Michel Foucault has exerted a pervasive influence on the concept of power in the twentieth century. By expanding the definition of power, and its horizons, beyond the state or organized institutions, he has bestowed power upon the weak as well as the strong, reconceptualized it from a one-dimensional, to an all-pervasive entity. / This thesis has adopted this expansive view of power and applied it to a study of the religious life within the Congregation de Notre-Dame of Montreal between 1693 and 1796. On a general level, the study, working within the framework of other research that has attempted to broaden the perception of female religious institutions, firmly links the congregation to the cultural, spiritual, political and economic life of its surrounding society. More precisely, it establishes the Congregation de Notre-Dame, within the Canadian historical context, as an institution not primarily founded, developed and centred solely on the work of one sanctified individual---Marguerite Bourgeoys---but one which, from its inception, owed its establishment and its existence to the network of linkages it formed through its mission. On a more specific level, the thesis moves to focus upon the relationship of power to the religious life in terms of three individual convent superiors---Marie Barbier, Marie-Josephe Maugue-Garreau and Marie Raizenne---and it explores these women as agents within their own social, political and spiritual frameworks. / In the process of this entire examination, this thesis set out to widen the perspective of much research surrounding the religious life. It has endeavoured to view the religious existence outside of the traditional dichotomies separating its active and contemplative dimensions, and to explore and give integrity and empowerment to its entirety. The study has also attempted to avoid depicting the existence of these women in terms of binary oppositions, of oppressed vs. the oppressor, and endeavoured to analyze them in terms of exchange. However, in spite of substantial evidence establishing these women as agents in their own right, the thesis inevitably returned, in one form or another, to the conclusion that, in the end, theirs was, indeed, a fragile authority.

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