10 While Ellis’s claim is generally convincing, she argues that Antonia is a passive female character as opposed to the assertive, active female characters such as Agnes and Marguerite in The Monk (136-39).
My observation in fact differs from hers, which I shall proceed to present in this chapter.
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
‘Hold! Father, Hold! Hear me but for one moment! Tax me not with impurity, nor think that I have erred from the warmth of temperament.
Long before I took the veil, Raymond was Master of my heart: He inspired me with the purest, the most irreproachable passion, and was on the point of becoming my lawful husband. An horrible adventure, and the treachery of a Relation, separated us from each other: I believed him for ever lost to me, and threw myself into a Convent from motives of despair. Accident again united us; I could not refuse myself the melancholy pleasure of mingling my tears with his: We met nightly in the Gardens of St. Clare, and in an unguarded moment I violated my vows of Chastity. I shall soon become a Mother:
Reverend Ambrosio, take compassion on me; take compassion on the innocent Being whose existence is attached to mine. If you discover my imprudence to the Domina, both of us are lost: The punishment which the laws of St. Clare assign to Unfortunates like myself is most severe and cruel. Worthy, worthy Father! Let not your own untainted conscience render you unfeeling towards those less able to withstand temptation! Let not mercy be the only virtue of which your heart is unsusceptible! Pity me, most reverend! Restore my letter, nor doom me to inevitable destruction!’ (M 47)
In this passage, Agnes is actually responding to Ambrosio’s earlier claim that she is an immoral woman who cannot regulate her desire: “Unworthy Wretch! [My] lenity would make me your accomplice. Mercy would here be criminal. You have abandoned yourself to a Seducer’s lust; You have defiled the sacred habit by your impurity; and still dare you think yourself deserving my compassion?” (M 47). Agnes acknowledges that she violates the vow of chastity, yet she defends herself by saying that “the purest, the most irreproachable passion” as opposed to “the warmth of temperament” has motivated her to do so. In other words, Agnes and Ambrosio are engaged in a debate about whether it is acceptable for a nun to break her religious vow. For a Gothic scholar Valdine Clemens, Agnes’ self-defence is more persuasive and deserves our sympathy: “Not only the emotional power of Agnes’s desperate and passionate pleading but also the validity of some of her arguments render her case far
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
more persuasive than Ambrosio’s rigid reliance on convent rules. Her final appeal is the most unanswerable: “take compassion on the innocent Being, whose existence is attached to mine. If you discover my imprudence to the Domina, both of us are lost”
(47). [. . .] Ambrosio seems to act more like a rigid, intolerant Puritan than a Catholic monk; he orders her to release him and calls anxiously for the nuns [to open the door of the confession room and step in].” (75-75)
In their respective attempt to open and close the door of the confession room, Ambrosio and Agnes do not only debate about proper female behaviour. They also debate about whether women should be allowed agency and whether women are able to control themselves. Agnes’s admittance that she violates the religious vow may suggest that women are too weak to be intrusted the task of self-regulation. Yet Agnes’s plea for mercy suggests that she is ready to exert herself and go back to the right track: “Look with indulgence on a Woman’s weakness, and deign to conceal my frailty! The remainder of my life shall be employed in expiating this single fault, and your lenity will bring back a soul to heaven!” (M 46). This sentence suggests that, if women are given the opportunity to direct the course of their own life, they will prosper, despite temporary lapses into mistake.
But Ambrosio entertains a very different view about female agency and self-regulation. He believes that women are too weak to govern their passion and that men should intervene on their behalf. This belief manifests itself in his response to Agne’s plea: “No, Daughter, no! I will render you a more essential service. I will rescue you from perdition in spite of yourself; Penance and mortification shall expiate your offence, and Severity force you back to the paths of holiness. What; Ho! Mother St. Agatha!” (M 47). Ambrosio argues that Agnes cannot be left to her own devices, that she needs “a more essential service” and that only a man’s assistance can save her soul.
