In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, Post 2

This is my second post on Rumer Godden’s InThis House of Brede.  You can read my first here.  

The first post provided a chapter by chapter summary of the novel.  This second is more of a literary analysis of the novel, albeit a cursory one.

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 (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.

There was a British TV movie based on the novel.  It took great license with the plot but I think it captured the spirit of the novel.  Here is a sort of extended trailer.