Both novels have a similar topic taken up from the chronicle and the nun as character. In Verga’s novel the protagonist is "canonical": a young girl who unwillingly becomes a nun, where as Serao’s protagonist is an old nun of enclosed order who is forced to return to the secular world where she suffers a social and human decline. She mirrors the woman’s condition in the XIXth century society. In the article the reception of two novels will be presented and we will probe, according to Lefevere’s theory of patronage, to what extent both works are accepted as a part of literary canon.