Secret Habits: Catholic Literacy Education for Women in the Early Nineteenth Century by Carol Mattingly (review)

In Secret Habits: Catholic Literacy Education for Women in the Early Nineteenth Century, Carol Mattingly’s fascinating study of the heretofore seldom-recognized educational systems of Catholic, female religious communities deftly challenges U.S. Protestant narratives of rhetorical education. Mattingly’s careful weaving of primary and secondary materials advances and answers the need for nuanced understanding of rhetorical education in the early days of the republic. The book addresses the totality of women’s education and advances a more complete rhetorical history of women’s rhetorical education as well as Catholicism in the early nineteenth century. Mattingly examines the educational practices and political climate of Catholic nuns and sisters in multiple regions, including the Carmelites, Ursulines, Sisters of Loretto, Society of the Sacred Heart, Oblate Sisters of Providence, and other sisters of charity communities; 14 communities’ activities are summarized in a helpful appendix.

In the introduction, as well as throughout the book, Mattingly reviews contemporary and historical scholarship to demonstrate the Protestant-focused historical bias of literary education history and also the work of previous scholars to question the “American Protestant grand narrative” of education (2). The five substantive chapters address the history of education, including pedagogical practices, anti-Catholic bias, and social and economic structures of women’s education systems, both Protestant and Catholic. Secret Habits leaves readers with a strong, expanded foundation of women’s rhetorical education.

Early in the book, Mattingly emphasizes the precarious position of Catholics as a minority in the United States—one that, at times, was subject to brutal actions from their Protestant neighbors, including no less than a mob burning of an Ursuline academy outside Boston in 1834 (132). Chapter 1, “Literacy, Religion, and Schoolbooks,” offers a detailed rhetorical reading of early educational materials—spellers, catechisms, readers, geographies, histories, and grammars—with compelling evidence that the majority of these texts were openly anti-Catholic. For example, geographies and histories, Mattingly explains, contained disdainful references to popery as bigotry and Catholics as “superstitious, filthy, indolent, and vicious” (29), leading Catholics to create new pedagogical texts for their schools. Chapter 2, “The Religious Nature of Early Women’s Literacy,” notes the subjects and pedagogical approaches of Protestant and Catholic academies for women. As Catholic convent schools depended on both Catholic and Protestant pupils for tuition, their curricula were less focused on catechism and proselytizing than their Protestant counterparts. In fact, Mattingly’s careful analysis of letters, newspaper columns, and tracts demonstrates how many Protestant schools were designed to counter the prevalence and effectiveness of Catholic schools for women. One such instance Mattingly recounts is Ladies Repository editor Sarah Hale’s article noting there were few Protestant academies for the “thousand young women, who are destined as wives for Protestant clergymen,” leaving these young women to be educated—and influenced—by the more established, successful Catholic convent academies (59). Taken together, the first two chapters offer a complex narrative of the development and pedagogy of U.S. schools for young women, demonstrating the influence of Catholic convent schools.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine two different organizational structures for Catholic schools, those with U.S.-based convent communities and European-based convent communities, respectively. Focusing on U.S.-based communities, Mattingly first notes the challenges in educating the religious sisters and nuns (even before turning to student education), as most were from poor and middle-class families with little access to education for women. The U.S.-based convents provided education not only for young women but also for the adult sisters and nuns as they joined religious women’s communities with schools and then focused on improving personal education, teaching methods, and student outcomes. Support from diocesan and Catholic male education systems as well as from wealthy families pleased with their daughters’ educations resulted in excellent staff and students who were some of the most highly educated women of the...