Following Anne Radcliffe in creating fiction of the Gothic genre, M. G. Lewis published his sensation fiction, The Monk, for a public eager to indulge in entertainment highly dependent on horror elements. Unlike Radcliffe’s more sophisticated The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Lewis attempted no rational explanation of the crude supernatural elements present in his novel.
Only 20 years old when he published Ambrosio, or The Monk, Lewis had nevertheless invested great effort in study of the literature produced by the decidedly more melancholy Germans. Upon reading Udolpho, he so admired it that he immediately wrote an imitation piece. When The Monk appeared, the immorality inherent in Lewis’s theme of sexual repression on the part of religious devotees proved so great that it was banned. Reissued following Lewis’s revision, in which he eliminated some of Ambrosio’s physical abnormalities, the book proved popular.
Although Mrs. Radcliffe may have found Lewis’s blood-curdling imitation less than complimentary, its effect proved clear in her next novel, The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), which contained a cast of familiar characters, including a monk and a young woman held prisoner in a convent.
In the early chapters of the novel, readers meet the chaste Antonia, who becomes the love of the dashing Lorenzo, and they plan to marry. They meet in a Spanish cathedral where the crowds wait to hear from the popular young monk, Ambrosio. Ambrosio soon finds himself tempted by the beauty of the model for his favorite portrait of the Virgin Mary, Matilda.
Psychoanalytic and feminist critics take note of Matilda’s appearance when she dresses as a boy. Her garb empowered her to enter the monastery, territory strictly forbidden to women. Her masquerade does not last long as she transforms into the stereotypical temptress, luring the aptly named Ambrosio into depravity and the discovery of his own enormous sexual capacity. Eventually he tires of her, and she “redoubled her efforts to revive those sentiments which he once had felt.” Although “disgusted” with Matilda, Ambrosio continues their “illicit commerce,” led not by love but by “the cravings of brutal appetite.”
Matilda then decides to help Ambrosio seduce Antonia. He drives Antonia’s mother to her death and kidnaps Antonia, whom he imprisons in the monastery’s lower levels. Lewis constructs a shocking rape scene, which culminates in Ambrosio making “himself master of her person,” attacking “his prey, till he had accomplished his crime and the dishonour of Antonia.” Ambrosio eventually stabs Antonia to death, and then discovers that the women he destroyed were his own mother and sister, and thus, his acts prove also self-destructive.
Lewis reflects his influence by Goethe’s work when Ambrosio believes he will be rescued by the devil in return for his mortal soul. He appears before the Grand Inquisitor, who condemns the monk to die in an auto da fé. As he approaches death, he discovers that Matilda is a lesser devil herself, and he plunges into eternal damnation in a grisly scene. The demon carries Ambrosio aloft, then dashes him onto rocks where his broken body is attacked by “myriads of insects” who drink his blood, followed by eagles that tear his flesh, digging his eyeballs from their sockets.
The Monk is still enjoyed as a prototype, although most modern readers judge it a silly one, of various genres, including horror and science fiction.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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