Questions concerning Victorian convents

[indri]

Assume, for the sake of it, that I know very little about organised religion. All my memories of Sunday school involve colouring in Joseph's coat.

So how long would one spend in a convent before one could take holy orders? What might the preparation involve? Could anyone point me towards a URL or book on life in mid-Victorian nunneries? My google skills seem to be failing me tonight and I want to get back to the writing.

Comments

Re: maybe one of these would help...

[eac.livejournal.com]

A little of both: I'm generally interested in the 18th and 19th century English speaking world (English because I'm lazy and not very good at languages), but also just wanted to see what I could find.