..
..
In
1962,
at the age of 17, Karen Armstrong
entered a very rigid, austere, anti-intellectual convent in Sussex,
England.
...
At
age 60, the amazingly prolific Armstrong returns to her convent
experience
in "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness," the third review
of
the trauma of her early life.
As
she says, "We should probably all pause to confront our past from time
to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter."
All
three of Armstrong's autobiographical books focus on her seven-year
"formation."
In religious societies, the term "formation" means the very systematic
process of turning ordinary secular people into members of the
religious
society -- some of us would call it brainwashing.
The
humanizing reforms of Vatican II had not yet reached her order, and the
work of formation, in Armstrong's case, was extraordinarily rigorous.
Her
convent superiors controlled her thoughts, emotions and even movement
of
her body; this formation went on every minute, every hour, every week,
every month, every year.
As
Armstrong repeats frequently in all three books, "formation was meant
to
last for a lifetime and did."
|
It
was during those years that she was made to practice sewing daily on a
machine with no thread and scrub stairs with a nailbrush, exercises
designed
to break her down and destroy her individuality and intellectual
coherence.
The
three books chronicle her attempts to free herself, to repair the
damage
that has been done to her. Her successes in repairing herself come only
after great, sustained effort and much pain. ///
Armstrong
accepts that she cannot change. She accepts the damage that the nuns
caused,
that she allowed them to cause.
She
insists, oddly, that she alone is responsible. She knows that building
a new identity will "be a lifelong task, requiring alert attention to
the
smallest detail, dedication, and unremitting effort."
Her
life will be a constant struggle, always resisting the convent
formation.
She will never be "like anyone else."
This
acute sense of always being an outsider pervades the book.
In
the last third of "The Spiral Staircase," Armstrong continues the story
of her recovery, her "climb out of darkness."
In
1982, while auditioning for a documentary television series, she finds
herself freed from the convent diatribes against intellectual pride;
she
is again able, and with pleasure, to talk about her own ideas.
from
review by Nancy Klein Maguire, LA Times, 4/18/04
 ...The
Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness -
by
Karen Armstrong
|
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