Humble women, powerful nuns: a female struggle for autonomy in a men's church
Introduction -- Part I. Religious revival, Romanticism and female action in a post-revolutionary age: four young women (ca. 1820-1860) -- Part II. Female agency at a turning point: four congregation founders (1857-1867) -- part III. Female entrepreneurship and leadership in al ultramontane church: f...
| Summary: | Introduction -- Part I. Religious revival, Romanticism and female action in a post-revolutionary age: four young women (ca. 1820-1860) -- Part II. Female agency at a turning point: four congregation founders (1857-1867) -- part III. Female entrepreneurship and leadership in al ultramontane church: four convent superiors (ca. 1865-ca. 1885) -- Epilogue. The shaping of perceptions -- Conclusion. A study in ambiguity. "Nineteenth-century female congregation founders could achieve levels of autonomy, power and prestige that were beyond reach for most women of their time. With a subject hidden for a long time behind a curtain of modesty and mystery, this book recounts the fascinating but ambiguous life stories of four Belgian religious women. A close reading of their personal writings unveils their conflicted existence: ambitious, engaged and bold on the one hand, suffering and isolated on the other, they were both victims and promotors of a nineteenth-century ideal of female submission. As religious and social entrepreneurs these women played an influential role in the revival of the church and the development of education, health care and social provisions in modern Belgium. But, equally well, they were bound to rigid gender patterns and adherents of an ultramontane church ideology that fundamentally distrusted modern society."-- |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 347-375 |
| ISBN: | 9462702276 |