Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed

by Maria Monk

First published in 1836 this is a sensational account by a nun who was allegedly sexually exploited in her convent in Montreal.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Religion, Canada, Research, Historical, Gothic

212 pages, Paperback

First published July 19, 1836

About the author

Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent.

Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph were forced to have sex with the priests in the seminary next door. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel. If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement.

Reviews

[Callie]

you know it's bad when it has you defending the catholic church

[Ozread]

I was given this to read as it was supposed to be a chronicle of horrific torture visited upon a woman in a Catholic convent. I looked into it after reading it and discovered it is another fraud memoir that was publicly found out not long after it was published. This woman's only contact with the Catholic Church was during a stay in a mental asylum her mother committed her to after she sustained a head injury that affected her mental stability. She left the asylum and at the age of 18, became involved with a man called William Hoyte of the Canadian Benevolent Society, a Protestant missionary association with a strong anti-Catholic approach to its work. Hoyte took her to New York where she met a group of rather unscrupulous Protestant clergymen. Whether Monk's story was her invention or that of the ministers is not clear, though certainly the ministers - most notably Rev. J.J. Slocum - were the actual writers. Advanced notice of the book appeared in the popular anti-Catholic newspapers of the era, particularly one published in New York called The American Protestant Vindicator. (Its editor would eventually distance itself from the story when it became more and more clear that the book was a fabrication

[Doris]

There are certain fascinating aspects about this book: It claims to be the true account of a young Protestant Canadian woman who voluntarily becomes a Catholic nun. Once in the convent, she discovers that the nuns are regularly raped by the priests of the monastery nearby, and that all the illegitimate babies are baptized and killed right after their birth before they are thrown into a sort of dump. There is of course also a lot of torture and physical punishment going on...
This is, however, not the interesting thing about the book. It reads much more like a morbid phantasy of a sexually repressed Protestant who has had a bit too much of de Sade. A psychologically and historically highly interesting piece of anti-Catholic propaganda.

[Julia]

There are many problems with this story, and this edition. Firstly, it is important for the reader to know that this "disclosure" is hoax that was discredited shortly after its original publication in 1836. Secondly, despite the obvious intent of the publishers of this relatively recent edition to market the text as a salacious expose, sex is only referred to in the most Victorian Christian manner--purely euphemistically. Descriptions are inflamatory yet vague in the extreme--to the point that even key plot points are completely omitted. Which leads me to the third and best reason you shouldn't bother with this book: the text itself is boring, meandering, vague, and rife with Protestant propaganda and anti-Catholic sentiment. If the publisher had included an introduction on the historical context and facts of the case (I had to go to wikipedia for the truth), this story might be an interesting slice on the history of sectarian religious battles in 19th century North America. However, there is absolutely no extra information provided by the editor. We are not even given the author's name of the piece on the Cadiere Case that is included.

[Sasha]

There was a famous expose of life inside convents in the 18th century, I think - aside from The Nun, that is - anyway, I don't think this is it. But check out that cover! Whee!

ETA: Okay, fine, I looked this up. The expose is Six Months in a Convent: The Narrative of Rebecca Theresa Reed (1835), which was neither as sensational as this thing nor as patently made up. Both works were said to be influenced by The Nun and by (inside, I jump and clap my hands every time this book comes up) The Monk.

I am unlikely to actually read this. It's apparently complete bullshit in every way. But let's let this cover stay on my TBR list for a while anyway, shall we?

ETA again: on second thought, the Wikipedia article shows zero evidence that "Historians are unanimous in their agreement that the whole account was false." The "inaccuracies" pointed out in her story are backed up by referring to her original text, so that doesn't make any sense, and by a text by an archdeacon. In a brief search around the internet, I found no actual evidence either way. I certainly have no trouble with the idea that there was a monastery in which the victimization of nuns took place.

[Libby]

Lof cruelty and old-school penance type stuff like flagellation. Actually, come to think of it the last book I read: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks, had flagellation in it, and only the other day I watched The Da Vinci Code with the charming mortification obsessed albino....hmmm what is the universe telling me?? On second thoughts I don't want to know!

[Amal El-Mohtar]

Read for the Making Settler-Modernities course. It sure was something. By which I mean it read like fanfic of The Monk, which was, itself, 19-year-old Lewis' id-powered NaNoWriMo attempt, so, you know. Wacky.

