2.7.2
Hoo boy! This chapter is a lot.
Hugo starts with a premise that monasticism is bad. And while I do agree with him that complete seclusion from the world cannot be good for anyone, Hugo says that monasticism was good in the tenth century, but overtime, the institution itself has become lax and therefore unable to provide much to society.
So far that makes sense, but I do not like the idea of women in convents being describes as unable to think, not having any desires, turned to stone, their breaths to death. Hugo’s ideal of a woman is motherhood and these women don’t fit that ideal by choosing to remain nuns and therefore their existence is not favourable, which is even more annoying considering that just a few chapters ago, he was describing some of the nuns as people who were making jokes and having a laugh.
I also dislike the comparisons and exoticization of the vague East, which I guess his intentions were to show that what is wrong in France is also wrong elsewhere, but I find the comparisons hilarious because he’s using the wrong comparisons here and also this whole thing is super gross, but I guess this is the 19th century, so understandable.
Hugo compares the Spanish convent with the horrifying details that he sketches, having the touch of the orient and therefore the Spanish Convent is like that because it is exotic and inspired by the East. He’s also implying that such practices are fine if they are in the ‘East’ but they cannot do for the Western civilisation, which from the whole thing I’m guessing is superior and so no savage customs have a place in France/Western Civilisation (Thank you for all the gross generalisations, Hugo).
He further exoticizes the whole thing by comparing monasticism to harems and eunuchs and says that for the sultana, her sultan is Jesus Christ, which while being wrong, really goes against what he was trying to do in the previous chapter, which is to say that all religions have aspects of the Man communicating with the infinite and therefore deserves respect. The comparisons to the harem also do not add anything, because harems were not religious and also mostly a Turkish Ottoman Empire thing. He also expresses horror of the ‘East’ in the next chapter and of 19th Century France resembling the antiquated savage East if it follows old traditions- this is not super gross at all.
He likens monasticism and its defenders to propaganda which confounds the facts, and the facts according to Hugo are that monasticism is like being confined to the dungeons and buried alive. While I still agree about monasticism being a thing of the past and not being of much use, I am really put off by this entire chapter and by Hugo’s 19th Centuryness.
2.7.3
We have more instances of how monasticism is bad because it causes depopulation and cuts of life and for Hugo, castration is something really awful and hard to imagine, which seems a bit too much, but okay, Hugo.
He also repeats grim pictures that he sketched previously, which were pretty horrific and maybe exaggerated to drive the point home of how awful convents are. I imagine that convents might not always be horrific, especially if someone prefers living a solitary life and wants to dedicate themselves to God and they could be centres of religious knowledge.
However, Hugo did go on to describe the Catholic priests in the Myriel chapters as taking money and becoming complacent, so I can see that convents under the Catholic Church in the 19th Century might be seen as backwards and not serving any useful purpose, except keeping women cut off from society and progress.
Hugo is insistent on fighting the convents as an institution. Since the century of Great Men is past, the century of convents is over too. I do get the idea of not keeping traditions simply because they are traditions supported by the Catholic Church, especially if the convent as a tradition has become superstitious and nuns have to torture themselves and need to cut off communication from their families completely.
Just because things have been done this way for a long time, does not mean that they continue, they need to be examined closely to see whether there is some benefit in keeping these traditions from the past, and I do agree with this.
