An interview with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson is the author of The Letters of Mary Magdalen Montague (Chrism Press, 2021) and A Bloody Habit (Ignatius 2018). She is a homeschool instructor and mother of five children. Her most recent work is Brother Wolf (Chrism Press, 2021). Brother Wolf tells the tale Athene Howard, the daughter of Charles Howard, a mythologist who, like George Eliot’s Rev. Edward Casaubon, is searching for the “key to all mythologies,” while, at the same time, neglecting his precocious and intelligent daughter. Athene eventually comes across a family tormented by a curse that will changes them into monstrous werewolves. Athene and a group of intrepid Dominican priests must battle these monsters in the hope of saving lives and (through God’s grace) saving souls.

The following is a wide-ranging interview with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson and Jesse Russell

Eleanor, like many Catholic parents, you have a wide variety of interests. You are both a novelist as well as a homeschooling wife and mother. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? How do you manage to live in a variety of worlds? Is there ever any overlap among them?

There is actually a great deal of overlap, which is a treat! Catholicism and literature permeate our household, with the strong, rational presence of my husband, who is trained as an analytic philosopher, to keep us from going off the deep end. With the children, in the high school courses I teach for Homeschool Connections, and in my writing, I visit and revisit the Western literary canon, as well as its historical and philosophical context. My children are very interested in my novels (even though they aren’t allowed to read them yet), and in my classes, and they offer feedback and suggestions. There’s also something remarkably maturing to one’s ideas about preternatural horrors in the experience of toddler emotions. Overall, the balancing act requires prayer, discipline, and a sense of humor. I am always in need of growth in the first two qualities; for the third, reflexive laughter is one of my awkward coping mechanisms.

Your novel Brother Wolf deals with a strained father-daughter relationship due to a professorial father’s interest in study. Is it possible to get lost in not only fantasy but the world of books and knowledge?

Absolutely. As you note, Charles Howard, the father of my narrator, exemplifies this. He has gone so far down the rabbit hole of his own ideas that he sees Athene as “The Interruption” (when he sees her at all). His background, as a lapsed Catholic priest, speaks to the danger of playing with unhealthy “knowledge”. His ambitious academic forays into proto-Jungian mythological theory destroyed his faith. He cannot respond healthily to legitimate criticism. Though generally a dusty old duffer, encountering someone whom he perceives as challenging his storehouse of knowledge rouses him to be quite vicious (this is shown in his strange relationship with Sister Agatha and other Catholics from his past). According to Aquinas, one of the five intellectual virtues is prudence. If the pursuit of knowledge leads one to neglect one’s duties of state or fosters vicious habits—there is something clearly problematic about that pursuit or that knowledge. Athene too requires guidance and discipline. Both her desire for knowledge and her erratic imagination could get her into serious trouble.

One of the other elements of Brother Wolf is how one’s past and one’s family haunt him or her (sometimes literally). How does the past haunt us? Can we be free of it?

This question seethes with Old Testament significance! “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation…” (Exodus 20). It is a spiritual and a psychological principle. We can draw out Original Sin, as our inheritance from Adam, the operation of the demonic in terms of generational curses and other sources of oppression, as well as wounds and peculiarities of a family. Not only do our actions have consequences, but those consequences can impact down the generations. This reality often impacts fiction, which explains the high percentages of bad or absent parents in great tales! Parents, for better or for worse, represent origins and formation. Seeking freedom from the oppression of the past, particularly as regards questionable fathers, is, I think, one of the most important themes of Brother Wolf. It can be attained through discipline, prayer, and the other tools of spiritual warfare.

Brother Wolf is also a book about the resurgence of the old gods as well as the persistence of paganism in the West. It seems in our own time that these pagan gods—or rather demons—have reemergence throughout popular culture in the West. Why are the gods our ancestors rejected now in vogue?

Post-Enlightenment man is such a superstitious, gullible creature! A few hundred years ago we threw out the intelligibility of the world, reducing it to the merely natural! Farewell, metaphysics! Farewell, a coherent receptivity to the supernatural or the preternatural! One of the results, in addition to a relativistic reduction of our historical understanding (so we can go around shopping for this or that belief structure, as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on par with the horrifying rituals of the Aztecs), has been the rise of spiritualism and the occult. So many people, seeking deeper meaning and assuming one idea system is as good as another, stray into very dangerous territory. With the ancient gods (who are, according to exorcists, actually demons), there’s a strong anthropologic component to attract the modern. Selfishly, fallen man too often wants to form the gods in his own image, and if he can justify his own disordered passions at the same time, so much the better! (Of course there is also an innocent love of mythology, which Brother Wolf expresses. Near-memorization of D’Aulaires in childhood was the entry point, followed by middle-school/high-school study of Homes, Virgil, Ovid, and Greek drama. That’s another thing delightful point of intersection; my children love the myths. My youngest brother will sit and regale them, always beginning: “Before God revealed Himself to man, man sought answers to many questions. To answer them, man created many tales of wonder and imagination. This is one of those tales…)

Your novel is set at the turn of the twentieth century. Many Catholics-especially traditionalists—look back to this world with admiration as the last era of now dead civilization. However, others look to this time as being very much like our postmodern and now post millennial age. Why are so many people fascinated with the 19th and early 20th century?

