Beyond compliance and resistance: Polish Catholic nuns negotiating femininity

Introduction

Since the increase in the global reporting of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in recent years, public and academic attention has been caught up in the problem of paedophilia in the priestly ranks (Donnelly and Inglis, 2010; White and Terry, 2008). As a result both celibacy and consecrated masculinity have come under scrutiny from academic authors (Loseke, 2003; Scheper-Hughes and Devine, 2003; Shepard, 2003). However, though it is central to the perception of the gendered self and religious experience of women, consecrated femininity has not received a lot of attention in the past few decades. This is partly a result of the organizational decline of female religious orders in the West and the subsequent blurring of the boundaries between secular and consecrated lifestyles (Ebaugh, 1993; Stark and Finke, 2000; Wittberg, 1994). However, in countries where Catholicism remains the dominant religion, female identity in the context of religious institutions continues to be a socially pertinent subject. Although in Poland the number of convent entrants is beginning to decrease, considerable numbers of young women continue to vow life-long chastity to devote themselves to God and helping others (Podgórska, 2011; Wojtas, 2009). At the same time, despite the relatively strong position of Catholicism and its professional representatives, a woman’s decision to become a nun remains a controversial one. Catholic journalists have often highlighted the persistence of negative stereotypes of prospective nuns in Poland (Jabłońska and Nosowski, 2004; Merdas, 2004). Commentators have particularly emphasized the lay belief that women entering Catholic convents need to become genderless in order to succeed as nuns (Merdas, 2004). Thus, it is implied that by donning the habit ‘a nun ceases to be a woman’ (Makowski, 2007: 188).

This article portrays how Catholic nuns manage their femininity in the convent and how they contribute to the plurality of experiences of gender outlined by various feminist scholars (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003; Ramazanoglu, 1989). On the theoretical level, my research findings constitute an empirical illustration of Lois McNay’s generative paradigm of gender identity formation as a response to the persistent agency and structure duality and the compliance/resistance model of identity management. The aim then is not to suggest a redemptive narrative of convent femininity but rather to signal the complexity and situatedness of gender identity more generally. Through their accounts of chaste femininity, my research participants demonstrate that female agency does not necessarily emerge out of resistance to and subversion of the male-dominated Polish Catholic Church. Rather, they exemplify a case of generative agency which transcends the compliance/resistance model. I begin with a brief description of the research project and the theoretical framework. I then sketch out the various sociocultural elements that shape the dominant model of femininity in Poland. My research participants’ accounts are presented to depict the shaping and negotiation of femininity in a religious setting. The subsequent discussion brings the theory and data together.

Methodology

This article is based on data from a larger research project on the ways in which Polish Catholic nuns manage their gender identity under circumstances commonly perceived as restrictive. The fieldwork involved spending six weeks in five Polish convents in 2004. These religious orders were located in five different parts of Poland, which benefited the research enormously as the levels of religiosity vary between geographical regions. For instance, one order inhabited the southern city of Częstochowa, famous for its Marian sanctuary and pious population, whereas another lived in Łódź, an industrial city in central Poland where anti-religious sentiments are common. This intra-cultural diversity enriched the data and allowed for a more informed analysis. I conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with nuns of different ages and community statuses, from teenage postulants to professed elderly sisters. ¹ The youngest participant was 18 and the oldest 81. The interview topics included the sisters’ joining narratives, vocation, religious vows, gender identity and feminism. This article draws solely on the material dealing with femininity and chastity. The names are pseudonyms and religious communities too remain anonymous. The interviews were conducted in Polish, transcribed and translated into English. All the religious communities were apostolic as opposed to contemplative. The former carry out practical work, often of a charitable nature, and sisters earn a salary as nurses, teachers, or social workers. The latter rarely leave the convent grounds and concentrate on prayer as their primary mission in the world.

This article is, in many ways, an answer to Mary Jo Neitz’s ‘call for stories’ (2004). Neitz follows Nancy Ammerman in advocating research which begins with embodied individuals and their narratives, with marginalized rather than dominant groups, and finally with lived religion and practices rather than simply institutions and dogmas. Like Neitz, I refrain from treating my informants’ narratives as authentic and somehow redemptive female voices. Rather, I see them as both arising from and constitutive of power relations in a particular time and space. Thus, listening to and analysing their stories need to be accompanied by ‘situating them in the multiple relational and institutional contexts in which contemporary people live their lives’ (Ammerman, 2003: 224).

