Fred Zinneman’s 1959 movie classic The Nun’s Story says a lot about American Catholicism in the 1950’s. Audrey Hepburn, the protagonist in Kathryn C. Hulme’s 1956 best-selling novel on which the film is based, began her role as Sister Luke in one century, but exited into an entirely different world at the end of the film. Gabrielle van der Mal left the security of convent walls into a world of emerging weapons of mass destruction and a culture that, at least in Europe, would drift dramatically from its religious past and its seven deadly sins morality. That may have been the obvious message of the Academy Award nominated film, but far more subtle was Sister Luke’s battle with her own interior silence as a nun.
The Perception of Nuns in American Society
The mystique of nuns has always haunted those outside the convent walls. Protestants frequently viewed those walls as somehow forbidden and dangerous. In August 1834, angry Bostonians burned an Ursuline convent in Charlestown. Anti-Catholicism continued through the 19th Century until the early 20th. By the time The Nun’s Story premiered, nuns were a fixture in American education and medicine.
Referring to the first time she met nuns, humorist Erma Bombeck wrote in September 1991, “…There was something awesome about them I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t fear. It was that in their presence I always felt like a small puppy who had just missed the paper. Actually, it was fear.” Like Sister Luke in The Nun’s Story, these women were special.
In Sister Act (1992) Whoopi Goldberg says to Maggie Smith, the Reverend Mother of the cloistered nuns, that she always admired nuns, that they were married to “the big JC.” In the 1950’s, almost all nuns looked like Sister Luke: they wore habits and this garnered respect. It added to the mystique. A member of the Sisters of Saint Joseph recalled how girls in the school she was teaching touched the nuns’ habits during Mass as the sisters filed to the front of the chapel. Teenage boys, encountering a nun while walking a sidewalk in the Northeast, doffed their caps.
Life Behind Convent Walls
The Nun’s Story begins in pre-World War II Belgium. Gabrielle enters the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Jesus and Mary. Why she does this is not entirely clear in the movie: her father, a brilliant physician, opposes her entry while a young man had his eyes on her as a future wife. Kathryn Hulme’s book explains her decision perhaps better than a movie could. Gabrielle was influenced by another nun during a pilgrimage trip to Lourdes with many desperately ill people.
Convent life was designed to redirect the independent natures of young women in a lengthy process designed to produce a “living holy rule.” It was something Gabrielle, now Sister Luke, could never fully accept. Deep inside her spirit she knew what Dr. Fortunati would tell her years later in the Belgian Congo was true: “Sister, you’re not in the mold.”
It wasn’t enough to be a “good nun.” Sister Luke’s ambition to work in medicine in the Congo was greater than her endeavors to be a good nun, although these endeavors were sincere.
Although film viewers may not fully appreciate all of the nuances of convent life in The Nun’s Story, the struggles behind the walls depict a life that was unchanged for centuries. For both Catholics and Protestants, the film was an education of medieval Christianity functioning in a modern world. When that world invades centuries of tradition, change becomes inevitable.
Sister Luke’s Ministries in Europe and Africa
Sister Luke’s first assignment was at an insane asylum. In Hulme’s book, the message is very clear: the nun’s see God in every patient and see a glimmer of hope in reaching them for Christ. The film, however, focuses on Sister Luke’s relationship with the “Archangel,” a dangerous patient kept locked in a room, as well as her own pride in working to be a good nun. Her independence of spirit remains. Her life as a nun revolves around obedience and silence, two elements that prove to be very difficult.
Once in the Congo, Sister Luke becomes a cause célèbre, drawing attention to herself yet functioning as Dr. Fortunati’s ablest assistant in surgical procedures. Her willingness to be a “good nun” is sincere, but her nature strives against the required interior silence. At the start of Hulme’s book, the reader is reminded – as is Sister Luke, that one cannot say an entire Ave without the mind becoming distracted. Forced to accompany a colonial VIP back to Belgium, Sister Luke looks at an indigenous bird and vows, “I’m coming back, you beautiful thing.”
World War II on the Dutch Border
Restless and struggling, Sister Luke is posted to a convent near the Dutch border at the time World War II breaks out. Holland is invaded by German troops and the nuns are counseled to remain neutral by the superior. As Germans pass through Belgium and into France, Sister Luke learns of her beloved father’s death at the hands of German invaders. He died helping wounded refugees fleeing the Nazi blitzkrieg.
The convent rule is not enough; it never was. Sister Luke requests a dispensation from her vows and despite last minute counseling by the order’s Mother General (Dame Edith Evans), she is permitted to leave. As a nun, Gabrielle only lived on the periphery of an uncertain world. Now she was going into that world, full of death, destroyed cities, and the new fears of atomic annihilation.
The Nun’s Story in the Late 1950’s
Hulme’s book was based on the life of Marie Louise Habets, her companion and a former nun. What motivates writers is often difficult to discern. The film, however, came at a time of global uncertainty. Senator John F. Kennedy was considering a run for the presidency in 1959, only the second American Catholic to aspire to be chief executive. The Cold War pitted the Soviet Union against the free, western world and no better apologist for American Anti-Communism could be found greater than New York’s Francis, Cardinal Spellman.
At the same time, Sister Luke’s struggle to be a good nun was characteristic of changes going on in the Catholic Church. Three years after The Nun’s Story opened in theaters, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council. Focusing on the laity, one result was a departure of many nuns and priests from religious orders. Unlike Sister Luke, however, most of them understood the modern world and saw an opportunity to minister to people from the other side of convent walls.
A Post Modern Nun’s Story Lesson
Comparatively, there are far fewer nuns today. Many of them no longer wear the traditional habits. The average age of an American sister is seventy and their numbers are falling. One New Jersey Motherhouse has only fifteen sisters left, most of who are long retired. Additionally, Church attempts are underway to, “wall off the ‘brides of Christ,’ Cask of Amontillado style…” as Maureen Dowd put it in an October 25, 2009 New York Times Op-Ed piece.
For Catholics, The Nun’s Story is still a source of inspiration, particularly since there was a time Hollywood made films about nuns and priests that were edifying and inspiring. Although Audrey Hepburn did not portray the “typical Hollywood nun,” like Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949), her characterization of Sister Luke addressed the essence of personal spirituality and the desire to serve God. Non-Catholics, already familiar with the good works of Catholic sisters like Mother Cabrini, for example, saw a deeper aspect of Catholicism that may have helped to explain the nature of vocation.
The Nun’s Story. 1986. Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Perf. Audrey Hepburn; Peter Finch, Dame Edith Evans, Dame Peggy Ashcroft. Warner Brothers Communication Company. Running Time: 149 min.
References:
- Conversation with Sister Irma, SSJ.
- Erma Bombeck, “Catholic schools have an effect into adulthood,” Universal Press Syndicate, September 25, 1991.
- Kathryn C. Hulme, The Nun’s Story (New York: Little Brown & Company, 1956).
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