I think there is a mixture of nostalgia and inherent arrogance in our fascination. We’re either in the best of times or we are in the worst of times (to paraphrase Dickens). There was a great deal that was beautiful in those bygone eras, but there was a great deal of horror and ugliness there too. Period costume seems to glamorize it, but there is nothing new under the sun (c.f. Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Your book is a horror novel; indeed, it is not the first work in the genre that you have written. Some Catholics might look askance as this genre. Is there anything redeemable about the horror genre?

I look at the genre askance too! I’m easily terrified and can’t stomach contemporary horror (I’m still rather frightened of Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer). I am quite a devotee of classic Gothic, which we might call the great grandmother of horror. In the Gothic, redeemability is one of the key elements. Encountering the preternatural Other, which is one of the hallmarks of the genre, is not merely meant to be eerie and unnerving; it is supposed to provoke a response of inward realization, which might bring about radical reformation (or a ghastly death). However it ends, the possibility of redemption is so essential, in fact, that, without it, horror is reduced to a nihilistic bloodbath. At its best, Gothic/horror can articulate the true dangers of evil and at least hint at the supreme reality of the Good. It’s a genre where you can play around with damnation and redemption, good and evil, life and death—what other genres allow such things without lapsing into awkward preachiness and bad storytelling?

Stephen King once wrote an essay saying that we watch horror films because we secretly want to be like the monsters in the movies. Is there some truth to this disturbing statement? Does horror reveal our sinfulness?

I would not say we want to be monsters, but that horror, properly wielded, provokes an encounter with the monstrousness inside ourselves. The unnerving weirdness or terrifying violence encountered in classic Gothic/horror operates like a funhouse mirror, illuminating that inner monstrousness of characters and their (and our) need for grace. You can see this to varying degrees with the greatest works of the tradition, such as Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Are werewolves and vampires real?

(This question emerged when my husband ill-advisedly answered the children when they asked: “What are vampires?”—a question I had successfully dodged for years.) Do I think that evil spirits are likely to manifest in the form of undead blood-suckers or men who literally turn into wolves under the influence of the moon? Very likely not. As Fr. Thomas Edmund Gilroy would say: such theatricality would be counterproductive, and might motivate men to consider that, if there are vampires and werewolves, mightn’t there be beings representative of goodness—angels or even the Supreme Being Himself? Much better to leave fallen man to sin his way to hell without shocking him and potentially awakening his spiritual sensibilities! Figuratively, of course, notions of werewolves and vampires provide a rich ground for moral, anthropological, and spiritual-hierarchical reflection. With these preternatural villains, we can explore demonic oppression, the authority structures inherent both in the celestial orders and the tyrannical government of Satan—and our own fallen natures.

Your work also deals with “secrets” hidden among members of religious orders. Many Catholics have been scandalized by actions by individual priests and religious. How do we deal with the werewolves in the Church?

More bad or neglectful fathers! Being wounded through the weakness and sins of priest must be counted as among the most horrifying and traumatic experiences a member of the faithful can experience. The response must be, I think, akin to that provided by the werewolf-rehabilitating Franciscans of my novel: discipline, penance, and prayer. I also recall the words of Hilaire Belloc, who described the Church as “An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.” The scandal we encounter through fallen members of the Church—including ourselves— serves as a backwards reminder that we are the Body of Christ. The gates of hell will not prevail, in spite of our best efforts.

Your work also has religious who heroically fight against both intellectual and real world “monsters.” So often the good and simple religious who struggle to serve Christ everyday are forgotten. How important are religious and priests in particular in our struggle against evil in our lives?

Religious and priests remain critical to this spiritual battle. I recall something I heard a Dominican preacher note: cloistered nuns are the red blood cells of the Body of Christ. As a child I rather imagined religious as being removed from the action—this is quite wrong, of course. They’re on the front lines. Further, in practical terms, we can’t forget the authority structure. There is an ontological difference between ordained priests and a laywoman such as myself. There are many prayers that can only be prayed by a priest, whose authority is the authority of Jesus Christ. Misplaced desire for inclusion or an unbridled spirit of egalitarianism too often robs us of the spiritual weaponry we require for this battle—or of the proper personnel for it!