An account of the feminization of the Church in 17th-century France and as far abroad as New France. This book is intended for students of 17th century France, historians of religion and gender.

In The Social History of the Cloister Elizabeth Rapley goes beyond the monastic rulebooks, legal and notarial records, and memoirs of famous women who passed through monastery doors to the chronicles, letters, and other little-known writings produced by nuns for and about themselves. Working from these accounts, Rapley is able to provide a far more complex picture of women who, as a whole, were much less otherworldly than the older convent literature would have us believe, much less thwarted and unhappy than their detractors have long maintained, and much less irrelevant than some historians...

A study of life in teaching convents across France through two hundred years of history, a history that provided the beginnings and inspiration for most of today's institutions for the Catholic education of girls.