The Nun's Story by Kathryn C. Hulme

First published: 1956

Edition(s) used:The Nun’s Story, edited by Roger Sharrock. New York: Pocket Books, 1958

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Biography; Catholic fiction

Core issue(s): Attachment and detachment; clerical life; discipline; humility; monasticism; obedience and disobedience

Principal characters

• Gabrielle Van der Mal, later Sister Luke, a nursing sister of the Order of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary
• Dr. Van der Mal, Gabrielle’s father
• Dr. Fortunati, a surgeon at the mission hospital in the Congo
• Sister William, a nursing nun who inspires Sister Luke to join the order
• The Reverend Mother Emmanuel, head of the order

Overview

The mention of the word “nun” evokes in many people’s minds an image of a black-clad figure, walking silently, eyes cast down. That a woman would choose to be cloistered in communion only with God and unaware of and unknown to her fellow human beings is a fascinating concept. Published originally in 1956, The Nun’s Story is based on the life of a real woman, a trained nurse, Marie Louis Habets, with whom Kathryn Hulme worked in the years following World War II, when both women were aid workers for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). The two women were trained together and became friends and roommates at Wildflecken, a camp from which more than twenty thousand displaced persons would be repatriated to their homelands, primarily Poland.

The Nun’s Story opens in the 1920’s in Belgium, where Gabrielle Van der Mal, the daughter of a noted surgeon, enters the convent of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. As a nursing student, Gabrielle first feels a calling to the religious life after she accompanies a group of sick pilgrims to Lourdes. Gabrielle is impressed with the care and gentleness of the nuns who work with the patients. Moreover, the piety of the pilgrims is evident, even when they are not cured of their physical illnesses. When the group returns home, Gabrielle begins to feel developing within her a vocation to the religious life.

Nuns vow to live a life of poverty (lacking personal possessions), chastity (keeping oneself sexually pure), and obedience (submitting oneself to the authority of one’s superiors). The education of a novice nun is designed to create a sense of unity and camaraderie with the other members of the order. Like military recruits, nuns learn that the unit is more important than the individual, and each individual is trained to act without a moment’s hesitation on an order given by a superior.

During her first year and a half in the convent, Gabrielle has many obligations and must learn all the minutiae of a life lived in community—the pattern of life called “the Rule” by its adherents. She learns that what the order demands more than anything else is a detachment from earthly relationships and material possessions. “Detachment” means having no possessions; even the clothing one wears belongs to the community. It requires instant obedience to orders from one’s superiors and absolute adherence to the schedule established by the convent. Detachment also means withdrawal from parents and family and even the public admission of one’s personal failures. Despite the hardships of her first year, Gabrielle remains committed to her goal. After taking her first temporary vows, Gabrielle, now renamed Sister Luke, is sent to study at the School of Tropical Medicine with the goal of her becoming a nursing nun in the Belgian Congo. Because of her years of medical study and education, she proves to be an exceptional student and graduates fourth in a class of eighty students.

Now ready for medical service in the Congo, Sister Luke prepares to make the lifelong commitment to Christ by taking her final, permanent vows and becoming a newly professed nun. She thinks she is ready for the big step and plans to live a life of service to the Church in the missions. She is not assigned to the missions, however, but to a mental sanatorium run by the order. When Sister Luke arrives at the asylum, she discovers that the patients are not medicated into obedience but are treated with care and respect. Her experiences at the sanatorium are capped when one patient, under the illusion that she is the Archangel Gabriel, tries to strangle Sister Luke and stabs another one of the nuns to death. Through her horror and sorrow, Sister Luke begins to understand the thinking behind the Rule: It helps her to carry on and to keep herself under control even during such horrific experiences.

In the months that follow the tragedy, Sister Luke, through her discipline and devotion to duty, earns the respect of the Mother Superior and is finally permitted to serve in the missions in the Congo. She becomes a surgical assistant to Dr. Fortunati, a brilliant if somewhat disrespectful doctor. He comes to respect Sister Luke’s ability, but he sees better than she does how her natural instincts for patient care make her a less than perfect nun, and he bluntly tells her so. Her desire to help injured workmen at an accident scene forces the young nun to admit that the doctor is right; when she is harshly punished for leaving the hospital without permission from her superiors, she realizes that she will never be able to be the kind of nun the Rule calls her to be.

Eventually Sister Luke applies to be relieved of her vows and begins the lengthy process of emergence. Her last days as a nun are painful, partly because of the impersonal nature of her dismissal. Seventeen years of service are forgotten in the bitterness of her departure, even though she is filled with new purpose and new goals. The novel ends as Sister Luke, now once more Gabrielle, prepares to find members of the underground and, if possible, work for the freedom of her native Belgium from its German oppressors during World War II.

Christian Themes

One of the dominant themes in The Nun’s Story is the idea of submission of the self to a community. From the very beginning, Gabrielle learns that the one thing a nun must never do is to “singularize” herself—that is, to stand out from the group with which she associates herself. For example, the head of Gabrielle’s order, the Mother Superior, is a very important and educated person: She has served as a missionary in India, a teacher in Poland, and a supervisor of many nursing nuns across the whole of Europe. She has degrees in philosophy, the humanities, and medicine. Still, when the Mother Superior visits the convents under her supervision, she makes a point of knowing every sister by name and speaks patiently and gently to the youngest beginners in the order. She even chooses, when taking part in the mandatory sewing circles run by the convent, to repair the stockings of the lowest workers—the gardeners and laundry nuns. Her humility is considered the essence of submission—she neglects to remind others of her own significant position because she seeks to promote the idea of service.

Another dominant theme is the idea of attachment and detachment. The ideal nun, or “living rule,” is a woman who can observe even the intense suffering of one of her fellow sisters or supplicants without becoming emotionally connected. While idealized detachment is perceived by outsiders as emotional coldness, within the order detachment is promoted as a recognition of one’s rejection of worldly issues and emotions in favor of an all-consuming devotion to God and God’s works. Furthermore, detachment allows each sister to perform her work effectively, without being distracted by what suffering of others.

Ultimately, however, The Nun’s Story is about being true to oneself—and the idea of calling, or God’s plan for one’s life: Gabrielle learns through her experiences as a nun that her personality is unsuited to that calling, and she finally finds herself more suited for work in the resistance against Nazi aggression.

Sources for Further Study

Hulme, Kathryn C. Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure. Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown, 1966. Hulme’s autobiography, with a much-expanded description of her life with Marie-Louis Habets as well as her earlier life, including her years in Paris.

Hulme, Kathryn C. The Wild Place. New York: Little, Brown, 1953. An account of Hulme’s years at Wildflecken working for the UNRRA. Winner of the Atlantic Monthly Nonfiction Award.

Patterson, William Patrick. Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff’s Special Left Bank Woman’s Group. Princeton, N.J.: Arete, 1998. A memoir of Hulme’s years in Paris as a pupil and later a disciple of G. I. Gurdjieff, philosopher and mystic. Tells of her becoming a member of the the Rope, a group of women dedicated to spiritual development.

Schleich, Kathryn. Hollywood and Catholic Women: Virgins, Whores, Mothers, and Other Images. New York: iUniverse, 2003. The author discusses the attitude of the Church throughout history and how Hollywood has adopted its point of view in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), A Nun’s Story (1959), Agnes of God (1985), and even the comedy Sister Act (1992).