La Religieuse

In Diderot’s text, Suzanne Simonin, a bastard child, is sent to a convent to atone for her mother’s sin. Her mother hopes that by forcing her daughter to lead the cloistered life of a nun, she will gain the eternal rest she lost by sinning with her lover.
Suzanne struggles in vain against this injustice, and fights to escape the cell ‘(...) where the days are spent measuring the height of the walls. ”
In truth, Suzanne is being punished for a circumstance for which she is not responsible: her illegitimacy. She is not only locked away in a convent but, above all, trapped within her own identity and destiny. This is perhaps the worst form of confinement: being locked away within oneself.
The story of this confinement takes place at the end of the 18th century, in a religious institution, yet it has a very contemporary resonance. For whilst our era has developed its own ways of marginalising those it deems undesirable, the struggle of those trying to break free retains the intensity of Suzanne Simonin’s fight two centuries earlier. Because a cell will always remain a cell, whatever system created it.