Sister acts: Nuns in Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus and at the Loreto Convents in India

IF 0.4 3区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY
Yashaswini Chandra, Alexandra Verini
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article draws into comparative conversation Rumer Godden's 1939 novel about nuns in the Himalayas, Black Narcissus, and the records of real-world nuns from the Loreto order in India. Through this comparison, we shed light on the under-studied field of nuns in India and on the intersection of gender and colonialism during the later period of colonial rule. Reading fiction against historical archives, we find that a novel that has been lauded for its anti-imperialist stance in fact retains elements of orientalism that dovetail with a misogynistic outlook. Meanwhile, an order that exhibited racist and colonialist tendencies also, despite and because of these, engineered a project with significant feminist purpose. This juxtaposition of Godden's novel and Loreto's internal archives reveals the ways in which white feminist goals can be at odds with anti-colonialist ones, but it also shows how the standard portrayal of nuns – represented by Godden's novel – as regressive and lacking agency does not hold up in the face of the historical record.

修女的行为鲁默-戈登的《黑水仙》和印度洛雷托修道院的修女们
本文将鲁默-戈登 (Rumer Godden) 1939 年描写喜马拉雅山地区修女的小说《黑水仙》与印度洛雷托修会现实世界修女的记录进行比较对话。通过比较,我们揭示了印度修女这一研究不足的领域,以及殖民统治后期性别与殖民主义的交集。对照历史档案阅读小说,我们发现,一部因反帝国主义立场而备受赞誉的小说实际上保留了东方主义的元素,与厌恶女性的观点相吻合。与此同时,尽管存在种族主义和殖民主义倾向,但这一秩序也设计了一个具有重要女性主义目的的项目。戈登的小说与洛雷托内部档案的并置揭示了白人女权主义目标与反殖民主义目标相悖的方式,同时也说明了戈登小说中对修女的标准描述是如何倒退和缺乏能动性的,这在历史记录面前是站不住脚的。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Gender and History
Gender and History Multiple-
CiteScore
0.90
自引率
0.00%
发文量
83
期刊介绍: Gender & History is now established as the major international journal for research and writing on the history of femininity and masculinity and of gender relations. Spanning epochs and continents, Gender & History examines changing conceptions of gender, and maps the dialogue between femininities, masculinities and their historical contexts. The journal publishes rigorous and readable articles both on particular episodes in gender history and on broader methodological questions which have ramifications for the discipline as a whole.
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