What is Susanna, what are the other nuns, if not living human beings, freely born, who are plucked out of their natural state and chained together to become slaves of public prejudice and, above all, of religion. Diderot is a brave, pateticly excited humanist who, while criticizing, at the same time protects man and, in particular, the degrading position of the woman of the people. In fact, the root cause of her suffering is the parents who forcibly send her to a monastery because she is a bastard daughter and her presence in the home of the honorable bourgeois brings, according to their understanding, a disgrace to their home.

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When we read Diderot's novel "La Religieuse", we admire artistic craftsmanship in personality building by convincingly depicted contradictions and struggles in the midst of believing people, from the profound humanist ideas of the craving freedom of Susanna. Here the whole action unfolds in the society of religious people and develops conflicts testifying to a different approach to the faith, to a different attitude towards the idea of ​​the supernatural and the divine. Diderot is very familiar with the scientific trends of his time. He is particularly fascinated by discoveries in the field of biological sciences. He knows better than any other defect in his work, he is thought to be born to art, to geometry. Susanna is an image of a liberal, secular woman who can not resign to the dark and murderous setting in the monastery. She strongly condemns the violence against the religious conscience and considers to a great extent the immoral behavior of those who force the believer to spend his life in complete retreat.

Violence, in her opinion, is incompatible with true faith and virtue, and therefore it has inevitably beget hypocrisy, lie, treachery, cruelty, and all other vices. At the same time, while maintaining the view of the freedom of the believer, Diderot's character casts doubt on the need for the existence of ecclesiastical institutions with a distinctly antisocial purpose. Diderot completes her novel with Susan's victory, who has managed, at the cost of many pains, sufferings and sacrifices, to win her freedom and to fight the vicious mores of society to seek her place in life, her personal happiness. But the path of this victory is so difficult, painful and murderous that Susan, entering the monastery at the height of her youth, goes out after a few years of it completely collapsed physically. She dies with unsuccessful dreams of the future and the moral satisfaction of a victor over religious fanaticism and conservatism.

Diderot leads the reader on the path not of inventions, but of actual events and facts, and manages to confront him with great religious clashes, against harsh and terrifying scenes devaluing the halo of divine faith, pushing the thought ultimately to the idea of ​​disappointment with the notion of God , for its frustration and infertility. Thus the writer, through the means of artistic generalization and emotional impact, has already discovered the prospect of overcoming mistrust in indifference, infertility in unbelief, denial of that reality that gives birth not only to constant anxieties but also to real human tortures and suffering. "La Religieuse" is a talented and uncompromising reproof of fake and unnatural religious morality. The novel stands out among a long series of anti-clerical works in European literature. The enlightened philosopher and adherent of the "natural" morality, Diderot, has a particular apathy toward the church, religion, and especially the parasitic monastic institution. His training in the Jesuits has undoubtedly fueled this apathy, and perhaps it is also irrelevant the fact that one of his sisters went to a monastery where he lost his mind. This book may be one of the best parodies, the monastic life ever made.

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part 1

part 2