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In This House of Brede
House of Brede - Feb 2021
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I saw the movie with Diana Rigg fairly recently, but have never read the book. I've sent away for a copy so that I can join this discussion.
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Excellent. I am really enjoying it.
i'm only ten pages in. My goodness there are a lot of characters. How does one keep straight each character's personality? I'm going to have to make a list.
Manny wrote: "i'm only ten pages in. My goodness there are a lot of characters. How does one keep straight each character's personality? I'm going to have to make a list."I wouldn't worry too much about the characters in the first ten pages. Most of them won't be back.
Mark wrote: "Manny wrote: "i'm only ten pages in. My goodness there are a lot of characters. How does one keep straight each character's personality? I'm going to have to make a list."I wouldn't worry too muc..."
Actually I just noticed. My edition has a listing of all the different nuns and their titles. The list is some four pages long.
I’m a third of the way in and am struggling a little bit with keeping the nun’s straight. Referencing the list of nuns at the beginning helps. Still it’s a very enjoyable read.
Catherine said, "I’m a third of the way in and am struggling a little bit with keeping the nun’s straight..." I think it takes a while to process the distinctions between the nuns--the author does a better job characterizing the cats! I'm almost halfway through and still having the same problem, along with confusion in point of view and the chronology (I forget which chapter, but they were discussing Sister Julian after she had left, but as if she were still there.) I wonder if there are flashbacks I'm missing--as much as I'm liking this book, I keep having to flip back to remind myself who, what when. I think maybe some stronger transitions would help?? But one big positive about the book is the vivid descriptions of the abbey itself. I feel like I am IN the abbey at times. It has become more familiar than the sisters....
Madeleine wrote: "Catherine said, "I’m a third of the way in and am struggling a little bit with keeping the nun’s straight..." I think it takes a while to process the distinctions between the nuns--the author does ..."I didn't have much trouble with that. But I did find the time changes confusing.
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Yes, there were a few times when I was tripped up with flashbacks that disrupted the flow of the story for me as I had to -refigure where I was in the Brede timeline.
They aren’t even flashbacks per se sometimes. They are almost a summoning up of the past to the moment. It’s kind of different than a traditional flashback. Does anyone know if this is something Goddard does in other novels or is it just here? It kind of makes sense aesthetically in this novel as I understand as to what I think is her central theme. But it is rather awkward. I still have a few chapters to go. I’ll put my ideas together when I finish. The novel has grown on me as I’ve gone along.
Manny wrote: "They aren’t even flashbacks per se sometimes. They are almost a summoning up of the past to the moment. It’s kind of different than a traditional flashback."That is an astute observation. One of the things that strikes me about this novel -- one of the things about its structure that interest me as a writer -- is that while modern fiction tends to be the story of an individual in the moment -- often expressed as first person or close third person present tense narratives -- this is very clearly the story of a community living in a continuity through time.
This is, I think, why it does seem at first that it is difficult to keep track of all the nuns. In a conventional story one would assume that there was a single main character and at most a handful of secondary characters and you would want to identify them and sort them out quickly. But here there is a community, a large community, and it takes a while to adapt ourselves to the fact that they all matter. And similarly with time, the distinction between present and flashback that matters in a person present narrative, just does not mean the same thing in this communal eternal narrative.
Manny wrote: " Does anyone know if this is something Godden does in other novels or is it just here?"She does it in other novels. It's as if we were reading a person's mind, and like in our own minds, current events we are living bring back memories or conversations from the past.
Manny, Mark, and Mariangel. Thank you for making sense of these confusions in her delivery. I think she is too good a writer not to know what she was doing. Not exactly flashbacks, not exactly stream of consciousness, and the community is the main character as we see its life unfold through the various members. Hmmm. And a community does have moments, memories, and insights that take it out of the time of life as it is being lived?
Mariangel wrote: "Manny wrote: " Does anyone know if this is something Godden does in other novels or is it just here?"She does it in other novels. It's as if we were reading a person's mind, and like in our own m..."
