Shadows of the Workhouse

thought I would be content to spend my life counting fish forks.”
    I was beginning to understand. One had to get used to following sideways the many strands of Sister Monica Joan’s thoughts. Perhaps the dinner services and the fish forks related to her family and her girlhood in the 1870s and 80s.
    Her next statement confirmed this. “My poor mother was a slave to such possessions. For all her finery and ‘Your Ladyship’ she was more of a servant than her own servants. I doubt she knew a day of real freedom in her whole life. Poor woman. I loved her, and pitied her, but we never understood each other.”
    Some things never change, I thought, remembering the mutual incomprehension which was about the only thing my mother and I ever shared.
    “My father ruled her life. Every move. Do you know, my dear, he had all her hair cut off and her teeth pulled out when she was less than thirty-five?”
    I gasped: “How? Why?”
    “She was never strong, always ailing. I don’t know what was wrong with her, except perhaps that her corsets were too tight.” Corsets. The accepted instrument of torture for women
    “I remember it quite well. I was only a little girl but I remember my mother lying in bed with doctors present. One of them told my father that all her strength was going to her hair and her teeth and that they would have to go. She was never consulted in the matter, she told me many years later. Her head was shaved and all her teeth extracted. I was in the nursery and heard her screaming. It was barbaric, my dear, and ignorant. I was frightened when I saw her later: her face swollen; blood all over her pillow and sheets; a bald head. She was crying, poor woman. I was about twelve years old and something happened to me in that moment. Something revolted inside me and I knew that women suffered through man’s ignorance. As I stood by her bed, I changed from a carefree little girl into a thinking woman. I vowed I would not follow the pattern of my mother, my aunts and their friends. I would not become a wife whose husband could order that her teeth be pulled out, or who could be locked up like poor Aunt Anne. I would not spend my life counting fish forks. I would not be dominated by any man.”
    Sister Monica Joan’s face assumed an expression of haughty defiance. The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan’s fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.
    I said, “Several times you have mentioned that your Aunt Anne was locked up. Why was this?”
    “Oh my dear, it was iniquitous. Aunt Anne, my mother’s sister, was put into a lunatic asylum because her husband was fed up with her!”
    “What! You are joking,” I retorted
    “Don’t you accuse me of joking, you saucy girl. If you are going to be rude to me you can leave the room.” She turned her head and arched her eyebrows, slightly dilating her nostrils, the epitome of offended dignity, although I had a feeling she was putting it on for effect.
    “Oh, come off it, Sister. You know that was just an expression. What happened to Aunt Anne? – that’s what’s important.”
    She turned to me and giggled like a child caught doing something naughty. But her expression quickly changed.
    “Aunt Anne, dear Aunt Anne. She was my favourite aunt. Always pretty, always sweet and gentle with a soft laugh. When she visited the house she always came up to the nursery to spend time with us, to tell stories and play games with us. We all loved her. Then suddenly she came no more. No more.”
    Sister Monica Joan sat as still as a statue, gazing out of the window. The sun was shining and she moaned, “It’s too bright, it hurts my eyes. Draw the curtain across, will you, child?”
    I did so and when I returned she had her handkerchief to her eyes. “We never saw her again. When we asked our mother she just said, ‘Hush, dears, we don’t talk about Aunt Anne.’ We kept thinking she would come back with her games and her stories; but she never did.”
    She sighed deeply and balanced her chin on her long fingers, lost in thought. “Poor woman, poor dear woman. She was defenceless.”
    “Did you ever find out what had happened?” I enquired.
    “Yes, years later I found out. Her husband tired of her and wanted another woman. So he quite simply spread the story around that she was weak in the head and going