As someone raised without a religion, a nunnery always seemed a terrifying place to me. A world full of rules and religion and no men at all? Not for me. But I’ve been watching the BBC show Call the Midwife which takes place in a convent-like house, full of nuns. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad. This convent is hardly sequestered from the world. Its women are intensely capable and deeply involved in their communities. They have extraordinary authority and command respect that no other women seem to manage. On the show, we see a wide variety of women – unlike the rest of TV on which we usually just see 1 or 2 conventionally attractive women engaged in romance. To see a whole world full of working women of all sorts is a revelation, really.
So I start to think going to a nunnery might not be so bad.
Also, there was a period in history in which convents could sometime double as brothels so the range of experience could be pretty wide.
You end up in a convent with porous boundaries and a vibrant population and suddenly being a nun doesn’t seem quite so bad.
The Hamlet Project 