Review of The Nun by Denis Diderot

A brutal and brilliant satire, but atypical for its time. 

Diderot was jailed for his polemic writings. Rightfully indignant toward religious men of power of the time. His most famous works were published posthumously – the only ones still in print – regarded as classics. He fits snuggly next to Rousseau on the bookshelf, although his storytelling seems more organized than his contemporary.

Told in the first person perspective of a young girl consigned to a nunnery because her parents are ashamed of her – not through anything she did but because of their own transgressions. It was possible in those days to lock people up for such reasons. The wealth of detail provided casts the cloister in the light of a veritable prison, a hellscape of petty vice in virtue’s clothing. The cliquey women inside this demented place spurn and eventually torture her both psychologically and physically, simply because she was placed there against her will. It is like a high school anime with all the bullying except these are mostly grown adults doing the bullying because they have nothing better to do with their time.

One comes to appreciate the variety of life and freedoms most of us enjoy in this day and age. Aside from the plumbing and computerized entertainment, we don’t have to mix ashes with our food to take away the sin of flavor. Trying to get out of this situation without getting herself killed through deprivation takes up a good deal of the runtime, but when she is moved to a second convent the fun really begins. The reader is left to ponder the depth of this girl’s innocence, and whether she is a reliable narrator. Is innocence truly a form of ignorance, which must be shuffled off in order to survive? Perhaps she needed a few good knocks, but maybe not so many as she received. Is there any use in whining when the rest of the world abstains from it? Diderot seems to believe that this closed system of worship is wrong, and the phony letters inserted into the end seem to justify his point of view through a systematic questioning of the protagonist’s circumstances. These epistolary missives are sapped of emotion and appended as a “Preface” to the edition, but the meat of the 170-page novel is the protagonist’s struggle. The second half was the more compelling as, having known the depths of cruelty, she discovers the depths of love and madness within the confines of an undignified existence.

One wonders how the conception of religious living has changed while the idea and execution of moral behavior may be more tenuous or open to interpretation.

It’s so much scarier than the twenty five nun-obsessed horror movies that have come out this year.