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In Our Convent Days
The literary critic and essayist Agnes Replier's memoir of her time as a young child in a convent boarding school during the 1860s.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1905
About the author
Agnes Repplier
122 books18 followersAmerican essayist. Educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Eden Hall at Torresdale, Philadelphia, and later at the Agnes Irwin School. Repplier was reportedly expelled from two schools for "independent behaviour" and illiterate until the age of ten. She received mentoring in writing by a nun who was herself a noted writer, Mary Paulina Finn, who published books, poetry and plays under the pseudonym M. S. Pine.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 20, 2016
This is a delightful memoir. The story of what it is like to be a small child at a convent boarding school. Agnes Repplier narrates the tale with a keen and witty remembrance of her school days spent with about half a dozen close friends. They get into scrapes together and have crushes on the older girls. When you are ten the girls of seventeen seem grown up and far too superior to even notice someone of your age. The girls make up their own marvellous games to entertain themselves. They write plays and perform them with great ardour. One of the most exciting events is when the school is given a day as a holiday. A very special day, maybe a saint's day that has particular significance to the convent or perhaps a day given by a visitor such as the archbishop. The girls would wait with baited breath to see if it was to awarded before the visitor left. Oh such excitement! There would be so much planning, the girls would spend some of their meagre allowance on sweets and cakes. Of course there would have to be a new play written and performed and outdoor games. It was the general rule of the convent that during meals, only French was to be spoken thus making conversation a little stilted. On holidays the girls could speak in English and chaos reigned.
I was surprised that whilst reading the book, I did not have any thought about the time setting for the story being in the mid 1800's. Agnes Repplier was born in either 1855 or 1858 and died in 1950! Only at one time, when it was mentioned that someone was leaving in their carriage, was I reminded that I was not reading a modern story.
I could quite easily have been reading about my own school days during the 1950's and 1960's.
This is a very simple school story, with echos of Malory Towers, no stress, no violence or bad language, back to childhood.
Although it was reprinted in 2010 the 'physical' book is still a little expensive so I was really pleased to find the site Questia online library. It is a site that you subscribe to but does have some free book and In Our Convent Days is one of them. Thank you Questia.
I was surprised that whilst reading the book, I did not have any thought about the time setting for the story being in the mid 1800's. Agnes Repplier was born in either 1855 or 1858 and died in 1950! Only at one time, when it was mentioned that someone was leaving in their carriage, was I reminded that I was not reading a modern story.
I could quite easily have been reading about my own school days during the 1950's and 1960's.
This is a very simple school story, with echos of Malory Towers, no stress, no violence or bad language, back to childhood.
Although it was reprinted in 2010 the 'physical' book is still a little expensive so I was really pleased to find the site Questia online library. It is a site that you subscribe to but does have some free book and In Our Convent Days is one of them. Thank you Questia.
October 20, 2021
A tart and amusing collection of vignettes of the author's time at a convent boarding school in the 1860s, where her closest friend was Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Both girls grew up to be writers, Agnes Repplier making a name for herself penning literary essays, which were published in the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines of its ilk. She had a special fondness for the 18th century. I'm sure no one reads her essays any more (I've tried multiple times with little success). By contrast, this book is lots of fun, although still rather wordy and full of obscure literary allusions. The strictures of convent school life as presented here are appalling, but Repplier remembers them fondly, and one suspects she was happier there among her friends and companions in mischief than she was at home.
March 26, 2022
In the middle of reading it, i related to a Philadelphia friend that i was reading it, prompting in my mind the recollection that I had read another book about a famous Philadelphian female, Gia Carangi. I thought it would be an interesting mash up to compare and contrast.
The most basic overlap between the two girls (Repplier's memoir is exclusively from her time at Eden Hall, the Catholic boarding school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, when she would have been 11-12 years old) is their both being in Torresdale, the section of Northeast Philadelphia where I too grew up (prompting much of my interest in both). Though both Agnes and Gia were on the east side of Frankford Avenue, the more suburban/wealthy/settled in the colonial era area, as opposed to the west side, containing the post WWII veterans, housing, schools and shopping centers that was my milieu.