Finally, the controversial door is open and Agnes, knowing that her freedom is lost forever, becomes mad.
The door of the Vestry opened, and the Prioress entered the Chapel, followed by her Nuns.
‘Cruel! Cruel!’ exclaimed Agnes, relinquishing her hold.
Wild and desperate, She threw herself upon the ground, beating her bosom and rending her veil in all the delirium of despair. The Nuns
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
gazed with astonishment upon the scene before them (M 48).
Agnes’s temporary madness (“the delirium of despair”) and her inability to control her violent emotions on this occasion, once again focus our attention on the issue of female agency and self-regulation that informs her previous debate with Ambrosio.
Deprived of the freedom to direct her own life, Agnes also looses her power to govern her passion. Men’s intervention does not help women to learn to govern themselves better, as Ambrosio would have us believe. Instead, they contribute to destroying a woman’s control of her own mind. To open or not to open a door: that is a serious question fueling gender dynamics in The Monk.
Ambrosio does not always have the power to override female self-determination.
In fact, as the plot of The Monk develops, we see him gradually succumb to the seductive and corruptive power of Matilda. Lewis dramatises the rise of Matilda’s power over Ambrosio through another contested door, more specifically, through Ambrosio’s strong desire to enter Elvira’s door in order to see Antonia. After he has grown weary of Matilda, Ambrosio falls in love with Antonia. In order to meet her in person, Ambrosio breaks his habit of always staying in his monastery and visits Elvira when she is ill. During one of his visits, Ambrosio cannot control his passion and embraces Antonia against her will. Elvira suddenly appears and stops the monk’s harassment. Although Elvira pretends that she is ignorant of Ambrosio’s improper behaviour, she politely yet firmly tells him that his visit to them is no longer welcome.
In other words, she shuts her door permanently against him. No longer able to gain access to the house of Antonia, Ambrosio feels humiliated and frustrated as a result.
Much to his joy and relief, his ex-mistress Matilda tells him that she has the power to open the door of Elvira’s house. She tells Ambrosio: “ Receive this constellated Myrtle: While you bear this in your hand, every door will fly open to you. It will procure you access tomorrow night to Antonia's chamber” (M 278).
Matilda’s “gift” in fact comes with a price. In order to procure this magic myrtle, she needs to summon the help of “a fallen Angel” (M 267). Ambrosio’s religious upbringing tells him that any connection with “The Enemy of Mankind” is wrong, so he vehemently opposes Matilda’s engagement with the devil: “‘Rash Matilda! What have you done? You have doomed yourself to endless perdition; You have bartered for momentary power eternal happiness! If on witchcraft depends the fruition of my desires, I renounce your aid most absolutely. The consequences are too horrible: I
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
doat upon Antonia, but am not so blinded by lust as to sacrifice for her enjoyment my existence both in this world and the next’” (M 268). What follows is a heated debate between Matilda and Ambrosio, during which the former gradually breaks down Ambrosio’s resistance and directs his course of life. Responding to Ambrosio’s fear of the supernatural forces, Matilda tries to awaken his masculinity: “‘You dare not? How have you deceived me! That mind which I esteemed so great and valiant, proves to be feeble, puerile, and grovelling, a slave to vulgar errors, and weaker than a Woman’s’”
(M 268 original emphasis). In order to refute Ambrosio’s claim that enlisting the help of “Sorcery” is “a crime so monstrous, so unpardonable,” Matilda argues: “Where then is your constant boast of the Almighty’s infinite mercy? Has He of late set bounds to it? Receives He no longer a Sinner with joy? You injure him, Ambrosio;
You will always have time to repent, and He have goodness to forgive.” (M 269-70) In contrast to her previous strategy of displaying female charm through Rosario, Matilda now resorts to using wits and verbal fallacy. Her aggressiveness becomes obvious, and her persuasive speech alternates between gender perspective and religious perspective. In fact, her rhetorical skills smack of Satanic temptation, because her words are precisely what Satan would use to entice human beings into disobeying God’s command. Eventually, Matilda succeeds in conquering Ambrosio’s reasonable hesitation. In this respect, the forbidden door of Elvira’s house reverses the gender politics of an earlier scene, when Ambrosio can dominate a woman’s life and deprive her of self-determination. Here, it is a woman, namely Matilda, who is able to dominate Ambrosio’s life, crush his ability to control his own passion, and direct him towards a sinful path. Of course, it is arguable that Matilda’s success comes from Satan’s strategy rather than from her own female power, especially after she inadvertently reveals her masculine side and frustrates Ambrosio’s affection and lust for her. While it is true that Matilda’s agency is inspired by or even subordinated to Satan’s contorted rhetoric about God’s forgiveness, this is not to say that female charm no longer plays a crucial part in seducing Ambrosio and ultimately in bringing the monk to his downfall. In fact, the female charm is merely displaced onto another woman, Antonia.
