The Nun (Classics) [Paperback]

"The Nun" concerns Suzanne Simonin, a young, extraordinarily attractive French girl who, due to unfortunate family circumstances, finds herself caught up in a seemingly inescapable fate. Suzanne's family-mother, stepfather, and sisters-are all concerned with money and family duty. The family decides that the best option for Suzanne is to join a convent and live her life as a nun. Suzanne hates the idea, as she sees herself unfit and unwilling to give up her freedom for the rigors of religious life. Her family sees things differently, and after some dramatic fits and starts that find Suzanne making a public scene before taking her vows, she finally settles into a convent called Longchamps. The life of a nun is sheer drudgery, but Suzanne fulfills her duties and even sings in the choir while she plots to discover any possible avenue to get back home. For a time, Suzanne does discover some solace in the reverent figure of the mother superior, a devout persona who takes a distinct liking to Suzanne. After this woman dies, Suzanne's intensified efforts to leave enrage the new superior and the other nuns. What follows is a lengthy description of the indignities Suzanne suffers at the hands of her fellow nuns. They throw her in a dank cell, steal all of her accoutrements, scatter broken glass under her feet, and pronounce her a minion of Satan in an effort to force her to remain in the convent.

Suzanne soon escapes the barbarity of Longchamps when her lawyer, who is fighting for her release in civil court, manages to get her a transfer to another convent. At the new house, even more problems plague young Suzanne. The mother superior here turns out to have a distasteful peccadillo for a woman in such a position, and she targets Suzanne as a new conquest. Things continue to deteriorate for the young nun, and by the end of the story she is in a terrible position with no clear goals or hopes for the future. "The Nun" is indeed a depressing story full of moral quandaries and cynical observations about the Catholic Church's role in modern day society.

Diderot presents a picture of the convent houses as one of vicious human callousness and pettiness. He deftly deflates the image we all have of such places, namely places full of saintly figures in quiet reflection with God who benevolently sacrifice themselves in order to serve the needs of mankind. What we see instead is the reality that, like any other human enterprise, there exists the usual range of human emotions both good and bad. The problem comes about because Suzanne's place is a convent, and convents are supposed to be above such base emotions. Moreover, Diderot shows how convents can be even worse than other institutions because those who torment Suzanne easily fall back on God as an excuse for making contemptible accusations and as a justification for bad behavior. Who can argue with the will of God in such a matter? Surely those who serve a higher power know the best way to administer discipline to a woman who refuses to give herself fully to the calling. Not so, writes Diderot, and he makes you believe it through the force of his narrative and the realistic presentation of the characters. In short, even those who pursue the "religious life" suffer the same twists and turns found in every human endeavor.

Translator Leonard Tancock points out that "The Nun" emerged from a practical joke played on a faithful Catholic by Diderot and some of his salon friends. The gag was never meant to be malicious, and this shows up in Diderot's reworking of the joke into a story. Suzanne, as much as she despises the strictures of the convent, is in actuality a faithful Catholic. She prays fervently to God and carries out her duties in accordance with the laws of the convent. Suzanne's problems, and by extension Diderot's difficulty, is not with Catholic dogma but with hierarchy and the rigid laws created by imperfect humans which force people into unsuitable social roles.

At times humorous and scandalously shocking, "The Nun" is sure to raise an eyebrow or two in even our jaded times. Tancock seems to have done a great job translating this story into English, and he provides a good introduction explaining the background of the story with some of the key pluses and minuses of Diderot's tale. I am surprised there are so few reviews of this incredible story, as this tale is a must for lovers of French literature. Recommended for Francophiles and those who endured Catholic school.