Thank you. I have to say I'm not fond of her technique.
I don't know where to put my final thoughts on this novel. This isn't an "introduction" but a conclusion, and i didn't see a sub-folder that was applicable. So I'll put it here. Be aware it contains spoilers, so people just starting out may want to wait to read my concluding comments. I'm afraid I wasn't able to engage in the discussion while the book club was reading together. I was drastically behind and when I finished I felt I needed to reread the novel to make sense of the structure and characters. So I'm finishing now, but I felt I owed the book club my thoughts.
Let me start a new comment box, since my conclusions are a bit lengthy.
I have to say that the novel is a hodgepodge of elements held together by the central character, Philippa, the stability of the monastery, and the central theme of what I’ll call the theme of “becoming.” I’ll flesh out that central theme in time, but let’s look at the plot first. The plot divides into two core narrative movements, bifurcating the novel, and as far as I can see unrelated to each other. The first half of the novel revolves around the financial crises Abbess Hester has put the monastery in. Her paralysis and death, the discovery of the debt caused by Sister Julian’s departure, the stone altar that needs to be paid, the decision to sacrifice to pay for it, the building of the altar, and the miraculous windfalls that covers the debt all take up the first ten chapters. The second half of the book, chapters eleven through twenty, mostly revolves on the Japanese postulants who enter Brede, their entrance, their benefactor, their development as nuns, and the establishment of a new monastery in Japan. I fail to see the relationship between the first main narrative and the second. From an aesthetic point of view, it’s rather disjointed.
Not only are the two narrative movements disjointed, but each come with some flaws. In the first movement, the one concerning Abbess Hester and the financial crises, the narrative is fairly interesting and steadily developed. The sin of Abbess Hester causes her death, creates instability to what should be above all else stability to the monastery, and puts the monastery into a crises. The narrative of the building of the stone altar nicely accentuates the theme of “becoming,” providing a dramatic symbol at the heart of the novel, though perhaps a little heavy-handed. The nuns are willing to go to severe ascetic measures in order to save money to pay the debt. And they do initially. But then a precious stone falls out of a broken crucifix and Philippa supplies a large dowry she was hiding, and the whole thing wraps up rather artificially.
The thing that is puzzling is that Godden didn’t really need to do that. If she had continued on the path of resolving the debt through asceticism, perhaps turned the screw a little tighter on the struggle, had the monastery do some extra work such as publishing, raising agricultural products, or dressmaking—all of which they already do, but now could be expanded—the resolution of the debt would have been both natural and aesthetically pleasing. Godden could have even integrated the Japanese part of the plot as helping pay for the debt. For example the extra dowries the Japanese brought and the wealth from Japan could have been brought to bear on the first part of the plot. Why she chose the convenient, happenstance resolution escapes me, though perhaps there may be a reason I’m not seeing.
The second narrative movement, the development of the Japanese postulants, is also unsatisfactory. The postulants, though individualized characters, remain stereotypes. Why have they been drawn to Christianity? What tensions back home did they face? What specifically about Christianity has captured their heart to leave a familiar life back home, move to another country far away, and then subject themselves to vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience? Godden drops little plums of suggestions, but nothing developed in a substantive way. We do get the expected cultural distinctions, subsequent assimilations, and the overcoming of communication differences. But from the initial hurdles we see the postulants being clothed, first profession, final profession, and off to Japan to start a new monastery all in cursory fashion. It’s rather superficial.
