SACRED HEARTS
Sarah Dunant
Random House
Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781400063826
From THE NUN’S STORY to IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE, from BLACK NARCISSUS to MARIETTE IN ECSTASY, novels about nuns have been an enthusiasm of mine since girlhood. The spare, contemplative life of the convent, the “marriage” to Christ, the drama of doubt and temptation: All this was inconceivably romantic to someone raised without a drop of religion. Although I hadn’t yet experienced love or sex --- those mysterious objects of desire still hung in the misty, hypothetical future --- I was fascinated by the decision to forgo them entirely. It seemed enviably pure.
Pure is not the word that comes to mind when the reader is introduced to the sisters in SACRED HEARTS, the third of Sarah Dunant’s wonderful historical novels (her previous two took place in Florence and Venice; this one in Ferrara) --- they are altogether more worldly souls. In the late 16th century, it seems, extraordinary faith was not a prerequisite for taking vows; often nuns were women who were simply losers in the marriage market. Perhaps they suffered from physical disabilities (cleft lip, twisted spine), or they were from families that couldn’t afford to see them properly wed (in an Author’s Note we learn that dowries had become so inflated that by 1600 nearly half of Italian noblewomen were destined to become nuns!).
Although some convents at the time were humble affairs, Santa Caterina, the fictional setting for SACRED HEARTS, is hardly a closed-off spiritual enclave. One nun has a pet dog; others write plays and compose choral music; all are able, on designated occasions, to meet face-to-face with family.Their cells, often containing such amenities as books, carpets and satin sheets, are cleaned by lay servants. The community is a business entity, producing and trading in illuminated manuscripts and painted religious figurines, herbal medicines and embroidered church robes, as well as a political one, competing with other convents to win patronage and fame.
Suora Zuana, the dispensary mistress --- the closest thing Santa Catarina has to a doctor --- makes the ironic point that women are often better off within the convent than they would be in the outside world: “[T]here are no fathers to bully or rage at the expensive uselessness of daughters, no brothers to tease and torment weaker sisters, no rutting drunken husbands poking constantly at tired or pious wives.” And in the remarkably democratic institution of the chapter meeting, each nun “has a voice and a vote” on everything from what they will eat to whom they will have as Abbess.
The daughter of an enlightened medical man whose sudden death left her nowhere else to go, Zuana is essentially a scientist plopped down in the middle of a religious community. For 16 years she has wrestled with the demands of faith and her own conscience, although she has also found a certain tranquility at Santa Caterina. She is the person the reader will most identify with: open-minded, self-doubting, curious, caring and practical --- a modern heroine underneath her habit.
She finds herself caught between two opposed convent philosophies. On the one hand there is the mysticism and orthodoxy of Umiliana, the sharp-tongued, frighteningly intense sister in charge of the novices (those who haven’t yet taken final vows). But there is also the penchant for realism and diplomacy epitomized by the Abbess, Madonna Chiara, a natural politician who sees no conflict between serving God and glorifying her family. This power struggle --- isolation and repression versus worldliness and liberality --- mirrors the one taking place in the Catholic world of the late 1500s in the wake of Martin Luther’s accusations of sin and hypocrisy. Change is looming, and Zuana, Umiliana and Chiara are fighting, each in her own way, for the survival of Santa Catarina in troubled times.
They are also fighting for the soul of Serafina, the newest novice. This high-born young woman has been sent to the convent as punishment for falling in love with her music teacher, and her angry presence rocks Santa Catarina to its foundations. Although reputed to have a stunning voice, she uses it to scream in the night, not sing in the choir; with her desperate plots, anorexic extremes (she is, after all, a teenager), quick wit and personal charm, she tests the limits of Chiara’s pragmatism, Umiliana’s fanaticism and Zuana’s compassion.
The drama of SACRED HEARTS is intensified and distilled by Dunant’s decision to set the novel entirely within the convent walls and to alternate her narrative between Zuana’s point of view and Serafina’s --- the ambivalent veteran and the ardent, angry newcomer. The color and detail of her writing is, as always, astounding; by the end of the book I felt that I knew Santa Caterina intimately and could sense the solemn rhythm of the convent’s daily offices, from Lauds to Matins.
I won’t go into the denouement, because Dunant’s plot is as riveting as that of any thriller. But it isn’t giving anything away to say that, ultimately, orthodoxy wins out, as the Abbess anticipates (she tells Zuana to memorize her medical books, for soon she won’t be allowed to have them). By 1600, says the Author’s Note, new convent rules were being imposed. Contact with the outside world was “brutally restricted”; plays and music were banned, and luxuries and private possessions confiscated.
There is a modern echo of such a shift in the Vatican’s recent investigation of American nuns, who are apparently suspected of being overly secular and insufficiently devout.* Zuana and her Abbess would, I am sure, take a dim view of this development. SACRED HEARTS suggests that it is possible, though difficult, to follow a consistent spiritual practice while using your brains and talents to engage in work that makes a difference in the world. It says that sisterhood is powerful.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
*According to a New York Times article from July 2, 2009
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