[John Witte]

I mean, this book is mean spirited and shitty, but I like it anyway.

[Julio The Fox]

Fascistic penguins and pedo priests? Yawn. The Catholic Church has done such a fine job at self-parody and auto-destruction it is east to forget thee was a time when its political enemies and not victims waged war on the Mother Church. AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF MARIA MONK is not just any run-of-the-church-steeple account of skulduggery and unholy rites inside a convent. Many historians of American literature estimate it was the best-selling "non-fiction" work of the nineteenth century United States. Our heroine (I once had to convince a friend that her name was Monk, she was not a monk) claimed to have been lured into a den of vice in Montreal in the 1850s called the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, a convent which was really more like a brothel for the priests of the church next door. The nuns, and nuns is training, like herself, were forced to have sex with the priests, all of them, at any time of day or night. (A secret tunnel connected the church to the nunnery.) The babies inevitably born of such unions would first be strangled by the shavelings, then secretly buried in a nearby field. Courageous Maria managed to escape from these predatory wolves in sheep's clothing, presumably with hymen intact, and sell her story to a publisher in 1854. Why did this lurid account, which most of th public and not a few critics took for a genuine memoir, send sales into the stratosphere? On bug reason is that by the 1850s Irish and Italian immigrants had come replace English and German immigrants as newcomers to the United States. Who knew what sort of designs these Papists had on the Grand Republic? Anti-Catholic sentiment pervaded the United States for at least the next one hundred years. The cartoonist Thomas Nast, best-known for goring Tammany Hall Grand Poobah "Boss" Tweed, once sketched all Catholic immigrants coming into the United States as crocodiles, wearing cardinals' miters instead of reptilian heads. The Republicans blasted the Democrats as the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion" after the Civil War, and the label stuck. As late as the 1970s I found copies of Paul Blandshard's anti-Catholic manifesto, AMERICAN FREEDOM AND CATHOLIC POWER in used book stores. But, payment should go where credit is due. Maria Monk, whoever she or he was, opened the gates to suspicion about the secret world of Catholicism, and since its publication the DISCLOSURES have only grown more AWFUL.

[armin]

This was so weird!!! A level of gothic literature that I didn't know existed in the US... reminded me very much of The Italian but the difference is that she holds that it actually happened! I think it's an early example of conspiracy novels pushing for the idea that Catholics are corrupting the New World and they are part of a plot to take over the United States and Canada from within and not through open warfare. When you think about the timing of it and all the other similar treatises and text that were published in those days, such as A Plea for the West. or the writings of Samuel F. B. Morse, it's easier to piece these things together!

[Jane]

Some debate on the accuracy of the account.

[Colette]

Autobiography of life in a convent in Canada in the 1800's.

Very interesting! Moves right along. Displays a very difficult life for all of the nuns. This is tragic if true.

[Carole Berlin]

Well written, but the story is way too farfetched.

[Tim]

Even if any of this WERE true, this book was so dryly written, it takes you out of whatever intrigue the tale was trying to create :/

[Sergio]

Found in an old pub amongst the books of a decorative library. Read the 1836 edition on Google books. Half way through I ran a search and found that with all probability Maria Monk had not spent any time at the monetary she speaks of, and that her account is a fabrication written by a ghost writer in a period in which anti Catholic and pro protestant stories were particularly fashionable. Not that I believe that stories similar to the one told here never occurred, but maybe not this one. An entertaining read nonetheless.

[Bryan Taylor]

Maria Monk was famous in her time after writing this book about nuns being sexually exploited in Montreal by priests. Of course, critics who want to be picky point out that most of her facts were wrong and she spent time in a mental institutions and most of the book was probably ghost written by an anti-Catholic legal guardian, William K. Hoyte, but taken as fiction, the book is lots of fun, and a classic of its time.

[Wreade1872]

Biography of nun who goes through awful stuff at convent. Good information of how a cult might operate. Prefer stuff written like fiction though. This is fiction but originally published as true by protestants trying to smear catholics.

[Pam]

Found in the bottom of a cedar chest this first edition was a must read. It should be a movie. Remarkable recount by Maria Monk along with a splash of humour amid the horrors.

[Kirsten]

a hoax, of course, but entertaining nonetheless
kind of like a saucy 19th century girl's boarding school romp
with nuns