This is an Ohio Seminar in Early American History & Culture event.
Monica Najar is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Lehigh University
Abstract:
In late 1835, a group of anti-Catholic activists, ministers, and publishers encountered a young woman named Maria Monk. A new mother and alone at just nineteen-years-old, she claimed that she had been a nun in a Montreal convent where she had been raped and witnessed the murder of women and infants. To some, her story was too fantastical to believe. But these increasingly dogmatic activists saw something different: the personification of their fears, a beautiful, sympathetic face, the possibilities of a persuadable public, and, an untapped commercial market. As Maria Monk tried to control her own fate, these men propelled the project forward despite compelling counter testimony, allegations of sexual impropriety in their ranks, double-crossing, and an unpredictable—and occasionally truant—“escaped nun.”
This chapter explores the fateful events that led to the publication of Monk's bestselling book, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu in January 1836. As such it tells two stories. First argues that the years between 1830 and 1835 saw a significant transition in American culture and politics when anti-Catholicism developed more currency and more urgency, with the focus on women and convents. In these few years, a circle of ministers and activists built the components for broad-based, vitriolic anti-Catholic movement. They created institutions to connect like-minded people; they founded newspapers and held public meetings to extend to new audiences; and they honed their messages to appeal to a broader audience. At the same time, they radicalized their messages. These immediate and practical supports for this newly energized popular anti-Catholicism catalyzed with longer-term cultural developments, such as a redefinition of the poor as strangers rather than neighbors, and the changing demographics of the US. These short- and long-term supports are important to map, not only because they uncover the building blocks of this popular movement, but also because they complicate the easiest notions of cause and effect found in some history texts, namely that Catholic immigration led to widespread anti-Popery. It is important to demystify that. Certainly anxiety about immigration was present the emerging movement in the 1830 and would come to play a substantial role a few decades later. At the same time, an overreliance on the explanation of immigration makes this worldview seem more “logical” or at least more transactional than it was. This matters because this new anti-Catholicism was built through institutions and a public repetition of perceived dangers. That message was attached to Irish Catholic immigrants; it was not the other way around.
Second, the chapter uncovers the strange negotiations that lead to—and almost derailed—the publication of Monk’s book, revealing the gendered and sexual politics that left Monk in a position where controlling her body was her primary negotiating tool. In doing so it uncovers how legal and economic structures, as well as sexual politics, restricted marginalized women’s options during this era. Arriving to New York City with nothing but a compelling story, Maria Monk joined the legions of poor women who were marginalized within the economy and the legal system. She was a remarkably entrepreneurial woman, who worked aggressively to shape her circumstances. Monk had relatively few options to affect her circumstances. She flirted, shifted alliances, and dispensed information very strategically. She used ideas about female propriety to improve her situation and employed cunning and deceit as willingly. But her plans were often overwhelmed by men who made use of the legal system and business practices to prioritize their own gains and limit hers. Excluded from conversations and contracts, made a ward of one of the enterprising men, Monk’s primary resource over her story became control over her own body. Through her intimate negotiations and her penchant for running away, she exerted what power she could, but with little meaningful success.
