Monk Ambrosio on Freuds Sofa

Antnio Martins Gomes (UNL CHAM/CHC)

This text, originally published in Portuguese

in 2003, is dedicated to Maria Leonor Machado de
Sousa, whose English Literature classes have
enhanced my attraction to Gothic narrative.

Introduction
There is a place in men's lives
where pictures do in fact bleed, ghosts
gibber and shriek, maidens run forever
through mysterious landscapes from
nameless foes; that place is, of course,
the world of dreams and of the repressed
guilts and fears that motivate them. This
world the dogmatic optimism and shallow
psychology of the Age of Reason had
denied; and yet this world it is the final,
perhaps the essential, purpose of the
gothic romance to assert.
(Leslie A. Fiedler)

The

Monk,

by

Matthew

Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), was

published in 1796, at the height of
the English Gothic novel, among
other

noteworthy

titles

such

as

Vathek (1786), by Horace Walpole,

or The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794),
by

Anne

author

Radcliffe,

this

writer

from

whose

was

deeply

influenced.
The main plot of The Monk,
a romance in three volumes, has Madrid as its scenery in the 17th century. Published
anonymously, it can be summed up in few lines: Ambrosio, a new-born baby, is left at
the doorstep of a Convent, and is taken inside this Capuchin community. Throughout
three decades, Ambrosio achieves a great reputation for his extreme holiness and
oratorical skills, until the moment he is seduced by Matilda de Villanges, a pretty young
woman who, disguised as a novice, had managed to join his religious Order so that she
could be closer to him. The friar eventually yields to female temptation, breaks his vow
of chastity and starts up a tailspin of violence and death: while doing the penitential
1

rites to D. Elvira, he tries to abuse Antonia, her 15 year old daughter; at the very
moment of perpetrating this atrocity in the childs bedchamber, D. Elvira tries to prevent
it and he is forced to kill the lady; then, Ambrosio takes Antonia to the Abbey crypts,
where he finally rapes and slays her with a dagger. Eventually, he is found by the
Inquisition, whose judges charge him with the crimes of murder, sorcery and rape.
Condemned to death by burning, the Devil rescues him from the Auto-de-f flames only
leave him in Hell and, in the closing moments, to make a striking revelation: Elvira and
Antonia were his mother and sister respectively, adding to all his wicked transgressions
the sins of matricide and incest.
By depicting the wonderful
adventures of Ambrosio, The Monk
obtained an instantaneous and sharp
response from critics, who, despite
recognizing its resourceful structure
and thematic fortune, stressed its
blasphemous,
pornographic

libertine,
nature

in

even
some

episodes that caused a negative

moral effect on female readers. Let
us

remember,

for

instance,

an

illustration drawn by Charles Williams

in 1801: "LUXURY or the Comforts of
a Rum p ford" depicts a young
elegant lady alone in her lounge, with
her dress raised up, showing off her
bare and rounded backside turned to
a blazing Rum p ford fireplace, a
reflex of her own desire. At her feet, a languorous cat is stretched up on a rug, as a
feline sign of her dormant lust. The ladys left hand holds one of the three open
volumes of The Monk, and, as under a side effect from reading it, her right hand wanes
within her dress, leading you to presume an act of masturbation.
At the age of 22, Matthew G. Lewis joins Parliament as Member, replacing
William Beckford. In the fourth edition of his controversial novel (1798), the author,
urged by relatives and friends, will eliminate many words considered offensive (such as
desire, incontinence, lust, or ravisher) and will purge the parts more censored by the
public morale, even giving a new title for the book: Ambrosio, or the Monk.

