In This House of Brede

Back in the mid-seventies I watched a tv movie called In this House of Brede. I believe I primarily watched it because I was a fan of The Avengers (no, not the superheroes) and I wanted to see Diana Rigg as someone other than Mrs. Peel. I remember liking it, but never got around to reading the book until it came up in the rotation of my book club this February. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find the movie. I’d like to compare how they dealt with the story, but I know it could never compare to the wonderful prose of the book. It will just be different.

Written by Rumer Godden (1907 – 1998) in 1969, a year after she converted to Catholicism, it covers a time period of the late 50s to just after the second Vatican council. What a huge change in the Church and in the world in just a decade.

The story centers around Philippa Talbot, who at age 42, decides she is going to give up her post in the civil service and become a Benedictine nun. She enters Brede Abbey, a fictional monastery, but based on Stanbrook Abbey in England. There she encounters diverse personalities, her past, her soul, and God. All the sisters come face to face with themselves, as seen through God’s eyes. They change in ways they never thought possible, and in ways they didn’t realize they needed to change. It was a challenging story because as you read it, you take a second look at yourself and wonder if you need some change, too. Are you approaching God the way you should? Are you listening to Him and discovering that He’s asking you to do things you never imagined. Will you do them?

In the Preface to the 2013 Virago Press edition of the book, Rumer Godden says,” ‘I wish,’ said Dame Felicitas Corrigan, ‘that someone would write a book about nuns as they really are, not as the author wants them to be.’ I thought of my novel Black Narcissus and blushed.”  That book, written in 1939, told a story about a band of outcasts and misfits, definitely not the very human women of Brede. Rumer Godden spent five years near Stanbrook, talking with the nuns there and came away with a vastly different picture. These women had strengths and talents and their share of weaknesses, but they were there for a definite reason, not because they didn’t fit in anywhere else.

Their primary purpose is prayer – prayer for those who ask their help, prayer in praise of God through the Mass and the Litany of the Hours, and prayer for themselves and their sisters. It’s a strenuous task, but aren’t we fortunate that there are people who are willing to undertake it.