num_pages: 104
description: My God! Pardon me if I have dared to make sacred things serve a profane love; but it is you who have put passion into our hearts; they are not crimesI feel this in the purity of my intentions. Agatha writing to Zo In pre-revolutionary Paris a young woman falls for a handsome young priest. To be near him she dresses as a man enters his seminary and is invited to become a fully ordained Catholic priesta career forbidden to women then as now. Sylvain Marchal's epistolary novella offers a biting rebuke to religious institutions and a hypocritical society; its views on love marriage class and virtue remain relevant today. The book ends in La Nouvelle France which became part of British-run Canada during Marchal's lifetime. With thorough notes and introduction by Sheila Delany this first translation of Marchal's novella La femme abb brings a little-known but revelatory text to the attention of readers interested in French history and literature history of the novel women's studies and religious studies.
language: English
title: The Woman Priest: A Translation of Sylvain Maréchal's Novella, La femme abbé
publisher: University of Alberta Press