On Monasticism in Fiction

 I am considering doing an ImpishIdea article on Thistlefoot, expanding thoughts that I had in the Book Diary, but I might end up just trying to do another sporking chapter.

International Women’s Day was this past week, so here’s some fantasy book recommendations by women that are quite good!

-The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

-Lady Trent by Marie Brennan

-A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin

-Farsala Trilogy by Hilari Bell

-Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

-Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

-Just pick a Diana Wynne Jones book. Just pick one.

Anyhow I read In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, and I have thoughts.

Monasticism in Fiction

Part of my experience reading Godden’s In This House of Brede was wondering if the religious sister I know has read this book. The other big part of my reading experience was that I kept thinking about how here was a book that is about people in the monastic life, and not only how few stories in popular culture are about that, but also popular fiction is really, really bad about depicting the life of people under religious vows. Like, cartoonishly bad. 

I’ve probably said the sentence, or variation of, “I’ve talked about how popular culture is really bad about depicting religion,” a lot. In my defense though, it is really bad. People tend to assume that other people believe the same way they do, and so when they come across a religion that isn’t theirs that they don’t understand, the assumption is that it can’t really be real. This extends to authors, and it’s why you see so many religious characters in fantasy, science-fiction, and historical fiction who don’t actually believe in their cultures’ religions. “Well, I don’t believe in it, because it seems silly to me, so clearly anyone halfway intelligent wouldn’t either!” There are an astounding number of evil priests in speculative fiction who believe it’s all crock and are using religion as a cover for their nefarious plans.

To be clear, this doesn’t just extend to Christianity and its in-universe stand-ins, either. Something that really bugs me about Iron Druid Chronicles is how it doesn’t seem to get Irish Celtic paganism. I don’t only mean that it gets facts about the gods wrong–though it does, as it draws more on New Age sources than actual mythology texts–but that the relationship between gods and worshippers is all wrong. There’s a subplot in the second book that reveals that the goddess Brighid is trying to manipulate the main character into revealing the secrets of his magic amulet. This doesn’t make much sense to me, as Atticus is supposed to actually worship Brighid (something you wouldn’t pick up if he didn’t tell you), so it would make more sense for the goddess to just… you know, ask her worshiper for the thing she wants in any of the thousands of years she’s known him.

The author, like many others, doesn’t seem to understand how worshiping a deity is supposed to work.

Monasticism is this, but up to eleven. Because not only are we in a culture that does not get religion, it’s a culture that does not understand prayer, celibacy, isolation, and contemplation. Here are a bunch of people who are so completely dedicated to religion, their entire day around their prayer schedule. Any one of those is going to be a difficult sell for a lot of people, for reasons that are odd to me. Remember that there are tons of people (many of whom have canon authority!) insisting that the Jedi, despite clearly being modeled off of real world monastic orders, are not actually celibate. Because their prohibition is against attachment to the material world, not sex! Except I think if you’re so attached to the physical world that you cannot imagine not having sex, you’re running against the basic philosophical idea driving it.

Also it’s something never even hinted at in the movies or shows, and at best has maybe some basis in certain corners of the new Expanded Universe (which is subject to change so… take it with a grain of salt).

[Honestly, the insistence that “Oh, of course the Jedi had sex!” thing strikes me as a “I want to fantasize about the idea of being a warrior wizard monk with a lightsaber but I couldn’t imagine life without sex/someone that cool not being sexually active, so I’ll make this assertion.”]

We’re also in a culture that has a lot of lazy writing. What’s a quick way to get character development? Introducing a love interest! Plenty of writers can’t think of a way to develop a character or get them to care about the Plot unless there’s a love interest (if the author’s really acting like a hack, that love interest will be killed off for motivation). If you’re wondering why so many Hollywood films, even good ones, have poorly-written love interests or romance arcs, this is why–it’s the fastest way to “make the protagonist relatable” to the modern audience.

Therefore, a lot of stories featuring monks are about characters leaving the monastic life because gasp! Who would want to live that sort of static, oppressive life? Much better to ditch that life you’re sworn to! And to be clear, yeah, it can be oppressive, but so often the objections that people bring up are things that are signed up for.  

Arn the Knight Templar has two main characters in monastic life, and it’s treated as a twenty-year-penance (for really weird, circuitous sin that has me scratching my head, honestly). There’s a side character who leaves the convent for Love with a monk who also leaves his monastery, and by Love we mean they like having sex with each other and can’t control themselves like stupid teenagers. 

This was a pretty dumb story all-around, I think.

Meanwhile, part of what led me to In This House of Brede was a discussion of monastic life that argued that the hardest vow to keep isn’t celibacy, it might be obedience. And in conversation with my consultant (my sister), we ended up agreeing that with a vow of celibacy, you know exactly what you’re signing up for; but with a vow of obedience, what your mileage may vary depending on who your superior in religious life might be. And your superior might change based on reassignment or death or something else–then you don’t know who you’re stuck with!

And there are plenty of ways to In fact a large part of In This House of Brede is that the current abbess passes away, and her successor inherits a lot of financial problems she has to handle really quickly. There’s also the different interactions between sisters, and when their past lives intrude on them.

Sister Cecily’s storyline, in particular, sticks out to me. Not only does her mother insist that she shouldn’t be a nun, but the man she spent a lot of time as a young woman thinking she would marry shows up and keeps pushing her to leave and marry her. For him (at least until he learns better), giving up the secular world is incomprehensible to him. They care about each other, isn’t that enough? Vocations don’t make sense. For him, she’s not even actually a woman unless she is able to marry and have children. Sister Cecily immediately refutes this, but it takes a while to get through Larry’s head.

Likewise, there’s a storyline in which our main character (or at least, the character who brings us to this life in the first place) is approached by one of her former coworkers for advice. Because if one of your friends is a career woman who drops everything to become a nun, clearly she’s some kind of moral authority to appeal to, right?

I keep flashing back to Kate Quinn’s review on Goodreads, in which despite not being religious she liked this story, and was happy to see a story featuring nuns that wasn’t about them falling in love. Not that romantic feelings are entirely ignored in the text, but it’s very rarely the primary motivation of any of the characters. Godden realizes that there are other things that motivate women besides finding love.

Basically, I think that there are a ton of storylines you could do about monks or nuns, but because so many people don’t understand religion, imagine life outside of cloisters, or conceive of character development that rejects romance. But there’s a lot to life to write about in these kinds of stories! Friendships, different jobs in the monastery, trying to raise money, interactions with visitors–there’s tons of stuff to tell stories about! If only writers would actually try them instead of declaring it all bad because it doesn’t appeal to them in particular. Everyone’s crying out about wanting Found Family stories but almost no one wants to do this a story with monastics.

Also, I have a story idea about a massive ship that’s also a monastery manned by monks, drifting between ports.

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