Book Review: I Leap over the Wall

[osprey_archer]

On one of troisoiseaux’s recent posts about a nun memoir, someone linked an article about a different nun memoir: Monica Baldwin’s I Leap Over the Wall: A Return to the World after Twenty-Eight Years in the Convent.

As Baldwin went into the convent in 1914 and emerged in 1941, I knew instantly that I had to read it. What an absolutely huge period of social and technological change to miss! Baldwin is astonished by modern underwear, the wireless, wartime shortages, and masses and masses of people who have become famous since she went into the convent: Greta Garbo, Picasso, D. H. Lawrence… Right up to the end of the war she keeps clanging up against her ignorance of so many things that everyone else takes totally for granted.

However, as interesting as I found all the details about social change, the parts I found most fascinating were Baldwin’s descriptions of life in the convent. I’ve read about early twentieth-century social changes before, although not quite from this angle, but the convent was totally new, in a “I wouldn’t make it five minutes as a novice” kind of way. Bells, bells, bells, ringing at intervals all day and all night, telling you to move from one occupation to another, stopping mid-stitch if that’s when the bell rings, lengthy sung prayers every day, every scrap of behavior governed by the Rule. There’s a correct way to sit, stand, eat, speak, and presumably breathe.

It’s particularly interesting because, although Baldwin left the convent, she still has faith in Catholicism and the concept of monasticism. She’s outside the convent but still “inside,” if you will, the belief system, so she’s particularly good at explaining the ideas behind an enclosed convent: humans were created to adore God and that therefore a life spent in adoring God is profoundly unselfish and also useful, because usefulness doesn’t mean first and foremost serving other people but serving God.

Unfortunately for Baldwin, most of her interlocutors aren’t willing to listen. It’s not just that they disagree (I certainly was going a bit bug-eyed over this order of priorities), but that they’re not even interested in trying to understand. And she’s never the one who brings up the whole nun business! People just tell Baldwin, the ex-nun, their opinion that nuns are selfishly hiding away in convents when they should be getting married or having families or building careers or CONTRIBUTING to the world.

Even if you think that, why would you tell this to an ex-nun unprompted? Were these people born in barns? But maybe they think that Baldwin, having left the convent, will agree.

But Baldwin does not, and she tries to explain the theory of the cloistered nun. Her interlocutors “listen” (read: sit in silence without taking any of it in) and then reiterate their original opinion.

So if Baldwin still believes, why did she leave the convent? Well, she believes in God, and Catholicism, and the concept of vocation, but has realized that she personally does not have a vocation. As she explains it, when she first decided she wanted to be a nun, she didn’t stop to ask herself if she actually had a calling. “I wanted to be a nun; it followed, therefore, as the night the day, that God must have chosen me.” (Some of my students who want to be doctors have the same attitude, insofar as you can have a thoroughly secular version of this belief.)

All through the year of her noviceship, and the five or six years of probation that followed, she continued in this willful confusion between “wanting to be a nun” and “being called to be a nun.” Only after ten years in the convent does she realize she’s made a horrible mistake.

And then she stuck it out for eighteen more years! The same pigheadedness that led her to decide wanting to be a nun meant she must have a vocation also kept her from throwing in the towel for nearly two decades after realizing she didn’t.

The tone of the book is generally pretty sprightly, a sort of quizzical madcap adventure, an Edwardian Rip Van Winkle awakens in World War II. But there is an undercurrent of tragedy, too, which sometimes breaks the surface in a brief lament. If Baldwin had left the nunnery at 31, when she realized she had no vocation, she might still have built a life for herself. But in staying so long, she missed everything: marriage and children, yes, but also the chance to build a career, or even just acquire the job skills that would suit her for any kind of war work.

As it is, she can only bumble from war job to war job. After the war she retires to a cottage in Cornwall, which is certainly a happy ending of a kind. But what a shame she didn’t change direction at once when she realized she was on the wrong path.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

This is really fascinating! I get the impression that the monastic system historically served as a refuge for the sort of neuroatypical people who are comforted by rigid rules and ritual.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

I also have a similar impression as a neurodivergent person, although this could be flagrant projection! I feel like I would have made an excellent nun if I’d lived during the Middle Ages.

[osprey_archer]

It's possible, although Baldwin's emphasis is definitely much more on the monastic system as a vehicle for getting as spiritually close to God as possible.

[sartorias]

If she'd come out earlier, there's a reasonable but dreary chance she would have washed up among the countless women who couldn't find husbands, or a living, post WW I, as the population of men had dropped sharply--and those who did return needed the work; there's a lot written about these women, and even subgenres of fiction anent them. (Cold Comfort Farm makes fun of one segment of this type of story.)

[osprey_archer]

It's possible, of course. But she did have very illustrious relations (the Kiplings; the Burne-Jones's; Stanley Baldwin the prime minister), and if she had come out in peacetime she would have been able to get her entire dowry back, which she couldn't do during the war as it was tied up in foreign investments IIRC. So she wouldn't have needed to find a living at least.

[sartorias]

True! Discretionary income changes all the rules.

[troisoiseaux]

Oooooooooooh I definitely need to read this.

[osprey_archer]

It's super interesting! Convent life is such an absolutely different world.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Oh, I’ve heard of this one! I must say that the seclusion of monastic life often feels very tempting to me…oh, to be so insulated from current events. (Am I right in remembering that it took Baldwin a while to realise that WWI was happening as the convent received no newspapers?)

