In this important study, the reader is taken inside the convents of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Quebec and, through the lives and work of women who chose to take the veil, discovers the complex social, vocational, and spiritual factors that made religious life a viable alternativeto marriage, motherhood, and spinsterhood.The book focuses on two religious communities, the teaching order of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the nursing order of the Sisters of Misericorde and, in the context of Quebec socio-economic and religious life, discusses the sisters' work, the expansion of community membership,and structural changes in and differences between these two orders. In addition, the study examines the close relationship between nuns and early Quebec feminists, some of whom led in the struggle for women's rights from inside the convent.