1. The Monk and Psychoanalysis

Sex and erotic imagination are very important for the psychoanalytic approach
on human behaviour. According to the Judeo-Christian myth of creation, God forbids
Adam and Eve to eat, and even taste, the fruit from the tree of knowledge, instead of
commanding this couple to use their sexual organs, as he did with all other animals
(Be fruitful and multiply"). In the Western culture, the sexual act is therefore a sin, a
fault originated from breaking Gods law. However, for Sigmund Freud, sexuality is just
a preformed innate behaviour, with a specific object and target.
Religious rules, exceedingly tyrannical throughout the centuries, turned sex
into an obsession. In The Monk, Matthew Lewis sustains this evidence by plunging into
the dark nature of human mind in order to bring to light the causes of degradation of
this particular act, and the fact of woman being always pointed out as the primary
cause of sin and human misery. Psychoanalytic criticism provides an enhanced
explanation for all the excess and irrationality of Gothic narrative1 and, especially in this
novel, for "the cruel and brutal violence of the lowest human passions" (Sousa 1978,
83). Thus, Ambrosio is the central subject of this text, due not so much to the monks
prominence in the novel (as its title suggests precisely) but particularly to the changes
that take place in this immaculate character: his life gets into a downward spiral right
from the moment when he has his first signs of desire, falls into temptation, and
develops into a disgraceful villain.
Early in the novel, Ambrosio, by reason of his enormous leadership and
attractiveness, stands out in society, in particular among a female audience2. After
having proclaimed conceitedly his capacity to oppose any temptation, this devout friar
of the Order of Capuchins will be subjected to a hard challenge, when destiny makes
him move from a state of confinement to a mundane space, also inhabited by many
passions and appeals:
[...] a Man who has passed the whole of his life within the walls of a Convent,
cannot have found the opportunity to be guilty, even were He possessed of the
inclination. But now, when, obliged by the duties of his situation, He must enter
occasionally into the world, and be thrown into the way of temptation, it is now that it
behoves him to show the brilliance of his virtue. The trial is dangerous; He is just at
that period of life when the passions are most vigorous, unbridled, and despotic; His
established reputation will mark him out to Seduction as an illustrious Victim; [...] (I, I,
21).

"Presenting pasts that the eighteenth century constructed as barbarous or uncivilized, Gothic
fictions seemed to promote vice and violence, giving free reign to selfish ambitions and sexual
desires beyond the prescription of law of familial duty." (Botting 1996, 4).
According to Jean Baudrillard, womans eroticism is quite attracted by success and social
acknowledgment.

2. Flee from the world

In the 17th century, the ideological values of Enlightenment draw attention to
the worthless mischievous existence of the monk, the main representative of the
Roman Catholic doctrine; moreover, the extinction of the Society of Jesus and of many
other ascetic communities illustrates the social hostility towards clergymen at that time.
By following this idea, Mathew Gregory Lewis uses Ambrosio to criticize the monastic
iniquitous condition, as this virtuous character, brought up away from the world, never
had the chance to know its pitfalls and traps and will never be able to face them.
In Politics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle states that human being was not
created to live apart from the world but in society instead, in harmony with his own
nature. Ambrosios Convent symbolizes both his seclusion from the world and his
repressed and unknown emotions - the "slumbering passions" (I, II, 66) to which he
alludes and Matilda cunningly criticizes3: "Unnatural were your vows of Celibacy; Man
was not created for such a state; And were Love a crime, God never would have made
it so sweet, so irresistible!" (II, III, 224). When Agnes speaks to Ambrosio, she uses
hard-hitting words and sums up his life to a simple act of cowardliness: "What
temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed
seduction." (I, II, 49).
By devoting himself to contemplative asceticism, the monk (a lexeme derived
from solitary) tries to rediscover the primal unity through his union with God, and he
invests all his life of celibacy in fighting any libidinal temptation of the flesh. Though, he
will live fragmented forever, incapable to achieve the physical and spiritual harmony he
has been longing for.
Instructed from early childhood about the wickedness of the secular world,
Ambrosio lives apart from all vices and corruptions, but in full psychic conflict with
opposing inner demands: on the one hand, he is led by reason so as to keep a spiritual
behaviour; on the other hand, he is continuously chased by the concupiscentia carnis4.
Having spent thirty years, that is, his entire life in total seclusion, retracing all
his desires and investing his sexual impulses in his ego as a consequence of that
premature deprivation, Ambrosio is an adult person in a full state of innocence. He
himself is a trapped Eros, simply waiting for a slight seduction to break the allegiance
he pledged to chastity.

Unlike what happened with the early Catholic secular clergy, the regular one was always
composed of bachelors.
In the Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, published in 1535, Martin Luther, when
referring to the attempts to repress his desire when he was a monk, also says: "Lust
reappeared constantly. I could not find rest." (Febvre 1976, 44).