So why read this novel? Is it a bad read? I still gave it four stars. I think it’s a flawed work, but it still has positive attributes that overcome the flaws. What I listed above are the two main plot lines but there are a variety and abundance of subplots that create a uniform work, despite the two disjointed main plots. There is the Dame Veronica plot line that takes her as an accomplice to Abbess Hester, steals monastery money for her wayward brother, accidently poisons herself, nearly dies, but lives and provides restitution. There is the Sister Julian theme of abandoning the monastery for a modern spirituality. There is the Abbess Catherine plot line as she doesn’t want to become Abbess, is elected nonetheless, and slowly grows to her job. There is the Dame Agnes plot line as a rigid and exacting nun but who maintains the monastery traditions. There is the Penny and Donald plot line with its secular world issues and saved by Philippa’s monastic wisdom. There is the Dame Maura plot line of playing and teaching music, her attraction to Cecily, her being sent away, and then years later returning. There is the Sister Cecily plot line of coming in as a young novice, being pressured to return to secular life, her internal struggles with remaining a nun, her beautiful musical gifts, and finally overcoming and being professed. And of course there is the Philippa plot line, taking us through her leaving the secular world, her internal psychological struggles with her past, her formation as a nun, her assistance with the Japanese, and her sacrifice in going to Japan.
Some have said that the monastery itself is the central theme. I don’t know if I would phrase it quite that way. I think the stability of the monastery set against the evolving and mutable secular world is one of the themes. But is it the monastery that is the theme or perhaps the Benedictine Order? Perhaps it isn’t even the order but this chapter in the order who maintain the stability and traditions. It is hard to separate the monastery from the Order from the chapter. They are interconnected. The interwoven web of subplots from the lives of the individual nuns forms the theme. The subplot of Philippa’s experience and development is the spine that runs through the novel and which is at the core of the central theme.
So what is this central theme? It’s actually given to us by Godden through a quote from the medieval past articulated by the character who encapsulates the sole source of wisdom from the secular world in the novel, Pilippa’s ex-boss, Daniel McTurk. The only secular person who understood why Philippa was entering monastic life, McTurk provides Phillipa a quote which then runs through Philippa’s mind as she wonders if she will sustain her vocation. It’s in Chapter 2, and we get Philippa’s thoughts:
Even if I don’t succeed they honour me for trying, for coming, and words had come into Philippa’s mind: ‘Not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with His merciful eyes, but what thou wouldst be.’ It was McTurk who had quoted that; McTurk who alone had understood. ‘What thou wouldst be.’ Philippa’s eyes had been suddenly blinded.
“Not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with His merciful eyes, but what thou wouldst be” is a well-known quote from The Cloud of Unknowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clo... (from chapter 75), an anonymous medieval work of mysticism, who’s central theme is that one needs to surrender one’s will to God in order to understand Him. It is not important what you have been, nor what you are now. The only thing that is important is what you will become, and that is the person that God made you to be. And so we see not just in Phillipa’s progress but in the novel every nun’s process of development to be conforming to the will of God.
We are told again of this theme later in chapter 2 when Dame Ursula provides guidance to her postulants, cautioning them on over striving to be useful.
‘And you needn’t worry about being useful,’ said Dame Ursula. ‘When you have become God’s in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.’ She was quoting St Basil. Then her face grew wistful, ‘“Unless He prefer, for thy greater advantage, to keep thee all to himself.” That does happen to a few people. Yet, paradoxically, they have the greatest influence.’
“When you have become God’s in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.” Again another quote from the depths of Christian spirituality that insists that God will shape you if you let Him.
In chapter three, we see Philippa explaining to Cecily why she came to Brede.
‘I haven’t even begun to catch up. You don’t understand,’ said Philippa more quietly. ‘All my grown life, it seems to me now I have been – acting in authority … yes, acting,’ said Philippa, ‘because I wasn’t a full person. I was so busy,’ said Philippa, ‘that I had no time for myself. Now, at last, at Brede I have a chance to be no one. That’s what I need because I must begin again; in all those years I hadn’t advanced one jot.’
“I wasn’t a full person.” The process of the novel is the process of Philippa becoming a full person. Duranski carving the statue is a metaphor for the nuns “becoming.” As he works, in chapter eight, the nuns watch.
The statue seemed to emerge almost naturally from the stone though again, statue seemed the wrong word, it was so alive. ‘He’s uncovering it,’ said Dame Gertrude marveling.
After the novitiate had watched him, Sister Constance had said, ‘It’s like us. We come as a rough piece of stone and have to be carved and shaped to have meaning.’
