In the book Mariette in Ecstasy, Rob Hansen paints the story of an extraordinary event that took place in a priory in upstate New York. Its depiction of life in the priory centers on the new Mariette Baptiste, the beautiful young daughter of a local doctor, and the controversial events that threaten to tear the priory apart from within. Rob Hansen does an incredible job of involving the reader in the priory and allowing them to see what kind of life the nuns live. On Mariette's first day, the women rise at five for a call-and-response ritual, in which Sister Hermance shouts, "In Jesus Christ, my sisters, let us arise!" and the sisters respond: "Praise be to his holy name!" (Page 5). The women follow a strict and regular schedule for the rest of the day. Many complex rituals and tasks are incorporated into their lifestyle, which have been almost completely legitimized by their repetition. The women of the priory also live a highly ascetic life, believing that hard work and simple living conditions alone can yield an experience that is greater than anything attainable through other worldly goals. Mariette herself writes prayerfully: "If it were necessary to give up all the worldly pleasures of my life to gain an instant of happiness for you, I would do it without hesitation." (Page 135). Even the way the sisters live their spiritual life has a touch of Peter Berger's idea of ​​masochism. In Mariette's conversations with Père Marriott, she says, “when I began to meditate on the crucifixion and the trials of Christ in this world, I was caught up in my thoughts and found myself again before Jesus, who was suffering such terrible pain. .. A liberation. .....middle of paper......common problem of theodicy. If God is good, why shouldn't he help his followers and prevent them from being led astray? The act of calling a surgeon implies that religion is not "good" or "powerful" enough to question the order of things within the priory and even the structure of plausibility that has been firmly established for so long . Ron Hansen for the most part avoids directly addressing these religious questions; instead Mariette in Ecstasy aligns more with what Mikhail Bakhtin claims is a novel, a presentation of many perspectives. Ultimately these two perspectives both have their own idea of ​​what the objective truth of the presented world is, and while Ron Hansen avoids directly presenting one side as the right one, his novel brings out the existence of more than one side, which from it's just more than many similar religious works do.