A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime (review)

Book Reviews263 Clark argues persuasively that, despite many set-backs, French female civil servants fared well, comparatively speaking. She underscores that republican France granted women the right to vote fairly late but "offered women civil servants a larger measure of professional equality much sooner than comparable European countries" (301). Her argumentation is supported through a wealth of well-researched archival sources, private papers, and interviews. The detailed biographies of inspectresses and female administrators working in central offices give readers a better understanding of the changes taking place in the educational make-up and socio-economic background of female civil servants, but they occasionally also distract from the main idea ofthe text. This is not meant to minimize the value ofthis thorough study which clearly describes public policies regarding women's employment in positions ofadministrative responsibility. At the same time, the author carefully documents the individual and collective perceptions of female administrators concerning their own careers. Clark's well-grounded research on the rise ofprofessional women in France provides many thought-provoking ideas for scholars interested in gender studies and social and cultural history. Elisabeth-Christine MuelschAngelo State University Elizabeth Rapley. A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime. Montreal, London: McGillQueen 's University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0-7735-2222-0. Pp. 369. Elizabeth Rapley's^well-documented study of three teaching orders in the Old Regime paints a realistic portrait of these nuns in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century society. She reconstructs their history and their daily life from testimonies and indications scattered in numerous public and private archives. The occasional use of material from Ursuline convents in Quebec and Louisiana, without discussing to which extent the history and daily life traced in the volume could be applied to cloistered teaching orders in New France, constitutes a minor flaw in this excellent work. The first chapter situates the birth, growth, and decline of the teaching orders: the Compagnie de Sainte-Ursule, the Compagnie de Marie NotreDame , and the Congrégation de Notre-Dame. It identifies important socioeconomic factors affecting these communities including the initial enthusiasm of the nobility, ensuing disenchantment by both the elites and the cities, taxation by Louis XIV and Colbert, the Law crisis, and growing public hostility after 1750. Chapter 2 examines more closely the material conditions upon which their evolution depended, presenting a fascinating story of the role of individual convents as small business enterprises, and the importance of dowries, money-markets, and investments to this evolution. Chapters 3 and 4 illustrate how the double vow ofobedience to their Rule and their Bishop did not always make the nuns docile. The history ofthe nuns ofthe Archdiocese of Sens, who remained Jansenist sympathizers even after the papal bull Unigenitus, provides an outstanding example of their tenaciousness in refusing the direction of their new bishop Languet. Stressing 264Women in French Studies that this was not a singular occurrence, Rapley documents how the struggle for their beliefs and opposition to their bishops brought harsh treatment upon many women's communities and even cost them their existence. Chapters 5 and 6 recount the decline of women's convents in the eighteenth -century until their suppression by the Revolution/Rather than seeing eighteenth-century women as devoid of faith, Rapley presents convincing evidence that the decline of their convents resulted from a more worldly society surrounding them, impoverishment, and lack of social esteem. Moreover , despite societal pressures for docility, they demonstrated a certain intellectual independence which neither the Crown nor the bishops appreciated. The story ofthe long standoffby the Ursulines ofSaint-Sever, told in Chapter 6, illustrates perfectly how the cloistered teaching convents rallied in 1 790 to the cause of 131 bishops who refused to take a Revolutionary oath to and resisted the four bishops who did so. Subsequently, the majority of women refused to be "liberated" by the Revolution; some paid with their lives for their attachment to their cloisters. Chapters 7 and 8 concentrate on the importance of the Rule and the officers of the congregation to life in the cloisters. Although she demonstrates how urban teaching convents presented challenges to and demanded modifications in the medieval rules...

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