Her next statement confirmed this. “My poor mother was a slave to such possessions. For all her finery and ‘Your Ladyship’ she was more of a servant than her own servants. I doubt she knew a day of real freedom in her whole life. Poor woman. I loved her, and pitied her, but we never understood each other.”
Some things never change, I thought, remembering the mutual incomprehension which was about the only thing my mother and I ever shared.
“My father ruled her life. Every move. Do you know, my dear, he had all her hair cut off and her teeth pulled out when she was less than thirty-five?”
I gasped: “How? Why?”
“She was never strong, always ailing. I don’t know what was wrong with her, except perhaps that her corsets were too tight.” Corsets. The accepted instrument of torture for women
“I remember it quite well. I was only a little girl but I remember my mother lying in bed with doctors present. One of them told my father that all her strength was going to her hair and her teeth and that they would have to go. She was never consulted in the matter, she told me many years later. Her head was shaved and all her teeth extracted. I was in the nursery and heard her screaming. It was barbaric, my dear, and ignorant. I was frightened when I saw her later: her face swollen; blood all over her pillow and sheets; a bald head. She was crying, poor woman. I was about twelve years old and something happened to me in that moment. Something revolted inside me and I knew that women suffered through man’s ignorance. As I stood by her bed, I changed from a carefree little girl into a thinking woman. I vowed I would not follow the pattern of my mother, my aunts and their friends. I would not become a wife whose husband could order that her teeth be pulled out, or who could be locked up like poor Aunt Anne. I would not spend my life counting fish forks. I would not be dominated by any man.”
Sister Monica Joan’s face assumed an expression of haughty defiance. The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan’s fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.
I said, “Several times you have mentioned that your Aunt Anne was locked up. Why was this?”
“Oh my dear, it was iniquitous. Aunt Anne, my mother’s sister, was put into a lunatic asylum because her husband was fed up with her!”
“What! You are joking,” I retorted
“Don’t you accuse me of joking, you saucy girl. If you are going to be rude to me you can leave the room.” She turned her head and arched her eyebrows, slightly dilating her nostrils, the epitome of offended dignity, although I had a feeling she was putting it on for effect.
“Oh, come off it, Sister. You know that was just an expression. What happened to Aunt Anne? – that’s what’s important.”
She turned to me and giggled like a child caught doing something naughty. But her expression quickly changed.
“Aunt Anne, dear Aunt Anne. She was my favourite aunt. Always pretty, always sweet and gentle with a soft laugh. When she visited the house she always came up to the nursery to spend time with us, to tell stories and play games with us. We all loved her. Then suddenly she came no more. No more.”
Sister Monica Joan sat as still as a statue, gazing out of the window. The sun was shining and she moaned, “It’s too bright, it hurts my eyes. Draw the curtain across, will you, child?”
I did so and when I returned she had her handkerchief to her eyes. “We never saw her again. When we asked our mother she just said, ‘Hush, dears, we don’t talk about Aunt Anne.’ We kept thinking she would come back with her games and her stories; but she never did.”
She sighed deeply and balanced her chin on her long fingers, lost in thought. “Poor woman, poor dear woman. She was defenceless.”
“Did you ever find out what had happened?” I enquired.
“Yes, years later I found out. Her husband tired of her and wanted another woman. So he quite simply spread the story around that she was weak in the head and going mad. Perhaps he ill-treated her; perhaps his repeated insinuations really did unbalance her mind, so that she began to doubt her own sanity. We don’t know, but it is not difficult to drive someone mad. Eventually her husband persuaded two doctors to certify that she was incurably insane. It would not have been difficult in those days. Perhaps the two doctors were cronies of his. Perhaps they were paid to certify. I do not suppose she was ever examined properly by an independent and impartial psychiatrist, as she would be today. It would have been very easy for him to choose his own doctors and the certificate was irreversible. Aunt Anne was taken away, taken from her children, who from then on were motherless. She was locked up in an asylum, where she remained for the rest of her life. She died in 1907.”
“That is one of the most shocking stories I have ever heard,” I said.
“It was not uncommon. It was a very clever way for a rich man to get rid of an unwanted wife. He had to pay for the asylum, of course, but that would not trouble a rich man. After a period of years, I don’t know how many, he could get a divorce with no scandal. Easy!”
“And did the woman have no one to speak for her?”
“Oh yes, her father or a brother could, and probably would. It was not always plain sailing for an unscrupulous husband. But my grandfather, Anne’s father, was dead, and there were no brothers, only four daughters in the family. So poor Anne had no one to protect her.”
“Could her mother or sisters not speak for her?”
“Women had no voice in any matter. It had been the same for centuries. That is what we fought for.” Her eyes flashed and she banged the desk. “Independence for women. Freedom from male dominance.”
“Were you a suffragette?” I asked.
“Bah! Suffragettes. I’ve no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!” With a dramatic gesture she swept her arm across the desk, scattering pencils, papers and notebooks to the floor. “But I broke the mould in my family when I announced that I was going to be a nurse. Oh, you should have heard the rumpus. It would have been funny if it had not been so deadly serious. My father locked me in my room and threatened to keep me there indefinitely. Then he tried to insinuate that I was mad and should be confined to an asylum like poor Aunt Anne. But times were changing. Women were beginning to break the chains of their bondage. Florence Nightingale led the way and many others followed. I wrote to Miss Nightingale from my prison in my father’s house. She was quite an old lady by then, but she was very powerful. She spoke to Queen Victoria on my behalf. I don’t know what they said, but the result was that I was released from captivity. My poor docile mother never really recovered from the shock of having a rebel daughter. Nonetheless, I was thirty-two before I could break away from my father’s domination and start nursing. That was when my life began.”
The chapel bell rang for Vespers.
Sister Monica Joan took up her black veil and adjusted it over her white wimple. She turned to me with a naughty wink. “If my father had seen me as a nun, he would have had a stroke. But mercifully he was spared, because he died the same year that the old Queen died. Hand me my prayer book, child.”
It was on the floor, along with the other items that had been pushed from her desk. I retrieved everything that was scattered around, placed them all on the desk and handed her the prayer book.
“Now for it,” she said, her head held high, her eyebrows arched in a slightly supercilious curve. A mischievous grin crinkled the corners of her mouth and eyes. “Now for it,” she said again as she swept out of the room.
There was nothing cringing or pathetic about Sister Monica Joan. She was going to battle it out to the end. If she couldn’t face her Sisters in chapel, she would sit with her back to them, and if they didn’t like it, they could lump it.