It was many years ago that you arrived at Whitwood, a happy postulant eager to live the religious life, which felt to you like your calling. Your novitiate, however, was not the happiest.

When you became a novice, Joan, the current Abbess, was still Novice Mistress. Joan was a kindly and indulgent Novice Mistress, and you thought she was weak. You believed firmly in the Rule and strove at all times to embody it in every moment of your life. Your fellow novices, however, were frequently lax, ill-disciplined, and lazy. Joan never seemed particularly interested in correcting them, certainly not with the firmness required, and you always felt like they were allowed to let you and Whitwood down. Several of the novices from that time never took their vows, failing at some stage in their training and returning to secular life. Even the sister who did get through—Phillippa—has always, in your view, lacked the proper discipline to be a nun, being distracted instead by the minutiae of the physical world and the secular parts of her duties. When you had the chance to become Novice Mistress, you eagerly took it—determined to be a better example to the young sisters than Joan was in her time.

You are a great lover of order and discipline, which you see as the foundation of society. You are not by any means cold-hearted and have a great deal of time for your fellow Sisters, whatever their seniority, but you take the Rule very seriously and are genuine in your desire to teach good behaviour to the Novices in your care. You are a firm believer in “A rod and chastising shall give wisdom; but a child, that is left to his own will, shameth his mother.” (Proverbs 29:15), and you get very frustrated when other Sisters intervene to allow Novices to get away with breaches of the Rule.