ABSTRACT

Touch can replace or reinforce other senses in a way that others apparently cannot. Blind nuns find their way around the convent by touch: they see with their hands, or their stick is the organ of some sixth sense'. This chapter deals with each of the issues and considering the nuns' ideas of touch itself; of texture; of proximate and remote touch; of hands; and flesh; of gesture, language and its tactile attributes. The contextual connection between social association and touch suggests a concern to prohibit undue intimacy of any kind. The nuns' clothing ceremonies symbolically marked their transition into egalitarian religious life. They were a prelude to their eventual profession a few years later, replicating in many ways the rituals of secular marriage. The hands of Teresa are literally central to her self-writing, and figuratively central to her posthumous iconography.