3. Original sin
"Monk" Lewis (the name by which the English author was often referred as)
reconstructs in this novel the original Fall of Man, by narrating Ambrosios dreadful fate
from the anabasis in his Sunday pulpit to the katabasis in the crypts, the dungeons,
and finally the precipice that will lead him straight to Hell; there, for six days, he will be
devoured by insects (inferior elements of the Chain of Being). In the plot, we also may
recognize an Edenic intertextuality in the Convent garden, namely when the novice
Rosario reveals his true identity as a seductress lady named Matilda, and,
subsequently, when the monk is stung by a serpent after picking a rose for her. It is not
by accident that the whole space of Ambrosios Convent is symbolically associated with
his Edenic state: the garden is the place where the clergyman gets intimacy with the
opposite sex for the first time, misplacing his innocence. The ongoing Fall of Man
echoes through the female guilt5.
According to theological doctrine, carnal greed is recipient of original sin, an
instinct that lies within man, and lust is an unappeasable fire that heats up human
libido. A court of consciousness named superego will impose on Ambrosio a strong
feeling of guilt6, leading him to disapprove desire and to prohibit himself to fulfil it:
Away, impure ideas! Let me remember, that Woman is forever lost to me." (I,
II, 41).
[...]
My bosom would become the prey of desires, which Honour and my
profession forbid me to gratify, If I resisted them, the impetuosity of my wishes
unsatisfied would drive me to madness: If I yielded to the temptation, I should sacrifice
to one moment of guilty pleasure my reputation in this world, my salvation in the next.
(I, II, 70).

However, despite a stern education received and a harsh repression felt

throughout his life, Ambrosio is not well-succeeded in submitting his carnal desire to
reason, and in avoiding his fomes peccati to burst out; for this reason, he finds himself
under a tension derived from a biological conflict between the reality principle and the
pleasure principle:
Conscience painted to him in glaring colours his perjury and weakness;
Apprehension magnified to him the horrors of punishment, and He already fancied
himself in the prisons of the Inquisition. To these tormenting ideas, succeeded
Matilda's beauty, and those delicious lessons, which once learnt can never be
forgotten. (II, III, 227).

The monk goes through an existential dissension: on the one hand, his
superego tries always to keep him in compliance with the law and the established order
in society; on the other hand, his id drags him towards ordinary love. Given the
5

"And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a
sinner." (First Epistle of Saint Paul to Timothy, 2: 14).
According to Paul Ricoeur, the lexeme "blame" expresses etymologically "self-observation,
self-accusation and self-condemnation by a split consciousness." (N. d., 419).

coexistence of these two conflicting psychological attitudes, we can note the cleavage
of his ego7: "The fact was that the different sentiments, with which Education and
Nature had inspired him, were combating in his bosom: [...]" (II, III, 238).
4. Desire repressed
Christian taboo concerning sex derives largely from some misreading of the I
Epistle to the Corinthians8, in which the Apostle Paul says sexual abstinence is the
ideal state of man, but recognizes that it is a divine gift which many do not have.
Additional examples may be found in Christian ascetical doctrines, in the Patristics
(whose thought believes to be preferable the human race to end than to its
reproduction by sexual intercourse), or in Manichaean ideologies widespread by
medieval Albigenses and Bogomils, who advocate an extreme renouncement of a
worldly and corporeal life9.
By following this approach, any popular homage to the mankind reproduction,
any pagan culture that expresses the human bond through sex, and all social rites
related with basic love instincts will be changed by the Roman Christianity into
diabolical deeds and deadly sins. Ambrosio is one of the victims of this orthodox
regulation of sexual behaviour; since he was born, his education was entrusted to an
abbot and the organization of his libido was managed by the vow of chastity, a very
authoritarian instance that restrains desire and keeps the appeal of flesh away: "He
never saw, much less conversed with, the other sex: He was ignorant of the pleasures
in Woman's power to bestow, [...]." (II, III, 238). Nevertheless, the strict sexual rules
that he is bound are not enough to resist his call for transgression, his need to commit
the supreme excesses10:
But no sooner did opportunity present itself, no sooner did He catch a
glimpse of joys to which He was still a Stranger, than Religion's barriers were too
feeble to resist the overwhelming torrent of his desires. All impediments yielded before
the force of his temperament, warm, sanguine, and voluptuous in the excess. (II, III,
238-239).
7

