The End of an Odd Year

And then it was New Year's Eve!

Goodness, can you believe it will be 2009 tomorrow? What an odd year 2008 has been, for various reasons, but as I say in my column (out in StarMag this Sunday), it was a great reading year.

Over Christmas I read Summer's Ending by Helen McClelland, which was one of the books in the Christmas parcel from Helen. The book starts off in Penang, Malaya, which Helen thought might be interesting for me, and so it was!

The book is about two sisters. Margaret and Jean. It's 1939 and they live in Penang, in a big colonial-style house by the sea, with their parents. But this is just in the first couple of chapters. After that they are shipped off to boarding school in Surrey, England.

The boarding school is a convent. I have always enjoyed reading about convent schools (having been to two myself) and this one was very well portrayed, with lots of details about the school, how it's run, the nuns, and the students.

Although Frost in May, by Antonia White, is one of my favourite books set in a convent school, I dislike how grim the school (the Convent of the Five Wounds) in that book is and how strict the nuns are. The students seem almost to be bullied by the sisters in that book. The nuns at my two schools were mostly lovely so it was nice to read about kind nuns in Summer's Ending.

The book led me to do some research on the two convent schools I attended. I don't know why I never until now took the trouble to find out more about the orders that founded the schools. The first school, which I attended from age five til 11 was the Canossian Convent (motto: "Via, Veritas, Vita", which means "the way, the truth, the life", badge on the left), founded by the order of the Sisters of Conossa, an Italian order. The second school was a French convent, The Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (motto: "Simple dans ma virtue, forte dans moi devoir", which means "simple in virtue, steadfast in duty", badge right, read more about the history of the convent here). I was there from age 11 and a half til 17.

Of course, by the time I attended those schools, most of the teaching staff were not from the sisterhood. However, nuns still lived on the premises and I was taught by some (I still remember their names and what they looked like).

There were chapels in both schools (the one at the Canossian Convent was beautiful - I used to tiptoe in and wander around, completely spellbound) - crucifixes above the blackboards in all the classrooms (I believe these were removed in the 90s) and statues of Our Lady, the Virgin Mary. At the Canossian Convent, the statue was in a grotto in a garden on a little hill that you had to climb a long flight of uneven stone steps to reach. All this is now gone and the convents are more or less like any other school in Malaysia.

Oh, I have to add that the nuns at the Canossian Convent wore longer habits than the ones at CHIJ. I was quite surprised when I changed schools and first encountered CHIJ nuns and their legs! The skirts were virtually minis (well, not quite but compared to the skirts of the Canossian nuns, they were quite daring!). Also, the CHIJ nuns wore blouses with normal collars, whereas the Canossian nuns wore high collars - they looked a little like dog collars.

However, I found the Canossian Convent more relaxed, academically. At CHIJ the girls did nothing but swot and compare marks. I hated it and after my first month there, I faked apendicitis so I could skip school!

Comments

[Daphne]

Actually the convents I attended were not boarding schools, but day schools.

I also forgot to add that I was held by a nun (Sister Mary Tay) when I was baptised. This was because my godmother was away at university on the day of baptism. Sister Mary was an ex-classmate of hers at the Canossian Convent.

I would love to see Sister Mary again.

[Delia]

Like you, I went to a girls religious boarding school. I too have read Antonia White's semi-autobiographical novel and read other novels and memoirs about lives in boarding schools. Naturally, I was drawn to your review--and to your experience. Unfortunately, I was not in a boarding school that treated children well. It relieves me to hear that not everyone endured what I did! I've started a blog, http://girlssentaway.com, chronicling my boarding school days. I hope you'll stop by, especially since I just quoted your post on it today: http://tinyurl.com/9hha56