The Edge of Sin

The AnchoressBy Robyn CadwalladerFSG, 2015They really did this in medieval England—a person, in this case a woman, would be sealed in a single cell for her entire adult life. It was voluntary. She would be a kind of super-nun, a hermit, a living local saint who would pray for the people in the village. Robyn Cadwallader’s The Anchoress tells the story of seventeen-year-old Sarah, the daughter of a well-to-do cloth merchant, going to an unfamiliar town to be enclosed in a stone chamber outside the church. She is grief-stricken after her younger sister’s death, and wants to avoid marrying a grasping landowner, but above all, she loves God and wants to pray. The meaning of her commitment is the stuff of the book.If it takes time for the book to lift off as fiction, that’s because of the reader’s curiosity rather than Cadwallader’s steady storytelling. She’s leading us through territory she clearly knows well enough not to stop and gawk at every eerie medieval practice along the way. None of the villagers seem to find Sarah’s choice ghoulish, though one of her duties is to scrape at the floor of her cell with her fingers to dig a grave where her body will eventually decompose. The previous anchoress’s bones are by the wall near the window.The book has all the answers to the reader’s questions, from the simple—the layout of the cell, the way food, dirt, and light are managed, to the more complex—what if she changes her mind? Who pays for all this? How do the people around Sarah think about her unusual life? Sarah is withdrawing from the world partly to avoid a marrying a man she rightly doesn’t trust, and she persuades landowner Sir Geoffrey to be her patron:

[The priest] had heard of Sir Geoffrey’s stern ways when it came to money and land, but even powerful, wealthy men—perhaps those men more than others—worried about what they couldn’t see or touch, especially when death began to stalk them. They wouldn’t hesitate to lavish money on a patronage if it brought them a little reassurance in matters of the soul. A holy woman to pray for them, before and after death, would be a comfort and some no doubt even thought of it as insurance.

She is mostly respected by her patrons, who expect prayers in return for her upkeep, but the people of the village are more warmly grateful to her. They want to chat with her and bring her gossip, questions and nicer food than she thinks an anchoress ought to eat.She is supposed to fast and pray, though each of those responsibilities is complicated. How much fasting is holy, and how much is self-indulgence? As her adoration of Jesus begins to seem less than pure, how can she keep her mental chastity as well as physical? When the priest comes to hear her confession, he brings her holy books and they talk over medieval philosophical questions. When a villager comes to her for advice about a violent husband, Sarah has one of her many crises of conscience—what can she say to this woman? What would the priests want her to say? Are the priests’ answers sufficient? The priests’ answers are never sufficient, though many of them are kind and well-intentioned.Sealing herself in seems to be such a perverse, conscious ceding of all worldly presence, yet there’s a contrary thread running through the book showing how Sarah becomes powerful. At first, she is grief-stricken about her sister’s death. In the outside world, women die in childbirth, they are raped and beaten, and more insidiously, blamed for these hardships when they ask for help. Sarah encloses herself out of fear and sadness, but that begins to change. A leper comes to her window and asks for food. There is extra food in her cell but it’s against her rules to give anyone alms. She pretends she has nothing to give because she’s afraid of breaking the rules and repelled by his illness. He asks again, explains that he needs help on his way to a leper colony. She turns him away and never knows what happens to him. She thinks about him often, knowing she didn’t do the right thing. She slowly becomes certain that it would have been right to break the rules for the sake of compassion. The question of how much of her own thinking she should do presses on her—she discusses it with her priest:

“But St. Catherine used her mind to argue for God and defeat pagan philosophers--fifty men assembled against her. How was that possible?” I spoke quickly.“With God's grace, Sister, that is all.”God's grace. I smiled to myself. “Then with God's grace and strength, it seems all virgins can learn to think as she did.” I was pleased with my answer, but nervous, and tried to make it a question when it wasn't.His voice was serious, focused. ‘There were virgins in the first centuries who thought as you do, who claimed that because they were virgins and no longer women they need not cover their heads in church, as women should. But Tertullian warns against such false reasoning: he says a virgin always remains a woman, otherwise she would be a third kind, a monstrosity. Unlike a man, her body, the fragility of her virginity, makes her always vulnerable, always at the edge of sin. That's why you're enclosed.’ he paused. ’Remember, sister, that virginity is not simply of the body, it is purity of spirit. Pride can make a virgin fall from her high estate.”

