Veiled Desires , livre ebook

351

pages

English

Ebooks

2013

Écrit par
Maureen Sabine

Publié par
Fordham University Press

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351

pages

English

Ebooks

2013

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Fordham University Press

Date de parution

22 août 2013

EAN13

9780823252121

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

Ingrid Bergman’s engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary’s made the film nun a star and her character a shining standard of comparison. She represented the religious life as the happy and rewarding choice of a modern woman who had a “complete understanding” of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this vibrant and mature nun figure come to be viewed as girlish and naïve? Why have she and her cinematic sisters in postwar popular film so often been stereotyped or selectively analyzed, so seldom been seen as women and religious?
In Veiled Desires—a unique full-length, in-depth look at nuns in film—Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Sea Wife (1957), The Nun’s Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), Change of Habit (1969), In This House of Brede (1975), Agnes of God (1985), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008).
Veiled Desires considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn to Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, call attention to desires that the veil concealed and the habit was thought to stifle. In a theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, Sabine responds to the critics who have pigeonholed the film nun as the obedient daughter and religious handmaiden of a patriarchal church, and the respectful audience who revered her as an icon of spiritual perfection. Sabine provides a framework for a more complex and holistic picture of nuns onscreen by showing how the films dramatize these women’s Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.

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Publié par

Fordham University Press

Date de parution

22 août 2013

EAN13

9780823252121

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

History of film Catholic Church

V E I L E D D E S I R E S

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M A U R E E N S A B I N E

Veiled Desires

I N T I M AT E P O R T R AYA L S O F N U N S I N P O S T W A R A N G L O - A M E R I C A N F I L M

F O R D H A M U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S New York /

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sabine, Maureen. Veiled desires : intimate portrayals of nuns in postwar Anglo-American ﬁlm / Maureen Sabine. — First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBNalk. paper) — (cloth : ISBN (pbk. : alk. paper) . Nuns in motion pictures.pictures—Great Britain—History.. Motion . Motion pictures—United States—History. I. Title. PN..NS  .—dc 

Printed in the United States of America         First edition

To Martin, for his staunch love, constancy, and faith, and to Chris, Peter, and Tony, who make our circle complete.

“Thy ﬁrmnes makes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begunne.” John Donne, “A Valediction forbidding mourning”

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

C O N T E N T S

. Selﬂess Desires: Sacriﬁcial and Self-Fulﬁlling Service to Others inCasablanca(),Mary’sThe Bells of St. (), andThe Inn of the Sixth Happiness()

and Sublimation in. Sexual Desires: Repression Black Narcissus (),Mr. AllisonHeaven Knows, (), andSea Wife()

Desires: The . Subjective Role of the Catholic Family Romance inThe Nun’s Story()

Stirring VoicesDesires: Sweet, Spirited, and . Sonorous inThe Sound of Music() andChange of Habit()

. Sacred Desires: Passion and Pathology inIn This House of Brede() andAgnes of God()

. Spiritual Desires: Sin, Suffering, Death, and Salvation inWalkingDead Man ()

Conclusion: Suspect Desires: The End of a Religious Illusion inDoubt()?

Works Cited

Index

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



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



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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Iam grateful to the History Department at the University of Hong Kong, which gave me a home away from home where I could work on this book in an intellectual environment of serious engage-ment with religious history and culture, and in particular, to colleagues Frank Dikotter, Staci Ford, and Bert Becker who supported me so gen-erously with advice and many interesting conversations during the long writing process. The Hong Kong Research Grants Council awarded me the GRF grant, which enabled me to research and devote consider-able time to this project. I also wish to thank Daniel Chua, Head of the School of Humanities, for his understanding and encouragement during this period. Behind these individuals are a “company of many,” and the memory of their love, friendship, collegiality, and goodness has sustained me over the course of my life. They include my siblings, Rob, Cathy, Tom, and John Fath; my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Peggy and Roger Sabine; friends made at university, the late Mary Daly and Eileen Warburton; friends made over the course of my academic career, Emma Letley, Maria Yuen, Lena Lau, Rodney Davey, Maryanne Dever, Peter Hutchings, and Greg Lee; friends made in service to Hong Kong educa-tion, Kin-Yue Fu, Alice Tai Footman, and Ti Dennig; life-long friends Howard and Christabel Flight, Andrew and Deborah Cullen, John and Bron Walter, Alex and Vicki Harris, and Colin and Peggy Cohen; and the students in English, Comparative Literature, and History who have made teaching so rewarding for me. Thank you all.

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