Through Philippa we see the woman God intended her to be emerge and take shape as she takes on different responsibilities and sacrifices her will for God’s will. But Dame Philippa’s “becoming” is accentuated in the other nuns “becoming.” Catherine becomes a wise abbess; Dames Veronica, Maura, and Agnes become balanced from their individual irregularities; Sister Cecily and the Japanese postulants become mature nuns.
All these subplots form a wonderful web of interest and overcome the disjointed plot line. Through the varied subplots Godden creates life at a monastery in a way that one single plot could not accomplish. It allows the reader to see, that is the primary function of literature, according to Joseph Conrad. We see the life and complexity at a Benedictine monastery as the characters live their lives before us, spanning some fifteen years, and relating to an outside world that is increasingly secular. We enter a different world, an unfamiliar world to us, and engage in lives that have fundamentally different objectives and routines and purposes than ours. For the span of the novel, we live in the rhythm of their lives.
Manny, I think this is brilliant. I wish it didn’t have to end with us, but could reach a larger audience. Thanks so much for enabling me to have a more complete understanding of the novel In This House of Brede.
Frances wrote: "Manny, I think this is brilliant. I wish it didn’t have to end with us, but could reach a larger audience. Thanks so much for enabling me to have a more complete understanding of the novel In This ..."OK, Frances, I finally finished the novel and I promised I'd comment, so here goes. First of all, Manny, I agree with Frances. You have summarized the book and its worthiness in amazing detail and insight. And perhaps helped me see what I was trying to see from the start.
I had some issues with the beginning chapters, thinking, too many characters, not coming across as real people because we don't see enough of them to figure out who is who; perhaps that Godden was lacking somewhat in storytelling skills, and that the structure seemed like a series of rooms opening and shutting with only a glimpse of what was happening within each of them. I was trying to get at a theme as well, but it seemed to be cut into pieces rather than reveal a consistent thread holding the story together.
Now it makes more sense to me to see the monastery itself as a character, because the monastery setting puts the nuns into their respective roles and as each progresses in spiritual development, their commitment to their vows and their living out their individual vocations, and their ability to relate to one another and to conform to the will of God that will reveal the value that they bring to the life of the monastery.
We are given, not so much the plot of a story with a definite beginning, middle, and end, but a slice of life, life that defines the House of Brede as a place where those who have chosen to live in selflessness, obedience, simplicity, and purity, offer to the community, inside and outside the monastery walls, a glimpse of holiness and sanctification in process, in all its variations and facets, remote, and yet inspiring and offering peace and hope to the lay persons who fall under its influence.
Manny wrote: [Quote]"The statue seemed to emerge almost naturally from the stone though again, statue seemed the wrong word, it was so alive. ‘He’s uncovering it,’ said Dame Gertrude marveling."As always, I marvel at what you uncover in novels, Manny.
About the above quote, wasn't it Michelangelo who worked on the premise that the sculpture was already enclosed in the stone, and that the artist's job is to free it?
I keep wondering, though, if the providential finding of the jewel was not actually based in some event in the history of the real Stanbrook Abbey, that Godden heard from the nuns themselves. I have been looking up information about the abbey, but did not find much. In the life of many saints, the providential appearance of much needed financial resources abounds. It may not be best as a literary device, but it is truer to the life of these saints.
Frances wrote: "Manny, I think this is brilliant. I wish it didn’t have to end with us, but could reach a larger audience. Thanks so much for enabling me to have a more complete understanding of the novel In This ..."Well, I do post them on my humble blog. Here is the post for this.
https://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot....
Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: [Quote]"The statue seemed to emerge almost naturally from the stone though again, statue seemed the wrong word, it was so alive. ‘He’s uncovering it,’ said Dame Gertrude marveling."A...
About the above quote, wasn't it Michelangelo who worked on the premise that the sculpture was already enclosed in the stone, and that the artist's job is to free it?"
You know, I think that is true.