Theoretical framework

The approach to subjectivity proposed by Lois McNay (1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2002, 2003) serves as the chief theoretical framework in this article. Her account departs both from the post-structuralist theories of identity as disconnected and fragmented, and from the Foucauldian subject as the effect of discourse. Instead, she offers a temporalized view of agency in which identity is characterized by a dynamic coherence where closure – a complete sense of self-sufficient self – is never fully achieved. Thus, identity narrative incorporates elements of others’ narratives, which makes it intersubjective and relational. McNay sees the concept of narrative identity as central to the task of going beyond the negative account of agency and supplementing it with a generative paradigm of identity formation (2000). Her generative theory of gender and agency draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1977), and in particular on his idea of a ‘phenomenology of social space’ (McNay, 2004: 180). According to McNay, this approach can be used to study gender as a lived experience, rather than as a ‘location within discursive structures’, as proposed by Judith Butler (McNay, 2004: 180). McNay also builds on Paul Ricoeur’s (1992) idea of narrative as a privileged, yet not a sole tool for making sense of one’s experience. Identity then is neither assured and stable, nor entirely fragile and decentred. A coherent sense of self is crucial to the process of (gender) identity formation through self-narration but equally gaps and ruptures are necessary for the emergence of creativity (McNay, 2003: 9). Identity narratives are never derived from inside individuals and they are never self-contained or finite. The intersubjectivity of narrative means that female agents – Polish Catholic nuns in this case – are simply co-authors of their narratives. Moreover, the choices made in narrating one’s identity will be neither completely random nor determined, but partly dictated by the relations of power in which the actor is embedded. Power relations must be included into any serious discussion of narrative structures to avoid the risky assumption that narratives possess an ultimately redemptive and authentic status (McNay, 2003: 12). While for many feminist scholars of religion (Brasher, 1998; Davidman, 1991; Griffith, 1997) female narratives of religious experience constitute the ultimate tool for describing the processes of the self, McNay explicitly warns against treating women’s own voices as an exhaustive and syncretic tool for explaining the ‘mechanisms of selfhood’ (2002: 85). When narratives are thought to be rendered coherent through reflexivity only, then we risk retreating into the idealized vision of (religious) women’s experience as privileged, true and real, or simply ‘replicating a form of standpoint essentialism’ (McNay, 2003: 11). Linked to this is the point that ideologies and dominant discourses do not simply oppress and restrict but also serve as a resource for the construction of coherent narratives. In many cases, and Catholic nuns represent one of them, it is only through appealing to certain ideological images that we can convey the meaning of our experiences to others. If others cannot place our narrative in their universe of understanding, it has no social authority. As all action requires meaning through interpretation, it is impossible to determine exactly which narratives are ideological. Their meaning only emerges when we place them in a network of temporal and spatial relationships with other events. Thus, rather than being an expression of the ‘authentic’ female experience, narratives are ‘neither authentic, nor ideological but an unstable mixture of fact and fabulation’ (McNay, 2000: 94).

McNay’s model offers considerable potential for understanding gendered and religious identity, agency and intersubjectivity, and the diverse, non-synchronous ways in which these are played out in various social fields. Nonetheless, she supplies few real-life illustrations of this highly abstract argument. It is useful to see how (and if) abstract social theory relates to everyday social reality, which is why the remainder of this article focuses on the empirical case of Catholic convents – a field where femininity is enacted and agency claimed in a potentially restrictive and patriarchal setting. What follows is an analysis of how McNay’s narrative approach to gender identity can help us make sense of vowed Catholic women’s experiences of femininity.