"[...] it might be preferable to see the law less as an external institution but more in terms of the
superego, as the legislator within. Superego and id; to use one of Freud's older and simpler
formulations, when these conspire together then the self is beleaguered indeed and has no
place to call its own. Gothic is thus a fiction of exile, of bodies separated from minds, of minds
without a physical place to inhabit, [...]." (Punter 1998, 17).
8
It is the case of I Corinthians, 6: 13 ("Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and
the Lord for the body.") and I Corinthians, 7: 1 ("It is good for a man not to touch a woman.").
9
Such is the case of Origen (3rd. Century), that castrated himself after having interpreted literally
a passage from Matthew, 19: 12: For there are some eunuchs, which [...] have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it.".
10
The Apostle Paul defends the law, but he is aware that law itself is also a source of sin, by
urging man to transgress it: "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had
not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt
not covet." (Book of Romans, 7: 7).

In order to express disapproval for monastic seclusion or Catholic repression,

The Monk consistently implements a Protestant strategy in the narrative11. The
Bleeding Nun episode is an excellent case in point of its anti-Catholic bigotry:
Beatrice de las Cisternas took the veil at an early age, not by her own
choice, but at the express command of her Parents. She was then too young to regret
the pleasures, of which her profession deprived her: But no sooner did her warm and
voluptuous character begin to be developed, than She abandoned herself freely the
impulse of her passions, and seized the first opportunity to procure the gratification.
This opportunity was at length presented, after many obstacles whir only added new
force to her desires. (II, I, I73).

5. Desire and female ambivalence

From a description of Saint Teresas Transverberation, the psychoanalyst
Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962) tries to convey us the idea that every mystical
experience is a transposition of a sexual drive, that is, when Catholic believers worship
Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary they are sublimating their own repressed sexuality.
Ambrosio goes through a similar experience when he stares at the portrait of Madonna
hang on the wall of his cell. The strong emotions felt by the main character in delectatio
morosa, a long-lasting state of bliss, before such explicit form of art will cause on him
the return of the repressed; it is in this moment that The Monk attains the sublime, a
Gothic feature par excellence.
If elevating mysticism is intimately linked with carnal lust, than the love of
Ambrosio for the Holy Virgin will grow until he yearns for the object of his worship to be
incarnated: "Oh! if such a Creature existed, and existed but for me! Were I permitted to
twine round my fingers those golden ringlets, and press with my lips the treasures of
that snowy bosom!" (I, II, 41). However, as if aware that he was about to transgress the
limits of his repressed desire, he declares that he is not attracted by the feminine
beauty, but by the iconological aesthetics as science of beauty, that is, by the painting
as art object: "It is not the Woman's beauty that fills me with such enthusiasm. It is the
Painter's skill that I admire, it is the Divinity that I adore!" (I, II,41).
Given the mystical veneration of the Madonna painting and the association of
the Holy Virgin to Matilda, Ambrosios libido turns objectual: this young woman
becomes the object of his desire from the moment she unveils herself in the Convent
garden. Pervaded by sensations which he never felt before, the main character yields
to the adulation of flesh, and joins in a game of seduction that will lead him downhill to
Hell and to the unending damnation of his soul.
11

Virtually anything that concerns Catholicism is exempted from Matthew Lewis criticism.
Observe how, in the incipit, the narration focuses on the church where Ambrosio presides at
the liturgy, not as a sacred space of purification, but as a "vanity fair" and a place of secret
dates between lovers.

This novel describes as well the dual aspect of attraction or repulsion felt by
man towards woman, this dichotomy being due to the fact that he is stuck between the
Virgins uplifting affection (the good mothers purity and compassion) and the sorcerers
dirty love (the bad mothers black magic). Both Antonia and Matilda fall within this
bizarre duality process12; the former, whose unique beauty is so much exalted by the
monk, will contribute to his crucial downfall: "Her hand trembled, as He took it, and He
dropped it again as if He had touched a Serpent. Nature seemed to recoil at the touch.
He felt himself at once repulsed from and attracted towards her, [...]." (III, IV, 387).
When the novel begins, Matilda, praised as a character by the romantic poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is thrush, asexual, and a divine stimulation to Ambrosio. But
this image will fade out as soon as she, bursting with sensuality, begins to reveal the
features of a dominating female:
I love you no longer with the devotion which is paid to a Saint: I love you no
more for the virtues of your soul: I lust for the enjoyment of your person. The Woman
reigns in my bosom, and I am become a prey to the wildest of passions. Away with
friendship! 'tis a cold unfeeling word. My bosom burns with love, with unutterable love.
[...]. (I, II, 89).