First Gia. It's been years since I read the book, but she grew up practically across the street from my grade school, St. Katherine of Siena (she may have even attended, I don't remember) in a single house on a nice, tree-lined street of well-to-do Northeast Philadelphians. The biography "A Thing of Beauty" by Stephen Fried, describes Northeast Philadelphia in the most exacting and perceptive paragraph I've ever read on this section of Philly, including its being a kind of middling ground between the city and the suburbs. Within the city limits, and denser and not quite as green, and with smaller lots than the suburbs just outside the city limits, but much more bucolic and spread out, and more prosperous than the inner city neighborhood from which it mainly drew its inhabitants. But the children of the Northeast, in this apt description, have none of the street smarts of the inner city kids, and little of the affluence of the suburban kids, a kind of worst of both worlds description that I found generally, though not completely accurate. But her upbringing in Torresdale eventually led her to modeling superstardom, through Center City Philadelphia and on to New York City, with her tragic, heroin-wrecked decline and death in the eighties.
Agnes Repplier, on the other hand, was from Center City, Philadelphia, of upper middle class upbringing, and sent out to the furthest reaches of Torresdale, in Philadelphia, where the French-founded Sisters of the Sacred Heart had established one of their Philadelphia-area schools (others are in Bryn Mawr and Princeton) in 1848. The former farmland had been purchased and remade into a country estate, then bought by the nuns, chapel added, and various additions made over the years in the late 19th and early 20th century. Agnes's tenure there was around the time of the Civil War, though one interesting aspect of the book is that the exact time of the remembered events is never close at hand, and given the premises' almost "cloistered" quality, and the content of the prose, one is generally unaware of being in a particular century or era.
Some interesting personal connections in these two books:
-- Eden Hall eventually (in the 50's, I believe) built or renovated a building to become the first St. Katherine of Siena grade school, established to provide Catholic education for the children of the WWII vets just then (and rapidly) settling in the area. I knew of it growing up because my brother attended first and second grade there (I on the other hand attended the brand, spanking new 1960 school, next to the similarly new church, both on Frankford Avenue). Not sure if the French nuns taught at the old St. Katherine's, or if the Polish nuns (Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth) who administered the new one did.
-- In my adolescence, I finally visited Eden Hall, on a bike ride, and was transfixed by the aura, the old, beautiful chapel building, the allee of trees, the majestic estate and fields, even as it was on its last legs (it closed in 1979). I would frequently go there to explore, including discovering the "back" entrance from Convent Lane (only realizing years later that Eden Hall's convent was the one to which the street name referred). But never laid eyes on the original St. Katherine's school building. I believe it's been torn down.
-- Also discovered on these teenage bike ride explorations was the rest of the "Old" Torresdale riverfront community, which included Glenn Foerd, Andalusia, and other old estates of Philadelphia's rich and powerful, including at the time Virginia Knauer, who was an administrator in some department under Richard Nixon. It was interesting for me to learn about this aspect of the "neighborhood", including/especially a tangible connection to bygone centuries.
But back to the book. I found the writing style engaging, a bit florid, but with interesting/archaic words sprinkled throughout (poltron!). An environment of strict, Catholic school obedience and religiosity, similar to what i grew up with, but with an overlay of fancy boarding school and French nuns/culture, is conveyed, though I finished the book wanting to know a bit more about this detail. As it was, the recollections were truly those of a young child, and perhaps this is where/how the book is most successful, in that portrayal of youth, from an experienced essayist, writing many years after the events and feelings described.
The most basic overlap between the two girls (Repplier's memoir is exclusively from her time at Eden Hall, the Catholic boarding school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, when she would have been 11-12 years old) is their both being in Torresdale, the section of Northeast Philadelphia where I too grew up (prompting much of my interest in both). Though both Agnes and Gia were on the east side of Frankford Avenue, the more suburban/wealthy/settled in the colonial era area, as opposed to the west side, containing the post WWII veterans, housing, schools and shopping centers that was my milieu.