Femininity in Poland

In order to appreciate fully the implications of the nuns’ negotiations of the dominant model of femininity, it is necessary to describe the prevailing discourses on women in Poland. This is not to say that there exists only one version of Polish femininity but rather to point to a hierarchy of femininities where some models receive a higher rating than others. In Poland, ‘emphasized femininity’ (Connell, 1987) appears to be rooted in an amalgamation of secular and religious components of national culture. ² Femininity has been historically mobilized as a symbol of Polish patriotism. Poland as a nation-state and the Catholic Church as a religious institution have been symbolically female. Both are characterized as nurturing mothers who despair over the plight of the Polish nation. The two are interwoven as the Catholic Church played an instrumental role in the formation of Polish nationalism (Jakubowska, 1990; Mizielińska; 2001). A belief that a woman can only fulfil herself through child-bearing in a heterosexual relationship still prevails in twenty-first-century Poland. In the words of a Polish feminist philosopher, Magdalena Środa, ‘if we say we do not want children nobody believes us, and if we say we cannot have them, we are pitied’ (2009: 98). Maternal instinct and self-fulfilment through caring for others are continuously reinforced as desirable and inevitable female characteristics by the Catholic Church (Środa, 2009: 68). Although the strongly heterosexual and pronatalist discourse is periodically challenged by feminist writers and journalists (Banot, 2011; Rossienik-Ciosmak, 2011), women remain defined by their romantic and complementary relationships with men (Adamiak, 1999). Women who defy this prescribed order of things may be subjected to informal social sanctions (Trzebiatowska, 2009). In particular, their refusal to become mothers may be read not only as a rebellion against the laws of nature and religion, but also as an unpatriotic act of selfishness. ‘Having a child means having a real, useful, purposeful and dignified femininity’ in Poland (Środa, 2009: 84). Although this traditional model has mutated over the past 20 years, the biological ability to reproduce continues to act as a desirable marker of womanhood (Mizielińska, 2001; Twardowska and Olczyk, 2000ń). In other words, single and/or childless Polish women are often expected to provide a valid explanation for their status. This unspoken obligation to perform maternal femininity means that Polish Catholic nuns face conflicting expectations from different segments of society.

Most importantly, the Polish version of emphasized femininity requires a visible social performance from women. Doing femininity is strongly anchored in embodied gender practices which must be made credible to wider society. These practices range from beauty regimes, through romantic liaisons with men, to childbirth and mothering. Catholic sisters cannot enact any of the above-mentioned in accordance with the lay script. Nuns’ definition and performance of femininity fail to resonate with the lay public mainly because of their metaphoric and abstract character. Therefore, according to the sisters I interviewed, lay people often read their voluntary choice to enter the convent as synonymous with their renunciation of womanhood (understood as sexual availability and child-bearing). Consequently, my research participants felt obliged to justify their decision to embrace an abstract and spiritual version of femininity. A 2004 edition of the Polish Catholic magazine Więź (Bond) provides a good illustration of the popular belief in the disjunction between Catholic sisters and femininity. The issue was devoted to convents and subtitled ‘Nun – Neuter Gender?’ Inside, a number of consecrated persons addressed the contested identity of chaste women, using their own and other sisters’ problematic encounters with lay public and priests as a starting point. One contributor recalled the typical reaction of priests to young girls’ enquiries about convent life: ‘what are you doing, stupid! Convent? You want to waste your life away?’ (Kołodziejczyk et al., 2004: 22).

Unsurprisingly, nuns’ chastity has always attracted curiosity and speculation from the lay public (Fessenden, 2000; McNamara, 1996: 569–571). It has been understood in relatively narrow terms: as a denial of one’s sexual identity, or simply as abstinence from sexual intercourse. During the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the attention of Catholic reformers focused predominantly on redefining the other two vows: obedience and poverty. Chastity was left relatively untouched, while remaining the one vow that set apart consecrated persons from laity (Wittberg, 1994: 249). However, as the structure and the rules of convent life became more malleable in the post-Vatican II years, attitudes to chastity also started to change. For example, prior to the 1960s the prescriptive model of a ‘good sister’ dictated avoidance of eye contact with men or denial of sexual feelings (Bernstein, 1976). Conversely, in the post-Vatican II years convent rulebooks encouraged nuns to become closer to lay people and rectify the negative stereotypes of religious communities as unworldly and restrictive. Nowadays it is mandatory to address the issues of sexuality and carnality in order to make nuns fully aware of their humanity and femininity as well as to look after their mental and spiritual health (Wittberg, 1994: 250). This shift occurred in Poland almost 30 years later than in the West. This was largely due to the political situation prior to 1989 when the main priority for all consecrated people was to maintain their religious identity in the face of the hostility from the communist state. This belated convent renewal in Poland manifested itself, among other things, in the promotion of a different attitude towards the formation process. Gradually, femininity became a fundamental element of consecrated life and sisters were prompted to express their sense of gender identity and to reflect on the meaning it held for them. For example, in the Polish convents I visited junior sisters were given an official reading list of texts on femininity chosen by their convent superiors. The list varied from community to community but all of the titles presented during my visit were authored by male clergy, with only two monographs by female Catholic journalists (Blaquiere, 1993; Croissant, 1998). How to Succeed in Femininity? A Manual was a monograph the sisters particularly favoured (Dziewiecki, 2004). The author champions modesty, sensitivity, integrity and nobility as the defining and desirable features of femininity. He depicts women as morally superior and emotionally stronger than men but also warns against the dangers inherent in women’s nature, such as naivety, helplessness and cynicism. The language in this and other publications on femininity remains euphemistic and clouded in theological terminology, which is why it is important to demonstrate how the recipients of these instructions interpret them. I now turn to the voices of Polish Catholic nuns to demonstrate the ambiguities and multiple expressions of consecrated femininity.