Belatedly Ambrosio will perceive how Matilda has changed from a subservient
woman to a demonic witch. If truth be told, Matilda, as revealed at the end of the novel
by Lucifer, had always been his agent13.
The sharp erotic recall that the monk has from the precise moment when
Matilda half-opens her cleavage and shows off her left breast14 is very important in this
12

"The double aspect of the female side of human nature in the Gothic novels does not split the
female figures in half as it does the male characters. Woman as gentle inspiration or as
seductress seems to be two forms of a single image." (MacAndrew 1979, 179).
13
Traditional mysticism states that woman is not only prone to attract the Devil, but also has
anatomically his brand, that is her Fallopian tube resembles an animal with horns. In the Late
Middle Ages, the Inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, in the treatise Malleus
Maleficarum (Latin expression for Hammer of Witches), witness the Catholic point of view on
women and on the fight against satanic influences:
"All wickedness is but too little to the wickedness of woman [...]. What else
is a woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a
natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment,
an evil of nature, painted with fair colors! [...] women are naturally more
impressionable and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit [...];
since they are feebler both in mind and body it is not surprising that they should
come more and more under the spell of witchcraft [...] for the sake of fulfilling their
lust they consort even with devils [...]." in Clive Leatherdale, Dracula - the novel and
the legend. A study of Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece, Wellingborough, The Aquarian
Press, 1986 - Part I, Question 6.
According to the religious myth, the devil managed to seduce heavenly souls by having
shown them an exceptionally beautiful woman. Thus woman represents a means of the
Devil's intermediate enticement: Eve is the source of all sin and humanity diseases, but in
the Assyrian-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which tells the great deluge, much earlier than
the Judeo-Christian myth, there is also an episode in which Enquidu, when he is led to taste
the fruit of love, is a victim of female seduction. Therefore, The Monk tells also the story of a
mans fall as a result of a feminine seduction.
14
The female breast is symbolically also represented as the Devil's pillow.

novel, as it is through this isolation phenomenon, by focusing the narrative on the erotic
detail of this scene, that we realize the devilish stratagem:
She had torn open her
habit, and her bosom was half
exposed. The weapon's point
rested upon her left breast: And
Oh! that was such a breast! The
Moon-beams darting full upon it,
enabled the Monk to observe its
dazzling whiteness. His eye dwelt
with insatiable avidity upon the
beauteous Orb. A sensation till
then unknown filled his heart with
a mixture of anxiety and delight: A
raging fire shot through every
limb; The blood boiled in his
veins, and a thousand wild
wishes
bewildered
his
imagination.
'Hold!' He cried in a
hurried faultering voice; 'I can
resist no longer! Stay, then,
Enchantress;
Stay
for
my
destruction!" (I, II, 65).

6. Dream, confession of desire

Adamic man having lost his primary unity while asleep, it is also in sleeps, and
particularly when dreaming, that he will try to retrieve it. This idea falls under the theory
of archetypes, by which the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believes there is something
beyond the personal unconscious: the collective unconscious that keeps all the
memories of one culture.
If woman is mans dream (see Baudrillard 1979, 158), then she is his
unconscious object of desire. After seeing Matilda, the monk's thoughts start to be
dominated by voluptuous and luxurious sensations; however, as craving does not
match with the social image, his libido emerges only in lonesome shadowy spaces, far
away from the intrusive regulation of the monastic superego, such as his cell, Antonias
chamber, the catacombs or the vaults, all of them standing for the irrational immanence
of his subterranean and labyrinthine id.
In his privacy, right in front of Mother Marys portrait, Ambrosio continually
resorts to fantasy in order to mitigate his craving, repressed all over three decades.
Such daytime fantasies, formed in a waking state when consciousness loosens its

censorship, stimulate the monks desire; his short soliloquy reveals all his anxiety and
psychological condition:
Oh! if such a Creature existed, and existed but for me! Were I permitted to
twine round my fingers those golden ringlets, and press with my lips the treasures of
that snowy bosom! Gracious God, should I then resist the temptation? Should I not
barter for a single embrace the reward of my sufferings for thirty years? (I, II, 41).