This fact is cleverly narrated in the episode in which Matilda proffers a magic mirror to Ambrosio in order to ignite his fiery passion and sexual lust again. Through the magic mirror, Ambrosio sees the naked Antonia bathing, totally radiating with female charm and even inviting birds to nest upon her breasts (M 271). The seduction
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
intoxicates the monk, so much so that Ambrosio finally caves in: “‘I yield!’ He cried, dashing the mirror upon the ground: ‘Matilda, I follow you! Do with me what you will!’” (M 271) Shockingly, the monk’s sudden change involves his renouncement of self-will and his decision to follow Matilda's guidance. Notice how Ambrosio relinquishes his agency by stressing words such as “follow” and “[d]o with me what you will” to Matilda. His passiveness suggests his blind following (which recalls his blind worship of the Holy Madonna painting earlier in the novel) and once again asserts Matilda’s undiminished female power over his body and mind. One can see that through the temporary displacement of female charm to Antonia, Matilda successfully reestablishes her own influence in Ambrosio’s life.Dramatising the power dynamics between men and women, the door in The
Monk does not only produce verbal debate but also bring about physical struggle. To
pass or not to pass through a door becomes a decision leading to violent confrontation.Near the end of The Monk, Ambrosio succeeds in bringing Antonia to an underground dungeon and attacking her. The unfortunate Antonia begs him to allow him to leave this dungeon and promises that she will never reveal his crime if her request is granted. On the face of it, Antonia under this circumstance is entirely powerless and at the mercy of Ambrosio. Just as Ambrosio can control the life of Agnes, so he now can determine the fate of Antonia. But Lewis engineers another contested door to show that that is not the case.
When Ambrosio is thinking about how to deal with Antonia, he forgets that one door remains open:
At this moment the Abbot heard the sound of distant voices. He flew to close the door on whose concealment his safety depended, and which Matilda had neglected to fasten. Ere He could reach it, He saw Antonia glide suddenly by him, rush through the door, and fly towards the noise with the swiftness of an arrow. She had listened attentively to Matilda: She heard Lorenzo’s name mentioned, and resolved to risque every thing to throw herself under his protection. The door was open. The sounds convinced her that the Archers could be at no great distance. She mustered up her little remaining strength, rushed
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
told that it is the object which conceals Ambrosio’s crime from the archers coming to this dungeon to investigate and to provide succor, especially after they hear the piercingly loud cries from Antonia from afar. This unfastened door is also Antonia’s only chance of escape. Both Ambrosio and Antonia wish to take advantage of this door for their own sake. Lewis’s passage shows that it is Antonia who has the upper hand in this scene. She manages to sneak out of the unfastened door before Ambrosio notices her. She shrieks so loud for help that the archers realise that some atrocious crime has happened, so much so that they insist on finding out the criminal. Antonia’s shriek has nullified the protection this door allegedly can offer Ambrosio. Lewis’s account of what happens after Antonia’s attempt to escape from the door draws our attention to this point: “In the meanwhile, though closely pursued, Ambrosio succeeded in regaining the Vault. The Door was already fastened when Don Ramirez arrived, and much time elapsed, ere the Fugitive’s retreat was discovered. But nothing can resist perseverance. Though so artfully concealed, the Door could not escape the vigilance of the Archers. They forced it open, and entered the Vault to the infinite dismay of Ambrosio and his Companion” (M 393). This apparently insignificant door, behind which Ambrosio perpetrates his crime, turns against him. It enables Antonia to exert herself and to defy the masculine power threatening her happiness.If, as Kate Ellis has convincingly demonstrated, a contested castle in Gothic novels can show how these novels investigate the ideal of home, I believe a contested door in The Monk can reveal the power struggle between men and women, a struggle that fuels much of the dramatic tension in this novel. In particular, Ambrosio’s ability to dominate a woman’s life is demonstrated through his ability to determine whether to open a door. His defeat by the rise of women’s power and self-determination also finds expression in his inability to control a door, be it the door of Elvira’s house or the door of an underground vault. A door in The Monk is never an ordinary object that