From denial to self-awareness

On the one hand, several research participants held strong views on the role of women in Polish society. Sister Monika (aged 26) told me:

I think a woman was created to be a mother and to be at home. She should sacrifice herself for her children and her family and if she does something else then she does not fulfil herself. I have read this book about femininity based on women’s own stories. They all discovered that they had to change themselves for their husbands to change. If [a woman] rejects [her role] then she loses her femininity and she stops being a woman. That’s the way it goes.

Similarly, Sister Aga (aged 21) believed that ‘women’s responsibility is to bring up children’, while Sister Asia (aged 25) bemoaned the fact that Polish women ‘have lost their dignity and they are selfish but helpless and vulnerable at the same time’. She further explained that Polish women were visibly confused as to their ‘proper role’ – they wished to emulate men in their lifestyle rather than rejoice in their God-given place as mothers and wives. Therefore, the nuns were committed to the model of femininity understood in a very clear-cut and traditional manner. On the other hand, however, they exempted themselves from this rigid template by using their consecrated status. Sister Miriam (aged 53) warned her young novices against conforming to lay stereotypes of a nun as a genderless being. According to her, nuns are ‘called refrigerators’ – meaning they turn off their sexual drive. She added that ‘it is true that sometimes a sister can’t deal with her femininity and she becomes bitter and frustrated’. In this instance, by femininity, Sister Miriam meant female sexuality, or as she put it: ‘the fire inside’. Like many others, she believed that every woman has an essential feminine nature, which should not be suppressed but rather worked on and managed. In this sense, chastity and femininity are mutually susceptible. Sister Agata (aged 28) saw herself as ‘both a woman and a nun because you cannot have one without the other’. Sister LBN (aged 36) simply cried out, ‘Lord, I feel like a woman! And it would be strange if I didn’t.’ Sister Sancja (aged 26) suggested that femininity could be accomplished in a number of ways, depending on a woman’s life values. She said:

Lay people think that if a woman doesn’t fulfil herself in marriage then she is not a woman. But femininity isn’t taken away by God once you become a nun! Femininity helps me fulfil myself as a nun.

As my research participants vow chastity and do not form intimate relationships with men, they felt that society denied them the status of ‘real women’. However, after they have joined the convent and acquired specific knowledge, the sisters themselves reject the lay definition of women and operate on the assumption that characteristics such as ‘femininity, sensitivity, fragility can be used in the convent and given to Christ’ (Sister Sancja, aged 26).

Sister Joanna (aged 45) was trained as a formation mistress: a senior nun in charge of educating young novices about convent life, including vows. In the interview she recalled that formation used to be ‘completely genderless and the chastity vow was presented as a sacrifice’. Consequently, the vow was explained in negative terms: as giving up a crucial part of human life for God. Post-Vatican II, the narrative changed from denial to positive reinterpretation. Interestingly, young postulants and novices often initially perceived chastity in pre-Vatican II terms – as an erasure of intimacy and sexuality – only to be corrected by senior nuns. For instance, Sister Maria (aged 19) recalled her conversation with the convent psychologist:

She pointed out that although I said sexuality did not interest me one bit, it was not true. She’s right. Everyone should address the topic, not switch it off. It’s an important part of a person’s life.

These Polish sisters were encouraged to acknowledge their sexuality per se but also personal crises related to chastity. These crises served as a constructive gateway to gendered self-awareness. For Sister Karolina (aged 37) difficult moments performed a useful function. She referred to the Vatican II document, Vita Consecrata, in support of her view:

It is clearly stated [in Vita Consecrata] that in the past crises were a negative thing and they were your fault. Now it’s just the opposite because crises are a form of experience and purification.