[osprey_archer]

I no longer have the book on hand to check, but my recollection is that they were aware it was happening, but only in a very vague and far away sort of way. They were told when it started, they were told when it ended, and that was the Great War for them, is more or less what she says.

[philomytha]

Oh, this sounds fascinating! Another one I want to read now (so many interesting books, so few hours in the day...).

[lucymonster]

so many interesting books, so few hours in the day...

I’m right there with you! Curse my flist for constantly putting tempting books in front of me. (Osprey is an especially terrible culprit for this.)

[osprey_archer]

Truly there are so many interesting books in the world. Impossible to keep up!

[lucymonster]

Oh wow, a cloistered Edwardian nun emerging from the convent int 1941 of all possible years! Culture shock doesn’t even begin to describe what she must have gone through.

I got curious about the ethos of convent life a while ago and looked up some convent websites - which are a thing now too, since we’re talking about cultural whiplash - and the ones I found seem to have shifted the narrative slightly from “serving God is the only purpose we need” to “by serving God we ARE serving humanity, because we spend our days praying for the world”. Of course I doubt Baldwin’s interlocutors would have liked that answer any better, since they’re presumably skeptical of the efficacy of prayer. But I don’t know, I feel somehow bolstered by the knowledge that the world is dotted all over with communities of devout women pouring out love and goodwill for us all.

[osprey_archer]

I think if an author made up a nun who entered the convent in 1914 and left in 1941, people would scoff that this time interval was simply Too Convenient.

Of course there are convent websites now. OF COURSE.

[sholio]

Oh, this sounds really interesting! I remember reading a book when I was a teenager about a girl who washed out of nun training before actually taking the vows (off the top of my head I can't recall if it was an autobiography or fiction, or really much else about the book now) but I remember finding all the details fascinating - slightly offputting a "wow, I never could or would do that" kind of way, while also being a really interesting peek into a subculture I know nothing about. I'll have to look this one up!

[osprey_archer]

Or lightly fictionalized autobiography? Nun training seems like one of those experiences so intense and full of strange-to-outsiders minutia that it would be very hard to write about it without having some firsthand experience. But yeah, definitely "I never could or would do that," but also so fascinating.

[marginaliana]

Wow, the culture clash part sounds fascinating. I wonder how the nun mindset would prepare you for dealing with it - would she be more or less fascinated by new celebrities than someone who had missed those years for another reason? (Although what other reason could there be?)

[osprey_archer]

In some ways I think the nun mindset prepared her well for dealing with rationing and the deprivations of war etc. - in the nunnery it was an ideal to "mortify the palate" by eating food you didn't like, or refusing a food you particularly did, or whatever - but not well for dealing with a massive influx of new information about celebrities and so forth. She seems not so much fascinated as just plain overwhelmed by all of it.

[passingbuzzards]

Thank you for reviewing this, this absolutely sounds like something I ought to read! What an interesting moment for such an interesting perspective.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's just a fascinating book!

[conuly]

And then she stuck it out for eighteen more years! The same pigheadedness that led her to decide wanting to be a nun meant she must have a vocation also kept her from throwing in the towel for nearly two decades after realizing she didn’t.

Yeah, I can see it. It's a little embarrassing to admit "Listen, I'm not really nun material even though I wanted to be" ten years down the line.

[osprey_archer]

Right, it's a very human reaction, and one that often occurs in places other than being a nun. You also get lots of people who put off getting a divorce or changing jobs for years for similar reasons.

[asakiyume]

Did she have family? I can't imagine trying to build up a life of friends and connections after all that time away, too.

Her interlocutors “listen” (read: sit in silence without taking any of it in) and then reiterate their original opinion.
--what's her reaction to this?

[osprey_archer]

Yes, she had a very large and illustrious family. Her uncle was the prime minister Stanley Baldwin and she was also related somehow to the Kiplings and Burn-Joneses and Angela Thirkell and some other people I've forgotten right now. So although sometimes she found herself in awkward living situations (crammed into the remains of a house that just got bombed with tons of other family members, etc) there's never any real danger that she's going to end up in the street or something.

In the book, when she explains the nun ideal and her interlocutors fail to even consider what she's saying, she just kind of gives up. I imagine that there may have been at least some internal eye-rolling, but possibly after 28 years as a nun trying to overcome things like internal eye-rolling, she simply moved on.

[oursin]

Have you read Kathryn Hulme's The Nun's Story - novel but I believe based on experiences of a friend of hers? As I recall the protag takes the veil at least partly because hereditary madness in the family means she should not marry (father is a doctor with eugenic notions), and it is a nursing order. <Warnings for rather unthinking Belgian colonialism.) She too leaves during the War but it is strongly indicated to Join The Resistance. Filmed with Audrey Hepburn....

[osprey_archer]

No, I haven't heard of the book, although I was at least vaguely aware of the movie. One of the Audrey Hepburns I still haven't managed to see.

[anna_wing]

I know a fair number of Catholic nuns, as well as some Buddhist ones, who are not the same thing at all, despite the similar vows. But the Catholics are, so to speak, action nuns, from missionary orders. They teach, feed and shelter orphans and refugees, feed the sick and indigent elderly, run hospitals and clinics and vocational training schools etc. All of them have education/ medical degrees or will acquire them along the way. The opposite of cloistered.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm aware that active nuns exist. However, Baldwin was a cloistered nun, writing about the experience of living in a cloister and then emerging in a world that had changed enormously. Naturally the non-cloistered nuns that you know have had a very different experience, but the fact that they are "the opposite of cloistered" really has no bearing of Baldwin's experience of being, in fact, cloistered.