Kitty+at+the+convent

Kitty at the convent by V. Kurbatova

I have read the novel the “Painted Veil” by William Somerset Maugham, who was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. I was interested in the chief hero, Kitty, and I’d like to tell of her in the convent. The Mother Superior was the head of the convent. She was a woman of middle age, assured but emaciated. The Mother Superior came to the convent 10 years before the epidemic and brought 7 nuns with her. Unfortunately, some of them died because of the cholera. When Kitty went to the convent for the first time, the Mother Superior showed her the chapel, altarpiece and other places of the convent. There they walked along cool white corridors. And Kitty saw a number of Chinese girls which were working at elaborate embroideries; the younger girls which were doing plain sewing, hemming, and stitching. And there were tiny orphans under the charge of a Chinese convert. After this visit to the convent, which moved Kitty so much, she wanted to help nuns and started to work there. The nuns were busy from morning till night with a hundred duties but none of the Kitty’s work was very important and she would have liked to do something which was more arduous. Nuns were wonderful and so kind but there was a wall between them and Kitty. Kitty was astonished that those nuns gave up everything, their home, country, love, children and freedom for a life of sacrifice, poverty, obedience and prayer. Kitty understood that she wasn’t ready for it and it was very alien to her. When the door of the convent was closed behind her Kitty was very upset because she was lonely and she didn’t want to go home back.