This constructive approach to identity crises and difficulties opens up the possibility of renegotiating the seemingly fixed notion of maternal femininity through the concept of spiritual motherhood.

Spiritual motherhood

Closely tied to the question of femininity and sexuality in the convent is the notion of motherhood. When asked about children, Sister Weronika (aged 42) sighed and said:

People find it hard to believe that nuns can live without men. Every normal woman thinks about having children. Every woman is destined and constructed to give birth. But I teach so I have a lot of contact with children.

Here, she alluded to men first but devoted more attention to a woman’s biological and social destiny as well as to maternal instinct. She saw herself as ‘normal’ because her job outside the community involved interactions with children. Other interviewees who taught in primary schools and kindergartens spoke of being subjected to critical remarks by the children’s parents. It was implied that nuns compensated for their own inability to give birth by forming attachments with other people’s offspring. The sisters resolved this problem by subscribing to the notion of ‘spiritual motherhood’ (Jabłońska and Nosowski, 2004: 52). Typically any form of voluntary abstinence is associated with lacking or missing out (Mullaney, 2006). For the Polish nuns, however, this alleged lack was in fact a gateway to an abundance of maternal possibilities. Spiritual motherhood simply constituted another version of the maternal task and it allowed these nuns to engage this part of their feminine identity in their daily mission. They argued that chastity allows them to direct their maternal feelings, not just towards children but anyone in need of support. To them the practical expression of chastity involved difference rather than lack, richness rather than paucity of experience, and finally productivity rather than inactivity. The sisters pre-empted the common criticism of life-long chastity as they denied ‘cutting out feelings or being deprived of maternity’ and insisted on ‘fulfilling it differently’. Some saw it as their obligation to engage in spiritual motherhood through their work. The non-physical version of motherhood had further advantages: it allowed the nuns to mother an infinite number of spiritual children. Sister Maura (aged 68) worked with orphans, the homeless and the poor and regarded them as family. By participating in their lives she performed a multitude of roles: ‘I’m a mother, a granny, an aunt! I am everyone to so many people. We’ve had christenings, first communions and weddings, so I’ve never felt deprived.’ Sister Zofia (aged 33) concurred, ‘it would be hard to distribute love to everyone if I had biological children because I’d prioritize them’.

Several of my interviewees worked in the Single Mothers’ Home – a facility run by their religious order. The inhabitants of the Home were young women who became homeless or unemployed as a result of their pregnancy. They came from a variety of backgrounds: some were teenagers thrown out of the family home, others were ex-prostitutes, often addicted to alcohol or drugs, others still had been abused by their male partners who refused to recognize the child. The nuns minded babies and children free of charge while the women looked for work, or attended night classes. The inhabitants were never pressured to participate in religious rituals but the option was always there. Sister Zofia (aged 33) saw her spiritual motherhood towards the women as loving yet tough:

If a woman wants security, a maternal presence, then that’s fine. But if she feels entitled to everything as my spiritual daughter, then unfortunately she will discover that she has to earn it.

Spiritual motherhood is not unconditional. Although the women in the nuns’ care were emotionally vulnerable, the sisters refused to see them as helpless victims. They wished to re-ignite dignity and strength in their protégés to help them reclaim their lives. Sister Zofia added that ‘very often these girls feel inferior, that they don’t deserve anything better in this life, so we want to make them feel secure and worthy as women’. These nuns created an atmosphere of hope and practical support for the women they worked with: through practising spiritual motherhood, they not only crafted their own femininity but also influenced the production of lay femininities in the Home. The positive approach to motherhood helped them shape an equally positive attitude to their gender identity.

This is particularly important when we consider practising chastity in the fast changing cultural context. Polish sisters in their twenties were alarmed at the omnipresent images of sexual freedom and claimed that remaining chaste in this environment was a blessing, rather than a constraint. The liberal turn in post-1989 Poland motivated them to persist in their vow but also to discuss sexuality with lay youth. Sister Monika (aged 26) taught in a secondary school and became anxious about the shifts in attitudes to sex already apparent in the teenage generation of Poles. Her students had difficulty grasping the concept of pre-marital chastity because ‘sex before marriage was natural to them’. The experience further strengthened her resolve to act as a role model for her students. Similarly, Sister Agata (aged 28) received calls and letters from teenage girls who sought her advice on the matters of sexuality. As she commented herself: ‘the trust is there because they know I am in charge of my own sexuality and I can give them an objective answer to their questions’. Sister Rosaria (aged 24) felt that young people in Poland needed nuns to ‘get some values across to them: what is purity and the value of married life, for example’.