It is however overnight that all his representations of sexual desire will be

manifested without restraint. The high stage of repression of this pious man15 is visible
in the day residues, oneiric elements that encompass the moments when he worshiped
the Virgin Mary in his room and when he was seduced by Matilda in the garden:
During his sleep his inflamed imagination had presented him with none but
the most voluptuous objects. Matilda stood before him in his dreams, and his eyes
again dwelt upon her naked breast. She repeated her protestations of eternal love,
threw her arms round his neck, and loaded him with kisses: He returned them; He
clasped her passionately to his bosom, and... the vision was dissolved. Sometimes his
dreams presented the image of his favourite Madona, and He fancied that He was
kneeling before her: As He offered up his vows to her, the eyes of the Figure seemed
to beam on him with inexpressible sweetness. He pressed his lips to hers, and found
them warm: The animated form started from the Canvas, embraced him affectionately,
and his senses were unable to support delight so exquisite. Such were the scenes, on
which his thoughts were employed while sleeping: His unsatisfied Desires placed
before him the most lustful and provoking Images, and he rioted unknown to him. (I,
II,67).

Erotic fantasy being intimately linked to sexual repression, according to

psychoanalytic theory, Ambrosios dreams will toil naturally as a means of suppressing
his unconscious latent desire:
[...] the dreams of the former night were repeated, and his sensations of
voluptuousness were yet more keen and exquisite.
The same lust-exciting visions floated before his eyes: Matilda, in all the
pomp of beauty, warm, tender, and luxurious, clasped him to her bosom, and lavished
upon him the most ardent caresses. (I, II, 84).

Since the Middle Ages, the confession, by means of its precise characteristics,
is also one of the most important catholic rituals for truth-seeking. Since sex is the
confessors favourite theme (see Foucault n. d., 58-61), the penitent is compelled to
disclose his innermost feelings and desires. In The Monk, Ambrosio uses this ritual not
to purge any worldly sin, but just as a subtle attempt to entice and arouse desire. This
applies to the confession of the novice Rosario, who, when she reveals herself to be a
woman, causes on the monk an increase desire, or his efforts to obtain evidences of
Antonias passion in private:
Have you never seen the Man, whom you wished to be your Husband?
[...]
'And do you not long to see that Man, Antonia? Do you feel no void in your
heart, which you fain would have filled up? Do you heave no sighs for the absence of
some one dear to you, but who that some one is, you know not?.

15

According to Marcel Jouhandeau, "les plus grands ont de plus violents dsirs. La paix et le
trouble qu'on prouve sont la mesure l'un de l'autre." (Jouhandeau 1969, 9).

10

Perceive you not that what formerly could please, has charms for you no
longer? That a thousand new wishes, new ideas, new sensations, have sprang in your
Bosom, only to be felt, never to be described?'. (II, IV, 260-261).

7. Two libidos
Man aims usually to satisfy his never-ending desire, and woman is the
preferred means for the selfish pursuit of his greedy pleasure. Supported by the
capitalist principle that economy is based on the insatiable ambition of profit, as well by
Darwins theory of survival of the fittest, this idea is developed by Freud, who believes
that man loves variety. In this psychoanalytic perspective, Ambrosio may be seen as a
voracious creature in search of an unreachable repletion, because after intercourse,
calling to mind the Latin adage post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier,
his desire for Matilda soon fades away. As time goes by, Ambrosio grows tired of
Matilda and begins to think about other women:
His warm constitution still made him seek in her arms the gratification of his
lust: But when the moment of passion was over, He quitted her with disgust, and his
humour, naturally inconstant, made him sigh impatiently for variety. [...] In spite of her
beauty, He gazed upon every other Female with more desire; [...]. (II, III, 235-236).

