Page:Saint Theresa of Avila (Gilman 1889).djvu/34

20 nature. She worked upon her morbidly sensitive imagination by telling her of the “reward our Lord gives to those who forsake all things for his sake.” Then she gave her an account of her own conversion, and related how she had resolved to quit the world and devote herself to Christ.

“But still,” Theresa writes, “I did not wish to be a nun, and hoped that God would not be pleased I should be one, though at the same time I was afraid of marriage.”

Here we see the only alternatives open to a woman in the sixteenth century; namely, the cloister or the hearth; moreover, a nun in those days had more independence than a married woman, who was expected to be wholly under the subjection of her husband. There were absolutely no channels open, into which a woman of genius could direct her energy and ambition. The Roman Church taught that wedded life, however pure and noble, was distinctly lower than virginity; and some natures found it easier to vow obedience to God than to an unknown and often unworthy husband.