The Collaborative International Dictionary
Anchoress \An"cho*ress\, n. A female anchoret.
And there, a saintly anchoress, she dwelt.
--Wordsworth.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"female recluse, nun," late 14c.; see anchorite + -ess.
Wiktionary
n. A female anchorite. A woman who chooses to withdraw from the world to live a solitary life of prayer and contemplation.
Wikipedia
Anchoress is a 1993 British drama film directed by Chris Newby. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
The screenplay is partly based on accounts of an historical female anchorite, Christine Carpenter, who was walled into her anchorhold in a village church in Surrey, England, in 1329. The story revolves around the girl's mystical visions of the Virgin Mary, the Priest who walls her into his village church, and his dislike of her mother, a midwife whom he regards as a witch.
The film is shot in black-and-white and visually resembles the works of Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, especially The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Usage examples of "anchoress".
Perhaps in lands where I am not already known as a figure of fun, an anchoress forever in hiding.
Technically, I intend to become an anchoress, a kind of religious hermit.
Exile anchoress turns out to be just as much of a fraud as the ministering nun in the hospice for the dying.
The ninth rule ordered that an unmarried monk and anchoress, each from a different place, should not stay in the same hostel or house, nor travel together in one chariot from house to house nor converse freely together.
Egyptian courtesan turned anchoress and canonized, famous in the middle ages and revived to-day in the repulsive masterpiece of M.