Discussion

It is not surprising that the sisters mobilized the notions of motherhood and femininity in order to create coherent narratives of their gendered subjectivities. A narrative is not meaningful if it lacks a degree of social authority. This authority is established by calling upon ‘culturally dominant discourses of truth-telling’ (McNay, 2000: 98), which my participants did. The ideology of Polish emphasized femininity serves as a point of reference for the sisters to construct their own narratives of what it means to be female. Their stories are not free of ideological elements – on the contrary, ideology underlies them. But the effect of ideological work is not simply oppressive. Rather, it enables the sisters to produce their own model of femininity. For instance, the ideology of sacrificial motherhood in Poland, or the socially conservative femininity manuals produced by priests, may be constraining but in order to redefine them the sisters had to draw on the vocabulary that is socially valid, hence often ideological. Otherwise, their promotion and defence of ‘spiritual motherhood’ would not be culturally legitimate. ³

As consecrated life revolves around the (dated but still widely used) idea of a symbolic marriage to Christ and sexual abstinence, biological motherhood is interpreted in light of and adjusted to the demands of the religious context. There were, however, many contradictions in the sisters’ statements about motherhood. For instance, they argued that women were created to be mothers but at the same time they saw joining a convent as a positive choice. This putative contradiction can be explained by the fact that spiritual motherhood is completely detached from its biological roots and it is primarily expressed through everyday practices of care. In other words, the nuns’ understanding of motherhood is premised on a symbolic and abstract basis because it is derived directly from their belief in the divine will. In the view of these nuns, God wishes them to serve him but equally he does not want to deprive them of their chance to fulfil their feminine role. Thus convent allows them to carry out their maternal duties in a manner compatible with their consecrated life. In this context, spiritual motherhood appears implicitly superior to its lay version. By virtue of their vowed status and a degree of independence from family ties, the sisters felt they could act as mothers to an infinite number of people and nowhere was it more obvious than in the accounts of the nuns who worked in the Single Mothers’ Home. They highlighted their involvement in the lives of women and children failed by society. Therefore, theirs was a public motherhood which required discipline in the attempt to distribute emotional and practical care evenly among all of their spiritual children. It was precisely the public expression of an essentially private duty which made consecrated femininity valid, although the constant battle for validity is not an easy task. The point is that the struggle is not an individual one. It is a collective exercise in re-inscribing the meaning of motherhood in the context of a religious community of women. The fact that this discourse cuts across five different communities scattered around the country testifies to the strength of collective definition of the putatively more individual aspect of a woman’s life.

For these sisters spiritual motherhood meant more than a mere compensation for the real thing they had given up. Rather, they used it to reclaim the normality of their lives. What to lay people may appear as a lack, the sisters choose to read as a gift. Consecrated life facilitated a modified performance of their maternal task. Therefore, far from absent, motherhood is firmly embedded into their mission as God’s servants. ‘Feeling like a woman’ is nothing more than the cumulative effect of institutional forms of control shaping our everyday experiences (Martin, 2003: 57) and though the sisters, like lay women, internalized technologies of gender, their place in a religious institution gave them the freedom to live out femininity in a distinctive way.

Many studies of femininity concentrate on subversive practices and strategies employed by young women who refuse to conform to the socially validated discourses of femininity (e.g. Kelly et al., 2005; Wilkins, 2004). Younger women, especially, are presented as independent, confident and eager to ‘try on’ gender (Williams, 2002) or to manipulate emphasized femininity by using the traditional traits associated with passive femininity as empowering. They manipulate in order to remain in control. This creates the impression that women either conform to the regimes of gender or they resist them (Sasson-Levy, 2003). However, what becomes clear, particularly in the studies of women’s struggle for autonomy within traditional religions, is that they may do both. Within this framework, my participants’ femininity could be construed as a version of what Kelly et al. (2005) term as ‘alternative girlhood’, i.e. ways of resisting models of femininity considered as mainstream, conventional and dominant. Consequently, the manner in which ‘alternative girls’ negotiate gender would fall into the compliance/resistance or restriction/empowerment paradigm. But despite their apparent empowerment through resistance the problem is that identity formation always involves emphasized femininity as the central point of reference. Therefore, whatever they choose to do will always fall into the category of departing from this model or embracing it. However, the example of Catholic nuns shows that, in some cases, religious commitment may foster an entirely different style of identity formation, which transforms the framework of reference. In a sense, it dethrones emphasized femininity in favour of multiple options of being a woman. But this is not done through subversion of the norm as such because emphasized femininity is not directly challenged.