First Gia. It's been years since I read the book, but she grew up practically across the street from my grade school, St. Katherine of Siena (she may have even attended, I don't remember) in a single house on a nice, tree-lined street of well-to-do Northeast Philadelphians. The biography "A Thing of Beauty" by Stephen Fried, describes Northeast Philadelphia in the most exacting and perceptive paragraph I've ever read on this section of Philly, including its being a kind of middling ground between the city and the suburbs. Within the city limits, and denser and not quite as green, and with smaller lots than the suburbs just outside the city limits, but much more bucolic and spread out, and more prosperous than the inner city neighborhood from which it mainly drew its inhabitants. But the children of the Northeast, in this apt description, have none of the street smarts of the inner city kids, and little of the affluence of the suburban kids, a kind of worst of both worlds description that I found generally, though not completely accurate. But her upbringing in Torresdale eventually led her to modeling superstardom, through Center City Philadelphia and on to New York City, with her tragic, heroin-wrecked decline and death in the eighties.
Agnes Repplier, on the other hand, was from Center City, Philadelphia, of upper middle class upbringing, and sent out to the furthest reaches of Torresdale, in Philadelphia, where the French-founded Sisters of the Sacred Heart had established one of their Philadelphia-area schools (others are in Bryn Mawr and Princeton) in 1848. The former farmland had been purchased and remade into a country estate, then bought by the nuns, chapel added, and various additions made over the years in the late 19th and early 20th century. Agnes's tenure there was around the time of the Civil War, though one interesting aspect of the book is that the exact time of the remembered events is never close at hand, and given the premises' almost "cloistered" quality, and the content of the prose, one is generally unaware of being in a particular century or era.
Some interesting personal connections in these two books:
-- Eden Hall eventually (in the 50's, I believe) built or renovated a building to become the first St. Katherine of Siena grade school, established to provide Catholic education for the children of the WWII vets just then (and rapidly) settling in the area. I knew of it growing up because my brother attended first and second grade there (I on the other hand attended the brand, spanking new 1960 school, next to the similarly new church, both on Frankford Avenue). Not sure if the French nuns taught at the old St. Katherine's, or if the Polish nuns (Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth) who administered the new one did.
-- In my adolescence, I finally visited Eden Hall, on a bike ride, and was transfixed by the aura, the old, beautiful chapel building, the allee of trees, the majestic estate and fields, even as it was on its last legs (it closed in 1979). I would frequently go there to explore, including discovering the "back" entrance from Convent Lane (only realizing years later that Eden Hall's convent was the one to which the street name referred). But never laid eyes on the original St. Katherine's school building. I believe it's been torn down.
-- Also discovered on these teenage bike ride explorations was the rest of the "Old" Torresdale riverfront community, which included Glenn Foerd, Andalusia, and other old estates of Philadelphia's rich and powerful, including at the time Virginia Knauer, who was an administrator in some department under Richard Nixon. It was interesting for me to learn about this aspect of the "neighborhood", including/especially a tangible connection to bygone centuries.
But back to the book. I found the writing style engaging, a bit florid, but with interesting/archaic words sprinkled throughout (poltron!). An environment of strict, Catholic school obedience and religiosity, similar to what i grew up with, but with an overlay of fancy boarding school and French nuns/culture, is conveyed, though I finished the book wanting to know a bit more about this detail. As it was, the recollections were truly those of a young child, and perhaps this is where/how the book is most successful, in that portrayal of youth, from an experienced essayist, writing many years after the events and feelings described.
March 31, 2026
"The world was very far away from us in those quiet years; we lived in a little universe of our own, governed by laws which were not the laws of men."
"We were not unhappy; on the contrary, we were incredibly busy with the momentous trifles of our restricted lives."
