Summary of Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The college bell was not the voice of God, but simply a convenience. It was not inviting me to a meeting with God. God was no longer calling me to anything. The smallest, most mundane job had had sacred significance last year, but now all that was over.
#2 I was late for dinner at the convent, and when I pushed open the heavy glass door, I was greeted by a riot of color and exuberant laughter. Instead of the monochrome convent scene I had been imagining, there was a cheerful profanity.
#3 I opened my first attempt to tell the story of my return to secular life by explaining that I had no sense of boundless opportunity. I felt sad and regretful, and I was constantly wracked by a great regret.
#4 The students at the table were my friends, and they had been wonderful to me. They had helped me buy my first secular clothes, and they had escorted me to dinner my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for my decision.

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Biography
• Lettres et linguistique
• Literary Figures

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 07 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822527478
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The college bell was not the voice of God, but simply a convenience. It was not inviting me to a meeting with God. God was no longer calling me to anything. The smallest, most mundane job had had sacred significance last year, but now all that was over.

#2

I was late for dinner at the convent, and when I pushed open the heavy glass door, I was greeted by a riot of color and exuberant laughter. Instead of the monochrome convent scene I had been imagining, there was a cheerful profanity.

#3

I opened my first attempt to tell the story of my return to secular life by explaining that I had no sense of boundless opportunity. I felt sad and regretful, and I was constantly wracked by a great regret.

#4

The students at the table were my friends, and they had been wonderful to me. They had helped me buy my first secular clothes, and they had escorted me to dinner my first public appearance as a defrocked nun. But they were probably wary of prying too closely into the reasons for my decision.

#5

I did not speak about my old life to anyone, and people assumed that I had simply put the past behind me. But I knew that I had not left the convent because I had to do public penance, but because I had failed to find God.

#6

I began to realize that the world had changed while I was in training. I had been raised in a convent, where we were taught to be obedient and submissive, but these young people seemed openly rebellious. They even took part in demonstrations.

#7

I entered the secular world completely ignorant of the problems of our time, and because I lacked basic information, I could not make head or tail of the newspapers. I needed a crash course in the current political scene, but this was not available.

#8

I found myself drawn into the climate of protest at my college. I had been approached the previous term and asked if I would let my name go forward as a candidate in the forthcoming elections for the Junior Common Room committee. I had been reluctant, but my supporters were insistent.

#9

I had to participate in student politics, and I was drawn into the debate about whether or not to allow women to attend the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The more radical students wanted mixed-sex colleges, while the more conservative students wanted the gate hours to remain the same.

#10

I was no longer a representative of the Catholic Church, and I had little interest in defending the church’s traditional teachings on sexual matters. I was drained and exhausted by the events of the past few weeks, and had little energy to spare for this battle.

#11

I had now been studying at Oxford for nearly eighteen months, and for two years before that I had been preparing for the rigorous entrance examinations to the university. I had acquired a healthy respect for the limits of my own knowledge and expertise.

#12

I was scared of Maureen Mackintosh, the president of the JCR, who was extremely politically radical. I was expected to go with her to meet with Miss Franklin, and I dreaded that she would treat me with disdain.

#13

I had thrown in my lot with the sexual revolution, but when I went to my first party, I was not so sure. The noise almost knocked me sideways. The parties I had attended before the convent had been sedate, elderly affairs.

#14

I was completely unprepared for the culture shock that was waiting for me when I left the convent. The Beatles were a current that united everybody at the party, a thread that bound the room together. They were the spokesmen of their generation, but I was still an outsider.

#15

I was completely out of my element when I went to a dance party at a college. I had been trained in absolute physical restraint, and I could not dance. I was miserably aware that I looked like a queen, in my suburban, matronly clothes, carrying my ubiquitous handbag like a shield.

#16

I was in exile from everything that made sense. I could not take anything for granted, and I did not know how to interpret the sixties world that had come into existence while I was away. I felt lost in a universe that was suddenly alien.

#17

I returned home from the convent, and while my family welcomed me with open arms, I was unable to respond to their affection. I was frozen and could feel what people meant when they said their heart had turned to stone.

#18

The novitiate is a conditioning for nuns, and it becomes their entire world. They are completely isolated from the outside world, and they speak to the other nuns only on special feast days.

#19

I had entered a twilight zone between life and death, and instead of being transfigured, I had gotten the worst of all worlds. I was scared stiff, unable to love or accept love, and I had become less than human.

#20

Returning to the family home was difficult, as I kept meeting my former self, the undamaged, seventeen-year-old Karen. I had done very well at Oxford so far, and was expected to get a first-class degree. With that under my belt, I could become an academic.

#21

I was assigned a new tutor at one of the men’s colleges. His name was Dr. Brentwood Smyth, and he was a reputedly very clever young don. He did not think much of my academic achievement, and he wanted me to write about one poem for a week and then tell him what it meant to me.

#22

I was unable to complete the assignment, and when I was given the topic again, I was unable to come up with anything meaningful. I didn’t know what the poem said to me, and I was thinking of some other lines by Coleridge, written in a period of deep depression.

#23

The author’s postulantship made him dependent on the church, and he was not able to have any ideas of his own.