Greying in the Cloister: The Ursuline Life Course in Eighteenth-Century France

The life course of the eighteenth-century nun, and the assumptions behind it, contrasts the growing acceptance that age, like gender, was a natural definer of human differences. The obituaries of the Ursulines of Toulouse, France, show that although the lives and experiences of the nuns changed as they grew older, the women did not anticipate aging. Instead, the records presented nuns' lives as static snapshots of lives without progression. Experience rather than age afforded older Ursulines authority, and the nuns did not consider age to be an indicator of role and status.