On the one hand, the monk, driven both by the need to relieve his annoying
strain and by the desire of possessing the largest number of women, has a plastic
libido; on the other hand, Matilda has a viscous libido, due to her major affection and
fidelity to Ambrosio16: She stifled the impulse of resentment, and continued to treat her
inconstant Lover with her former fondness and attention [...]" (II, IV, 258).
Ambrosios primary narcissism leads him only to discharge his repressed
desire, devoid of any love feelings: "He was led to her arms, not by love, but the
cravings of brutal appetite. (II, III, 236). After every sexual encounter, Ambrosio, being
under the pleasure principle, is compelled to go over a new carnal experience because
his growing desire requests him to release the renewed anxiety: "Shame and remorse
no longer tormented him. Frequent repetitions made him familiar with sin, and his
bosom became proof against the stings of Conscience." (II, III, 235).
In the absence of love between two people, all merely physical attraction is
artificial and volatile. This is why the fiercest lust felt by Ambrosio towards Antonia, a
timid girl of 15 years old who asked him to confess her dying mother, is proportional to
the increasing strangeness felt between him and Matilda after his first pleasure,
attained from their carnal relationship, he gets a mixed sensation of ignominy and

16

"There is a large preference of woman for continuous and a preference of man for
discontinuous." (Alberoni 1991, 29).

11

disgust: "The burst of transport was past: Ambrosio's lust was satisfied; Pleasure fled,
and Shame usurped her seat in his bosom." (II, III, 223).

8. Eros and Thanatos

The cruelty and atrocities exposed in
The Monk fits completely in the Gothic
literature aesthetics: for achieving the tragic,
Matthew G. Lewis goes beyond the limits of
decorum and is carried away by the major
anti-classical

idea

of

excess17.

The

association of Ambrosios sexual passion to

immoral

irrationality

will

be

expressed

throughout his appalling crimes of rape,

poisoning, witchcraft, murder and incest, as if
there was nothing but evil in the world.
In order to indulge his most primary
desires, the monk will follow the paths of
seduction and violence, to the ultimate release of his libido with Antonias rape: "I burn
with desires, which I must either gratify, or die: [...]." (III, lV, 382)
According to Freud, when the mischievous and destructive components stand
out in the superego and threatens the ego, the death instinct emerges, which is well
reflected in the final sacrifice the monk commits on Antonia18. Ambrosio will be
consumed by his own desire from the moment he is led by his insatiable greed;
moments before he accomplishes his wicked machinations on the innocent, virgin
Antonia in the gloomy crypts of the Abbey, his death is previewed by a mise en abyme

17

18

As far as pity and fear are concerned, The Monk, likewise the 1790s Gothic writing, plays a
cathartic function on the reader as well; Marquis de Sade, a great admirer of this novel,
considers that these violent feelings stems partly from the emotional instability occurred after
the French Revolution, an event that destroyed the monarchical order, imposed in Europe
through centuries (see Whitlark 1997).
In 1798, two years after this novel had been published, the Bishop of Durham ensured
before the House of Lords that the French, who could not conquer England by military force,
were planning to send a large group of female dancers, as a means of demoralizing the
English.
The monks split self leads him to commit violent acts against others, as noted by Gui
Rosolato: "Le corps comme tre fissile centre le problme de la douleur, de la peur, et de la
relation agressive autrui [...]. (Rosolato 1969, 252). By commenting Antonias murder,
Coral Ann Howells states that "this stabbing is the only possible ending to such a nightmare,
where sexual desire has been perverted from a life-giving to a death-dealing force: orgasmic
destruction is the appropriate consummation [...]." (Howells 1978, 75-76).

12

process: "This Sepulchre seems to me Love's bower; This gloom is the friendly night of
mystery, which He spreads over our delights!" (III, IV, 381).
As we finish reading the Gothic
novel The Monk, we feel that there is some
injustice in Ambrosios punishment, since
this Oedipal hero19 never had the chance to
make his own choices: from a seclusion in a
Convent, this clergyman moves to the
dungeons of the Inquisition, and when he
believes that he gained freedom, through a
contract signed with the devil, he finds out
that he is imprisoned everlastingly.
The Monk is a great metaphor for
the tragedy of living under Eros designs
and assuming a Faustian hubris as an
attempt to escape Gods unrighteous fate, with the consequent chastisement of
Thanatos, stronghold of major violence.
Oddly enough, and despite the centuries that take our times apart from the
year of its publication, Matthew Lewis's The Monk is an extremely current novel, by
drawing the attention to essential religious issues such as the Catholic discipline, the
clergy bachelorhood or the sexual scandals of its members all over the world.
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19

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