The Monk by Matthew Lewis Literary Analysis Essay Example

Matthew Lewis’s 18th-century novel The Monk was written as a way for the author to project his anxieties about homosexuality and fear of exposure. This novel was quickly written in Lewis’s youth while seated in parliament. A young man struggling with sinful desires would surely suffer in a position of power where his morals and personality would be consistently viewed and judged by a God-fearing public. Such a religious time that viewed homosexuality as not only sinful and worthy of damnation but criminal and subject to arrest or beatings would not be sympathetic to any desires Lewis may have felt about the men around him. The Monk and its themes of sinful desires, fear of those desires being exposed, and the requisite punishment for acting on those desires was an outlet for a closeted Lewis.

The main point of view character followed in The Monk is the revered monk Ambrosio, a man in a position of authority and leadership who is struggling with sinful feelings of desire, much like Lewis. He feels lust over a painting of the Virgin Mary, something pure and sinless that should not be an object of lust or desire. Nevertheless, Ambrosio burns over her image and tries to explain away these feelings of passion by reducing them to an appreciation for the Madonna’s “divinity” (page 66). This is one of the ways that Ambrosio’s character is used as a major expression of Lewis’s homosexual desires, veiled by a heterosexual lens, and explained away in a similar fashion. Homosexual desires are easier to rationalize as an objective appreciation for the masculine or platonic friendship rather than unveiling those feelings for what they are. 

A character heavily veiled by the platonic is featured in this novel by the name of Rosario. Only moments after Ambrosio expresses his forbidden lust for the Madonna, in walks a mysterious youth whose soft nature has been widely noticed by the other men of the monastery. The friar expresses a secret desire to unveil Rosario’s face to see his full beauty but would never act on such an urge. He paints a handsome image of Rosario with his words, using as much attention to detail and romantic words as one might when describing a lover. Lines such as “No voice sounded so sweet to him as did Rosario’s” (page 67) and “Ambrosio was every day more charmed with the vivacity of [Rosario’s] genius, the simplicity of his manners, and the rectitude of his heart: in short, he loved him with all the affection of a father” (page 67) suggest Ambrosio’s interest and affections for the younger monk. Expressing his desire to remove Rosario’s cowl after describing him in this affectionate way suggests a yearning that is beyond platonic. However, Ambrosio covers up these romantic feelings by comparing their relationship to that of father and son, condensing their dynamic into something that’s more familial and less tempting. 

Rosario and Ambrosio’s homosocial relationship that veers into romantic is veiled by heterosexuality in the novel. At first, it seems Rosario returns Ambrosio’s feelings of idolatry. While Ambrosio uses a softer tone reserved only for Rosario and his kindness, Rosario offers an excitement reserved only for Ambrosio’s favor. Rosario expresses anxiety that his feelings could possibly destroy their friendship, a concern that many queer youths feel when they start to develop feelings for their same-sex peers. It seems as if Ambrosio’s friendship is not quite enough for him, or possibly that he cannot contain his desires any longer, because he expresses his affections by proxy with a story of forbidden romance. Rosario tells the tale of his ‘sister’ Matilda who fell in love with a man above her station but never hoped to have him. In this story, a woman loved a man who was already in love with another woman, implying Rosario’s feelings that he can’t be with Ambrosio because they’re both men in a religious monastery. In his story, Matilda’s love casts her away from him and the grief kills her. “Poor Matilda! She sleeps in the grave, and her broken heart throbs no more with passion.” (Rosario, page 77). Rosario seeks Ambrosio’s pity with this fabricated story. He fears nothing more than losing his friar’s friendship and esteem, of outing himself and being rejected and cast out into grief that would have carried him to the grave. If this was a book that was never meant to be published, perhaps Lewis would have let Rosario remain as Rosario, and the story could have otherwise stayed the same. However, another cowl is placed on the narration, one for the 18th-century reader’s comfort; a veil of heterosexuality. Rosario reveals that he is a woman named Matilda.

Ambrosio mourns his friendship with Rosario and wrestles with his feelings of desire towards the now unveiled Matilda, suggesting that he wishes he never pulled back the cowl. His suppressed lust is difficult to manage when all he knows is controlling his desires through institutionalized fear through religion. However, Matilda provides Ambrosio with an excuse to act on his lust in a way that seems out of his hands. And after the friar falls to sin once, there is nothing under his feet to keep him from falling even further. All he’s ever learned how to do is suppress. “As yet his other passions lay dormant; But they only needed to be once awakened, to display themselves with violence as great and irresistible.” (page 215) When he acts on his feelings, they run rampant and feverish, and he has no clue how to control them. This part of the narration was a way for Lewis to describe his fear of what might happen if he acted on his lust for men even once. Perhaps he had already acted on his desires before writing this book and the rest of The Monk was written as a dramatic hyperbole of what may happen if he was discovered, based on the mass amount of fear Ambrosio feels from this section of the novel and onwards. Lewis fears he might commit more heinous sins, that he might be exposed, and that he might be punished. To vent these anxieties, he puts his main character through each of these nightmarish fears.

The nightmarish hyperbole occurs after Ambrosio breaks his vows of celibacy. After falling into sin once, the monk can’t seem to stop falling, and he becomes a ‘ravisher’ and then a murderer twice over. While Ambrosio is committing these crimes, his driving motivation is fear of being caught, of being exposed, and being punished. The monk’s fear of exposure keeps him from pardoning Agnes of her lustful crimes, even though he now empathizes with her weakness. He allows someone else to be punished due to fear while his own sins remain hidden. Agnes was ‘outed’, and Ambrosio failed to stand up for her in fear of being outed himself. The monk goes as far as murder to keep his desires a secret from the world and to retain the respect his position holds. “To be exposed to all the mortifications of shame and infamy! Who can reflect without horror on such a doom?” (page 353). Surely these are not the extremes that a sane person would turn towards, but this is an anxious fantasy being explored by a frightened Lewis.

The fear of punishment follows the fear of being exposed almost every time it comes up. The two ideas go hand in hand. Being exposed means being punished. Being outed means losing respect, becoming a criminal and a sinner, and facing the consequences whether that be imprisonment or death. Lewis uses his novel to explore the fear of punishment frequently and without mercy. Punishment is brutal for The Monk’s characters. Agnes gives into her bodily desires and is punished for it by being locked in a crypt and facing the fate of dying away from her family without them ever knowing what happened to her. The prioress is punished by being beaten to death by a furious mob. Ambrosio’s crimes are discovered, and he’s stripped of his station, dying alone without the revere he once held. “Ambrosio was prey to the pangs of conscious villainy, and the terrors of punishment impending over him” (page 347). He would have been tried and potentially executed, had he not called on the devil and tried to get out of it by selling his soul, only to meet an even worse fate at Satan’s cruel hand. Any of these horrible and lonely punishments could have happened to a closeted lawmaker like Lewis if he were outed. In his view, his soul would have been damned as well, and his punishment would have continued even after death.  

“I have no friend! The whole wide world cannot furnish a heart that is willing to participate in the sorrows of mine!” (page 78). The Monk was published anonymously and revised a total of three times to appeal to a horrified public. What was meant to be a way to vent Lewis’s fears of being unveiled became widely judged and changed to fit others’ comfort. So alone in the world and terrified of what might happen if he lived freely, Lewis turned to authorship to vent what should have been regarded as natural feelings into supernatural and sadomasochistic horror.