragrant incense, silence – all of which would have attracted an Aesthete:

A vowed patrol, in silent companies,
Life-long they keep before the living Christ.
In the dim church, their prayers and penances
Are fragrant incense to the Sacrificed.

Influence

Was Marga influenced by any of these ideas, for good or bad, which were then in the zeitgeist?
That fact is we don’t know if Marga read much of literature or newspapers. Though she did read a deal of theology; that we do know.
But, at her workplace, she did mix in progressive, bohemian circles, where there was sympathy for women’s right to choose.

Curiously (back to the sociologists now!), there seemed little interest then in another putative aspect of women’s attraction to the life of a nun, i.e. the desire simply to get away from the world of men/the ‘Patriarchy’.
It may be a rather final choice, but to enter an enclosed convent is a direct way to get away from the domination of men, as convents are among the very few clubs on Earth completely exclusive to women. (Referring back to films, this aspect is directly referred to in the feminist film Vision (2009), the story of the medieval nun & composer Hildegard of Bingen).

Did Marga then perhaps have other motivation, apart from her clearly deep religious feelings?
There is a growing suspicion among Marga-watchers that she did indeed seek some solace when she joined the Carmelites. Although sadly almost none of her writings (which might have let us know what her motivations were) is left to us, we do have a quote from her mother, who said that Marga “carried a heavy burden”. Even her brother, a priest, expressed his surprise at her choice (though he was happy with it of course); he called it a ‘hard decision’.

A hard decision?

Despite what her brother Harry said, when Marga took her final vows, descriptions of the event say that she was calm, sombre, and joyful on the day.

Leaving behind the febrile, excited atmosphere of the bohemian Glass House community of artists with whom she worked might even have been a relief to a ‘lone-wolf’ as she was.
One should also mention that she was leaving behind the growing realisation of the horrors of the First World War, the facts of which were then, in those years after the event, slowly being disclosed to the public, and which (the family believed) had driven her sister Monica, a nurse, into an asylum. A male world indeed.

As to what motivations we can glean from her art, it does tell us clearly of her profound feeling for the forms & theology of the Church.
But, when it comes to depiction of individuals in her art, it is clearly women that she cares for most: St Mary, followed by St Therese of Lisieux (see above) are her obvious favourites (not Jesus or God The Father, or any particular male saint). Indeed, on entering the convent, she took as her religious name ‘Sister Margaret of The Mother of God’.

Nunsploitation

Although this piece started off by wondering if negative and prurient views of nuns might have affected Marga’s sense of vocation, the evidence (thin as it is) seems to say not. Apart from anything else, we also know that she had a very strong, if lone, character, and such views might just have bounced off her.
(In fact, the most likely negative influence was probably her grandfather, who made it clear that he detested Catholic monastic-style orders.)

The positive views of nuns in literature (from Dowson etc) might have encouraged her, but who knows? It’s more likely that any positive views she absorbed came from her aunts & mother, all converts to Catholicism.

In the end, one can only opine that she seems to have pushed anti-clerical and popular prurience aside, and simply made up her own mind on what was best for her – in a manner rather to be respected.

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