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
‧
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
33
we can take for granted. To fully understand the gender relationship and the power structure underpinning it, we need to carefully examine how men and women struggle to control a door.
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
world of excess and horror back to the world of normalcy. He writes:the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires . . . and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable? In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers, and the murder, must be insulated—cut off by an immeasurable gulph from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs—locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested—laid asleep—tranced—racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated . . . Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds:
the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the reestablishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them (392).
De Quincey’s observation of Shakespearean strategy invites a comparison. Indeed, the dramatic effect of knocking at a door lies in the way it pulls us back to the reality. Just as Shakespeare singles out the door to “make[] us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis” bespeaking the effect of eerie time lapse succeeding the murder in
Macbeth, so Lewis draws his characters and readers alike near doors to accentuate the
effect of horror in The Monk. A door is more frequently and commonly owned by one individual, who can decide who can enter or exit it. Also, a door exists presumably because there is a need to separate insiders from the outsiders. I believe the issues ofDOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
‧
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
35
boundary crossing and the dramatic effect initiated by the door that Shakespeare notices are explored in Matthew Lewis’s novel, The Monk. Lewis’s dramatisation of doors in this novel elicits our deepest fear, makes it possible for the reader to straddle the inside and outside imaginatively with characters, and stages doors as contested sites of power display .
One measure of how important doors are in The Monk is that the life of almost every major character in this novel is seriously affected by it. The infant Ambrosio is left at the door of the church of Capuchins. Elvira shuts her door against unwelcome suitors of her daughter, Antonia. Agnes entreats Ambrosio passionately not to open the door of a confessional room. Matilda negotiates with a devil and procures a magic myrtle which can open the door of Elvira’s house. Antonia manages to sneak through an unlocked door to pursue her freedom. These examples combine to indicate that doors in The Monk are not simply quotidian objects that we can take for granted.
Instead, they dramatise the (dis)appearance of boundaries, the (in)ability to control one’s course of life and the power struggle between men and women. The Monk is an extraordinary Gothic novel not so much because it features sensational and supernatural events as because it endows an ordinary object with unusual significance.
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604
‧
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
36
Works Cited
Bauer, Gero. Houses, Secrets, and the Closet: Locating Masculinities from the Gothic
Novel to Henry James. Transcript Verlag, 2016.
Botting, Fred. Gothic. Routledge, 1996.
Blakemore, Steven. “Matthew Lewis’s Black Mass: Sexual, Religious Inversion in The
Monk.” Studies in the Novel 30.4 (1998): 521-39.
Clemens, Valdine. The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from The Castle of
Otranto to Alien. SUNY Press, 1999.
Crawford, Joseph. Gothic Fiction and the Invention of Terrorism: The Politics and
Crawford, Joseph. Gothic Fiction and the Invention of Terrorism: The Politics and