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Summary Of Masterless Mistresses By Emily Clark

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Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society 1727-1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Emily Clark’s book Masterless Mistresses addresses the Ursuline order of nuns in the Louisiana area between 1727 and 1834. Clark argues that the sisters in the Ursuline convent broke traditional roles that had once been attributed to a male position. Clark’s argument is upheld well throughout the entirety of her book, and brings forth new ideas about women’s role in the church throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century in society. Her bibliography contains a variety of sources which support her thesis, and displays the wide selection she chose from to create …show more content…

Because Clark lived in New Orleans she stood to gain a great deal of information from the area. Specifically, since the Ursuline nuns had settled in New Orleans when they arrived. This alone makes the book more credible than if she had not lived there, or understood the area in which they lived so intimately. Unfortunately, the fact that she lived within the area also raises the question of the amount of bias within Masterless Mistresses. However, there was no clear sign of bias within the text itself and the bias that is within it merely supported her thesis. She accessed some of her research from the nuns which are present in New Orleans today, granting the book excellent credibility and her thesis substantial …show more content…

Unfortunately, Clark did not include much information addressing how the nuns shaped the Atlantic. Instead, she predominantly relied on emphasizing their experiences and appearance among others in the Americas and structure of what was their current society in the New Orleans area. Clark has a section within the book entitled “It is the Custom of the Country” which contained the most information about what life was like in France. This chapter is a good start, but it could have included more information by comparing the two nations and contrasting the nuns in the old world with the Ursulines in Louisiana. Clark tended to lend most of her writing on other countries to the Africans and the way this increased the measuring of “piety” among the Ursulines, themselves. Many of the chapters include the enslaved Africans and their interactions with the Ursulines, but she does not include much information on the indigenous of North America and their interactions with the

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