Of course Sarah is not satisfied with that answer. The question is never really settled. She is supposed to pray and teach, but each of those things is tied up with thinking for herself. As she uses her judgment, she gains respect and gratitude of the least powerful villagers, and annoys the more powerful patrons and church leaders.Trouble comes to her through her maids. Her patrons pay two maids to bring her food and tend to her through a small curtained window between her cell and the church. Sarah has a duty to teach them and keep them safe and holy—that she’s expected to do this from her cell without ever seeing their faces is one of the contradictions of her situation. While Sarah is held apart, she isn’t all that far away from the world, or very alone. Her spiritual influence comes from her absence, her refusal to engage with the world, but she’s held accountable when one of her maids gets pregnant. This is one of the ways the Medieval understanding of the world differs from the modern one—they thought of Sarah’s power as an emanation from her virginity and her closeness to Christ’s suffering. The fact that she wasn’t tarnished by the sinful world was supposed to emanate God’s favor out toward everyone around her. If that failed, it was evidence she was doing her entire job poorly, not only that she hadn’t instructed the young woman to avoid men.As she grows through the book, from a scared kid to maturity, her memories of her sister shift. She doesn't feel as judgmental about her sister's romantic heart anymore:

I used to frown when she laughed at crudity, drank too much mead, or kissed Godrick under the maypole and told him to give her a baby. But that May Day morning at my altar, I no longer saw the lines of pain on her face as she died, but her laugh, the curve of her back, the lift of her feet as she danced, her hair curling with sweat, and I realized with a shock like being slapped, that in truth I wanted to do that, to wind around the maypole, to sing and laugh with the others: I had watched on, longing and afraid. A foolish idea; I had always wanted only to pray and serve God. My prayers finished, I stayed on my knees, my face throbbing at the thought. Was it a temptation sent by the Devil?

No longer furious at her sister for choosing a life that led to her death, Sarah sees the maid’s problem sympathetically. The maid is pregnant because she was raped by one of the landowning patrons. Sarah refuses to send her away, provoking the church. The walls of Sarah’s cell are believably thin when anyone wants access to her or to threaten her right to stay. Throughout the book it seems possible that she will be forced out of her cell—but her reasons to keep her vows get more persuasive too.Her fears dwindle and she grows more willing to fight but above all, Sarah simply loves God. She contemplates the line of her obedience, which sacrifices make her holier, and which only make her weaker and how she can help people who need it. She often seems like a college student, away from home and encountering big ideas, big injustices and testing her powers for the first time. By the end of the book I was wondering less why anyone would choose a life like that to wondering why more people don’t.Cadwallader layers the medieval interpretations with modern understandings—one of the maids believes Sarah needs a leech on her foot when she stops getting her period after fasting too much. The priests refer to God’s will regularly, but there is also a clear influence of money in the power of the land-owners—God’s isn’t the only will that affects the villagers. For all that, the novel often carries Sarah’s philosophical and religious issues lightly; there are questions of hair shirts and what to do if she orgasms while wearing hers—but there are also plenty of subplots about a populous medieval town, the interests and cares of the people around her. Sarah grows out of being a frightened and sorrowful girl, but abject suffering finds her again, even behind her walls. This time, she’s prepared to meet it without retreat—using her community and her spiritual strength to find a way through.____
Catherine Nichols lives in Massachusetts and writes fiction and nonfiction. Find her on Twitter at @clnichols6 .