Abstract
Anti-Catholic narratives like Barker's emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in tandem with escalating transnational Protestant fears over the dramatic rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the US and England. Barker's narrative validates the wandering nun, whose flight across the convent threshold, across the Atlantic, and through the wilderness confers upon her the power to occupy multiple worlds and to convey hidden knowledge from one sphere to another. The 'White Nun' exploits this power in order to advance what the narrative poses as the cause of justice in the unmasking of villains, the reuniting of lovers, and the thwarting of despotic authority. With its transnational readership, its traveling plot, and its transgressive heroine, Barker's version of the convent narrative demonstrates its ultimate fantasy to consist of the free female agent who belongs to every country and to none. It also describes whose mobility and in-betweenness triumph over the fixity and limitations of national, religious, and gender-identity categorizations.