In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

First published: 1969

Edition(s) used:In This House of Brede. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2005

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Catholic fiction

Core issue(s): Attachment and detachment; Catholics and Catholicism; conversion; monasticism; pilgrimage; women

Principal characters

• Philippa Talbot, a businesswoman, later Dame Philippa
• Dame Hester Cunningham Proctor, abbess of Brede, a Benedictine monastery
• Dame Catherine Ismay, nun of Brede, later abbess
• Penny Stevens, typist in Philippa Talbot’s office
• Daniel McTurk, colleague of Philippa Talbot

Overview

Rumer Godden, already a widely published novelist, wrote In This House of Brede while on her own spiritual journey to the Roman Catholic Church. She worked on the novel while living for three years in the gate (guesthouse) of an English Benedictine abbey. Several of her novels had been made into films, and so her conversion was newsworthy. Godden converted to Roman Catholicism in 1968. “I like the way everything is clear and concise,” she remarked apropos her turn to Catholicism. “You”ll always be forgiven but you must know the rules.” Rumer Godden was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

In This House of Brede traces the journey of Philippa Talbot, an influential London businesswoman, who astonishes her friends and colleagues when she resigns her job and enters a Benedictine women’s monastery. Philippa is not only a recent convert to Catholicism but also a widow and the mother of a deceased child, for which she carries a great burden of emotional loss. Although she is in line in her secular professional life for further promotion, she has come to realize that her success and influence are not bringing her happiness. “I thought I was very well as I was,” she tells one of the nuns. “Only suddenly it wasn’t enough—not nearly enough.”

Her conversion story, beginning with entering into a church by an almost blind accident, leads her to risk everything she has—wealth, power, a devoted lover—for the more dangerous business of giving her life to God. For Philippa, who entered the order at age forty-two, learning to accept monastic disciplines requires a radical rerouting of her former life of power, control, and ambition, and her difficult acceptance of what one of her sister novices calls “understanding what we are in for.” The youthful sister novices both amuse and humble Philippa, as she sees their unabashed joy and determination in their vocations, and her own confused passage to find her way into the life she feels called to.

The death of Abbess Hester Cunningham Proctor, who admitted her to the order, and the economic and philosophical complications that arise afterward in the monastery, force Philippa to confront her own assumptions about her place between the cloister and the world. Her secular skills prove to be a saving grace for the sisters, as she helps them through the difficulties Abbess Hester’s enthusiasm brought to them, though it proves a further burden for Philippa to carry on her journey.

Philippa finds herself working closely with the new abbess, Catherine Ismay, who is undergoing her own personal struggle to grow into her election as abbess, and the two women form an initially uneasy bond, and later mutually supporting friendship. It is the Benedictine cycle of prayer and work that grounds the women over and over again. Prayer draws Philippa back into the life of her former typist, Penny, and draws all the nuns into facing another, more complicated question. “Prayer must be based on common sense,” says one sister, but, “Not necessarily so,” replies another. “It often seems against sense.”

Philippa finds the constancy of the Benedictine life both exhilarating and exhausting, and she begins to achieve a deeper peace in her life, and, not inconsequentially, ceases to crave just one more cigarette. Change is inevitable, however, and the sisters obtain a television set for the first time to watch the proceedings at the Second Vatican Council called by John XXIII. The younger sisters are thrilled by the prospect of vernacular liturgy, wearing simpler clothing, and breaking down the barriers between the cloister and the world, while the senior sisters recall how their founders fought to wear the habit and establish exactly those barriers. When Philippa is called upon to follow her vocation to be part of her monastery’s expansion to a new home in Japan, she must find the meaning of vocation and obedience all over again.

Christian Themes

In This House of Brede explores the dimensions of Christian understanding of obedience and vocation, when a period of profound reordering of monastic life and Christian practice was beginning to take place. When Philippa Talbot enters Brede as a postulant, she enters a house still strictly based on the ancient Benedictine Rule of Life, which requires stability in the monastic house and the conversion of manners, including poverty, chastity, and obedience. The nuns’ lives are centered on the Divine Office of Prayer and on the Lectio Divina, the reading of sacred works. Their way of life is meant to be an encapsulation and intensification of the life of worship and obedience expected of all Christians. As Benedictines, they are also expected to engage in physical labor, support themselves, and thereby share in the life of the poor.

In spite of their enclosure, they are constantly involved in the life of the world through their ministry of intercessory prayer. A decade after Philippa’s entry, the nuns of Brede allow a television into their enclosure for the first time. Their intensive cycle of prayer and work continues unabated, however. The novel illustrates the traditions of monastic life, the ministry of intercessory prayer, and unceasing worship in its strength and resilience, even as questions arise and are debated about the forms and constructions of faith. In the end, the novel affirms a certain traditionalism, as the sisters prepare for a new monastic establishment in Japan. This new location will both extend their adherence to tradition and challenge it, even as they seek to make their faith relevant anew in a radically different culture.

Sources for Further Study

Chisholm, Anne. Rumer Godden: A Storyteller’s Life. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1998. Authorized biography of Rumer Godden, who was born in the United Kingdom in 1907, was reared in India, twice married, and published twenty-four novels and several works of nonfiction and poetry.

Godden, Rumer. A House with Four Rooms. New York: Morrow, 1989. Godden’s autobiography from the late 1940’s through the 1970’s, including her work with filmmaker Jean Renoir, her return to England, the flowering of her career, and her move to Scotland in the 1970’s. Covers the period when she wrote In This House of Brede.

Rosenthal, Lynne M. Rumer Godden Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996. Part of Twayne author series, this is a good introduction to Godden that addresses her Catholicism and individual works.

Tickle, Phyllis. Introduction to In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. Chicago: Loyola, 2005. An astute and helpful introduction to the work.