Madeleine wrote: "Now it makes more sense to me to see the monastery itself as a character, because the monastery setting puts the nuns into their respective roles and as each progresses in spiritual development, their commitment to their vows and their living out their individual vocations, and their ability to relate to one another and to conform to the will of God that will reveal the value that they bring to the life of the monastery.."There is one element of the monastery that I did not mention, and that is its mobility, which is the opposite of the impression most take away from the novel. We perceive it as fixed. But if you check the sections where the narrative fills in the history of the monastery, you will see it was first planted in a different part of England but when the Reformation came to England it was relocated to France. In time when the reign of terror from the French Revolution developed in France, the monastery was moved back to England to its current location. Notice too that the spreading out with a sister monastery to Japan follows a similar pattern of mobility. And if I remember correctly the monastery that Dame Maura is sent to in Canada was also a sister monastery. So while we think of the monastery as fixed, it may not be as fixed as we think. Perhaps this is meant to be part of the theme.
Mariangel wrote: "I keep wondering, though, if the providential finding of the jewel was not actually based in some event in the history of the real Stanbrook Abbey, that Godden heard from the nuns themselves. I have been looking up information about the abbey, but did not find much.In the life of many saints, the providential appearance of much needed financial resources abounds. It may not be best as a literary device, but it is truer to the life of these saints."
It could be Mariangel (love your name!) but it strikes me as a horrid plot device for a novel. I keep thinking there must be something more to it but I can't come up with it.
Manny wrote: "it strikes me as a horrid plot device for a novel."The discovery of the stone feels like a 'deus ex machina'. Hurra!, now we're out of our fix. It's a little over the top. I agree with you, there could have been other ways of providing the monastery with the needed influx of cash.
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The discovery of the stone feels like a 'deus ex machina'. Hurra!, now we're out of our fix..."
This discussion about a "Deus Ex machina" took place several weeks ago here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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The discovery of the stone feels like a 'deus ex machina'. Hurra!, now we're out of our fix. It's a little over the top. I agree w..."
I will be contrary and say that I liked it. Yes, it feels like a "deus ex machina" but we are reading a book about Catholic nuns and our God is, well, providential. Let us not be like those faithless priests who are only able to accept a miracle in the bible when they have figured out a non-miraculous explanation for it. (If I hear someone prattle on about a miracle of sharing again I may scream.)
Manuel wrote: "This discussion about a "Deus Ex machina" took place several weeks ago."You're right. I had completely forgotten about that. Next time I'll check. You were heavily involved in this exchange, and I must admit I didn't follow it all the way.
John wrote: "Let us not be like those faithless priests who are only able to accept a miracle in the bible when they have figured out a non-miraculous explanation for it."Good point.
Manny wrote: "There is one element of the monastery that I did not mention, and that is its mobility, "Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that move to France, and had of course not thought to connect that with the move to Canada and Japan. Good point. I think that reinforces somewhat my thought of the monastery itself having an enveloping character development that influences each of the nuns.
Mariangel wrote: "In the life of many saints, the providential appearance of much needed financial resources abounds. It may not be best as a literary device, but it is truer to the life of these saints."In Madrid and other cities in Spain there is a foundation called Cottolengo, created by Father Alegre. It is a religious foundation to host people with non-curable diseases, many of them psychiatric, and who are poor. Their maintenance is entrusted to Divine Providence, without state aid of any kind. They only accept voluntary donations.
A lady friend of my family who volunteered to help the nuns told us about "miracles" that happened many times. At some point they lacked food to feed the sick, or had any other problem, began to pray and suddenly a farmer appeared with a truck full of vegetables that he brought as a donation, and similar things happened many times.
Therefore I agree with Mariangel, that Providential acts like the one mentioned in the book we are discussing are quite frequent, and shouldn't be consider un-literary.
My Loyola Classics edition includes a set of discussion questions and I have borrowed heavily from that set. If you are reading the same edition and would like to discuss one of the other questions I haven't chosen, please feel free to add it, or to send me a note and ask me to add it. As always, feel free to add your own discussion questions.