The sisters themselves did not perceive their enactment of gender identity as rebellious, or at odds with lay femininity. Neither did they declare a conscious desire to challenge the existing gender regime, or wish to be defined as rebellious non-women. On the contrary, these nuns stressed the ordinariness of their version of femininity, which for them was just another route to fulfilment. They magnified the core of their feminine identity through their commitment to perfection at forming their gendered selves. In a sense they also enhanced the socially prescribed gender norms to the point where their femininity became a ‘hyperfemininity’. Their ‘consecrated femininity’ cannot be defined simply as alternative, or as an act of resistance. This would imply a hierarchical order of femininities where dominant models constitute the normative point of reference. At the same time it would suggest that the nuns’ agency ‘could only be conceived of as the inherent indeterminacy of symbolic structures rather than as a result of social practice’ (McNay, 2000: 45). If the symbolic norm is understood as internally uniform, yet unstable and open to subversion through re-signification, then the nuns would need to leave the convent in order to attain any possibility for agency. Such a model forecloses the chance to challenge the norm from within. Indeed, it echoes the call from post-Christian feminists (such as Mary Daly or Daphne Hampson) to abandon the oppressive structures of the Christian faith altogether.

My participants viewed themselves as women in the traditional sense but they also appeared to transcend emphasized femininity through their gendering practices. It is vital to point out here that the sisters’ insistence on their gender normality does not automatically turn them into Foucauldian ‘docile bodies’ (1977) upon which dominant discourses are inscribed. They are active and creative agents constrained by their positioning in the network of social relations. In short, instead of reacting positively or negatively to the dominant model, my participants fashioned a gender identity which is simply one of the many possible femininities on the gender continuum. Female agency in this context means the power to transform without subverting, or intending to subvert, the normative gender model. In order to make sense of my participants’ experience of gender, it is necessary to abandon the falsely universal compliance/resistance paradigm in favour of a vocabulary which is more fitting to this group of women. McNay’s generative agency serves this purpose because it helps to understand the types of agency which are transformative but not self-consciously subversive.

Conclusion

I would like to precede the conclusion with a disclaimer of sorts. The exploratory and participant-centred nature of this research means that social actors’ own accounts of their experiences, perceptions and feelings are prioritized over other versions of the same slice of reality. This, in turn, may create the impression that the above narratives are disproportionately neat and positive while human life tends to be more complex and messy. But it is crucial to stress that in order to remain faithful to one’s interviewees’ words one must not attempt to replace their accounts by others to create a more complex picture. The quotes presented above were not selected to fit the argument. They are representative of the sample and the argument emerged from the data. One reason why the sisters’ narratives of chastity appear relatively flawless and untroubled is that these are individuals who entered convents and remain Catholic nuns. Had my participants been ex-nuns who subsequently married and had children, undoubtedly their stories would reveal something different. Human beings tirelessly make sense of their actions and strive towards coherence in their personal narratives. Institutions (both secular and religious) play a significant role in shaping these stories. The Catholic nuns I talked to explained their perception of reality on three levels: their view of how laity perceive them as women; what chastity means to a vowed woman in the Catholic Church; and finally their personal interpretation of gender identity which grapples with and reconciles the lay and the religious discourses.

Polish women have been referred to as ‘hostages of destiny’, meaning they are enslaved within a culturally and linguistically imposed gender norm (Płatek, 2004). This label cannot be applied indiscriminately, of course, considering that there are a number of possibilities on the spectrum of Polish femininity: Catholic nuns being one example here. The case of these sisters demonstrates the capacity to transform emphasized femininity without directly undermining it. Some may argue that if the nuns do not subvert the gender norm, their behaviour is conformist. But their femininity falls in the ambiguous space between the ‘normal’ and the ‘excluded’. Instead of rejecting, or embracing emphasized femininity, they transform it and make it their own. In this sense, Catholic nuns are not simply placed within discursive structures but they reflexively re-shape them. In this sense, they are hostages of neither lay social expectations, nor religious dogma. As a result, their narratives of femininity become a mixture of gender ideology and spiritually driven gender work.