NUN ERA — Black Narcissus I

NUN ERA – Black Narcissus I (October)

“You cannot accuse those who have suffered deeply, and you can accuse them even less if they have faced their sins.” Priya Jaikumar, "Place" and the Modernist Redemption of Empire in "Black Narcissus" (1947).

“You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad.” Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus (1938).

Rminating on devotion (to God) and desire, and (female) asceticism. Long a fan of periods of celibacy, among other disciplinary exercises, I realize that affinity for restriction is the other side of the love of reckless excess. One may find as much pain in one as the other. The Libran judicial lens views these as periods of crime and punishment, but aesthetically it’s a neutral psychic circle, circling around one, lesson and analysis, hunt and retreat, life unending… .

Have you spent an extended amount of time in solitude? I lived for a few months in a remote ski town, sober, elevation sick, and heartbroken. There was no one there except a groundskeeper who had been shot in the head nine times. The bullets went under the skin of his skull, traveled down his spine, and ejected out his back. I had a nervous breakdown in a CVS and flew home early, only to spend the next few years desperate to return.

The famous british film Black Narcissus (1947) has all of the above: monks (nuns) and mountains, blood, sweat, tears, men and women, et cetera. Mountains must be all the same. The clear air makes you sick, the view makes you yearn, and ultimately you fall apart inside out.

Five female missionaries, nuns of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary, ‘travel to Mopu, a fictional place in the Himalayas, to set up a school, chapel, and dispensary… The place arouses several dormant desires and memories in the Sisters who slowly plunge into despair and insanity' (JP). The setting is a run-down palace, formerly the Indian ruler’s harem, set on a mountainside above the village.

The five appointed Sisters, led by subtly hubristic Sister Clodaugh, can be seen insofar as they are presented archetypically, as five splinters of the psyche and their descents as corresponding sins that ricochet and crescendo into climax.

Phillipa the older gardener is sent for her knowledge. While farming in Mopu she begins to remember her past before taking the covenant and is overcome with thoughts and emo-tions. She tries to work through it but mentally loses herself, planting exotic flowers instead of root vegetables.

Phillipa’s nostalgic spells infect Clodaugh, who begins to remember as well. As a young woman, she loved a man. In shame and pain after his rejection she joined the Congregation, transferring her unrequited devotion to her lover to devotional service. From man to God, emotional to manual labor.

Briony the sympathetic nurse overrides advice not to treat fatally ill patients, and in her involvement in the death of a village infant invites the threat of mortal danger to the palace. Blanche, the sweet socialite, is absorbed in the child-care, and Ruth, always a problem, romantically imprints on the English agent Mr. Dean, and slowly succumbs to her obsession with him.

The nun who appoints Sister Clodaugh to the Mopu mission remarks that she does not believe Clodaugh is ready for the responsibility, and worries that she won’t be strong enough. She warns of the difficulties of controlling a small number of women in a closed environment. Mr. Dean, too, upon their arrival, warns of the treacheries of the palace, the mountain, and the villagers, and predicts they will not last. Other missionaries have come and gone from the place over time.

Indeed, as the Sisters unravel and lose control, Ruth transforms from an ailing nun to a mindless, insane demon-woman donned in civilian clothes and outfitted with lipstick and rouge. After being rejected by Mr. Dean on the fateful night of revenge, she returns to the palace to rage-murder Clodaugh – the secret object of Mr. Dean’s unspoken affections. Thus, while the revenge was expected to be external (villagers upset over the death of the child), it appears internally: the nuns, overtaken body, mind, and soul, turn on each other; the covenant infected, eating itself from the inside out. The call is coming from inside the house.

At dawn, Sister Ruth approaches Clodaugh as she is ringing the bell on the edge of the cliff. In a wordless choreographed struggle, the moment where action and emotion erupt and supersede dialogue and silence, Ruth falls from the cliff and is defeated in death.

So much is there to analyze here – repression & oppression, exoticism & colonialism, eroticism, death– and so much not even mentioned (let alone the book), I have to refocus. Desire and asceticism.

1. THE LINE

‘Sister Philippa says to Sister Clodagh: "I think there are only two ways of living in this place. Either one must live like Mr. Dean or...like the Holy Man. Either ignore it or give yourself up to it." To this, Sister Clodagh replies, "Neither will do for us”’ (PJ).

The heart of things. There are only two ways of living in the state or environment that forces you to confront yourself. You live like Mr. Dean, who is cynical and indulgent: lives with the people; smokes hookah and drinks booze; and employs a rude manner. You live like the Holy Man, who sits alone and stares night and day, either hyper-aware or not at all aware of his surroundings.

What’s strange about this compact, potent little quote is that I can’t quite place which is why. Is the Holy Man ignoring it or giving himself up to it? Is Mr. Dean ignoring or surrendering? The nuns, Clodaugh especially, seem disturbed by the ideological locations of both men. Yet, this is how they are both able to live in Mopu. One among the people, one apart. One high, one low. One vocal, virile, one silent and immobile. 

And what about the nuns? It’s clear why neither of these routes, total indulgence nor complete severance, will work for them. But what is it about their particular position on this continuum that disagrees with the place? Why are they so incompatible?

They are not the only people of their type to have disagreements here; apparently, some monks failed in recent history as well. There are three requisites specific to the nuns of this order laid out in the film: 1. Their work is voluntary and their vows are renewed annually 2. They are devoted to work, not contemplation, and 3. Their work is the mode of self-actualization and worship.

This sets them apart from the Holy Man in that they are not idle and contemplative, but ‘busy,’ focused, ambitious, and mission-oriented. They are women of action. They can neither accept nor reject the palace and its ghosts and the mountain and valley and strange winds, they are forced to live within them. If the setting is a reflection of their own internal conflict, they can neither escape it nor allow themselves to succumb to it – save for Ruth, who becomes her wild self.

Henry Sheehan writes, “the sisters have come, in answer to the bell, to walk along the edge of the world– and to either pull back or throw themselves off.” They are all in this tension, this test of strength and faith, between their latent desires and the hauntings of the past, and the spiritual meaning of their work. They must attempt to walk the line between devotion and isolationism, to delicately balance on that one narrow path that allows them to serve God and remain rational.

Clodaugh is the only one to survive this, in a sense. Although she like Ruth has feelings for Mr. Dean, and like Phillipa has visions of her past, she maintains her allegiance to her vows of the order. She attempts to not only control herself but also control the other women and strives to make the mission a success even as it becomes clear it can never be.

In her tender goodbye conversation with Mr. Dean, finally, their love though unspoken is acknowledged. Clodaugh has softened, become more forgiving, and grown individually in her experience though failed her mission of the collective. In this postmodern ending, which did not seem to agree with the Church at the time the film was released, Clodaugh has conquered the foreign within herself; come to terms with the mystique of her past, and her dark reasons for taking the vow. She integrates and becomes whole, just as a cloud of mist rises to obscure the palace that represents her shadow.