"Discipline did not crush us; it merely gave us something to push against."
Agnes Repplier’s In Our Convent Days is a charming, witty, and deeply nostalgic look at 19th-century religious education. However, through the lens of 2026 radical pedagogy and dialectical materialism, the book reveals itself as a defense of a "disciplinary apparatus" designed to produce submissive, middle-class subjects for the burgeoning American empire.
The Disciplinary Apparatus: Repplier romanticizes the "friction" against authority, but a Marxist analysis sees the convent as a site of ideological state apparatus (ISA). The goal was not "character," but the internalizing of hierarchy. The "discipline" she praises was the systematic breaking of the child's will to ensure they would eventually serve the patriarchal and capitalist structures of the world outside.
Class Isolation: Repplier speaks of "freedom of the mind," but this was a luxury afforded only to those whose material needs were met by the labor of others. The convent was a walled-off sanctuary for the daughters of the bourgeoisie, an elite bubble that ignored the industrial squalor and labor struggles of the early 20th century. Her "monotony" was a privilege.
The Erasure of the Labor Behind the Walls: Who cooked the meals? Who scrubbed the floors? Repplier’s "visionary universe" is populated only by nuns and students. A materialist reading demands we acknowledge the invisible labor of the lay sisters and working-class staff whose exploited work made Repplier’s intellectual "armour" possible.
Repplier is a master of the "sanitized memoir." She turns a system of rigid social reproduction into a whimsical tale of girlhood. It’s a brilliant example of how literature can be used to mask the structural violence of "traditional" education. Read it for the prose, but analyze it for the walls—both the stone ones she describes and the ideological ones she helps build.
Recommended for: Historians of education and those interested in how the 19th-century elite refined their "spirits" while ignoring the material world.
Not recommended for: Radical educators, proponents of unschooling, or anyone who finds "discipline" to be a euphemism for class-based indoctrination.
"We were not unhappy; on the contrary, we were incredibly busy with the momentous trifles of our restricted lives."
"Discipline did not crush us; it merely gave us something to push against."
Agnes Repplier’s In Our Convent Days is a charming, witty, and deeply nostalgic look at 19th-century religious education. However, through the lens of 2026 radical pedagogy and dialectical materialism, the book reveals itself as a defense of a "disciplinary apparatus" designed to produce submissive, middle-class subjects for the burgeoning American empire.
The Disciplinary Apparatus: Repplier romanticizes the "friction" against authority, but a Marxist analysis sees the convent as a site of ideological state apparatus (ISA). The goal was not "character," but the internalizing of hierarchy. The "discipline" she praises was the systematic breaking of the child's will to ensure they would eventually serve the patriarchal and capitalist structures of the world outside.
Class Isolation: Repplier speaks of "freedom of the mind," but this was a luxury afforded only to those whose material needs were met by the labor of others. The convent was a walled-off sanctuary for the daughters of the bourgeoisie, an elite bubble that ignored the industrial squalor and labor struggles of the early 20th century. Her "monotony" was a privilege.
The Erasure of the Labor Behind the Walls: Who cooked the meals? Who scrubbed the floors? Repplier’s "visionary universe" is populated only by nuns and students. A materialist reading demands we acknowledge the invisible labor of the lay sisters and working-class staff whose exploited work made Repplier’s intellectual "armour" possible.
Repplier is a master of the "sanitized memoir." She turns a system of rigid social reproduction into a whimsical tale of girlhood. It’s a brilliant example of how literature can be used to mask the structural violence of "traditional" education. Read it for the prose, but analyze it for the walls—both the stone ones she describes and the ideological ones she helps build.
Recommended for: Historians of education and those interested in how the 19th-century elite refined their "spirits" while ignoring the material world.
Not recommended for: Radical educators, proponents of unschooling, or anyone who finds "discipline" to be a euphemism for class-based indoctrination.
December 5, 2019
28/100 (= 1.6/6) ≈ 1 Stars
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews