國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
16
Chapter Two: Closing and Opening Doors
Mark S. Madoff has argued that Gothic novels tend to dichotomise space and engineer the inside/outside difference. He writes:
Outside is the modern, civilized, orderly, banal, decorous place, where the Gothic protagonist, like the reader, begins and, probably, ends. It is a place where appearance and reality are trusted as a reliable match, where word and deed seem to complement each other. Sexuality flows regularly into courtship and marriage, violence into lawful resolution of conflicts, desire and passion into commerce. In history, the Gothic outside opens toward the present, in which its typical faculties of mind—reason, common-sense, and sympathy—will dominate human affairs. Outside contains those actions and attitudes proudly called modern, civilized, enlightened.
Inside is the ancient, barbaric, disorderly, passionate, indecorous place where the Gothic protagonist, like the reader, arrives only through apparently accidental transgression (51).
Madoff’s observation is generally true. But Matthew Lewis is interested as much in separating the inside from the outside as in exploring the intersection between these two opposites. Doors in The Monk, I argue, provide a useful lens through which we can clearly see this point. This is because a door can be closed and opened at the will of its owner. While closing a door clearly indicates a yearning for privacy and the rejection of outside stimulants, opening a door allows such stimulants to come in, whether one likes them or not. On the face of it, closing and opening doors may be quotidian activities that usually pass off as insignificant. But in The Monk, they become significant moves, inasmuch as they focus our attention on the problems of desire and transgression.
Ambrosio is a hypocrite in The Monk. In public, as the head of the Capuchins Church, he appears a saint and is venerated by his colleagues and followers alike. But
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such publicly-displayed glamour and piety only conceal a troubled heart beleaguered by vanity and desire. Lewis dramatises this contrast between Ambrosio’s public self and private self through a door. Having ended a religious ceremony, Ambrosio, accompanied by his colleagues, returns to his own room.
The monks having attended their Abbot to the door of his Cell, He dismissed them with an air of conscious superiority in which Humility's semblance combated with the reality of pride.
He was no sooner alone, than He gave free loose to the indulgence of his vanity. When He remembered the Enthusiasm which his discourse had excited, his heart swelled with rapture, and his imagination presented him with splendid visions of aggrandizement. He looked round him with exultation, and Pride told him loudly that He was superior to the rest of his fellow-Creatures (M 39).
What is worth noting is that, before entering his room, Ambrosio inhabits a semi-public space, where he is forced to keep his public persona and austere aura intact. He is “attended” by the community of friars whilst moving through this liminal, in-between space, and he claims the authority to “dismiss[] them” at his doorstep as if they were more like his slaves than brothers. In fact, this “conscious superiority” is a mixed result and divulges the never-ending process in which his pretended humility is to be “combated” against by his massive ego. The threshold3 as a transitional space duly represents Lewis’s unmasking of the abbot’s two-facedness. The disparity is shocking. Before Ambrosio closes the door of his room and retreats to his own private world, he assumes a very public persona: a humble and respectable leader whose asceticism sets an example for everyone in his church. But even when Ambrosio stands outside his door and therefore inhabits what Madoff calls “the modern, civilized, orderly, banal, decorous place” (51), he is influenced by his private self, by the inside world that he is about to step in. Lewis’s sentence tells us that at the
3 For a more detailed discussion about thresholds and the significance of crossing thresholds for Gothic heroes/heroines in general or more specifically in Radcliffe’s novels, see Eugenia C. DeLamotte, Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
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threshold, Ambrosio’s apparent humility is counteracted by “an air of conscious superiority” and “the reality of pride.” Both qualities can only flourish when Ambrosio moves into what Madoff calls the “inside,” “the ancient, barbaric, disorderly, passionate, indecorous place” (51). Indeed, Lewis tells us that, as soon as Ambrosio closes his door, all the appearance of humility disappears: “He was no sooner alone, than He gave free loose to the indulgence of his vanity.” Standing in front of the door of his own room and facing a group of his fellow clergymen, Ambrosio straddles the inside and the outside. While Madoff suggests that the inside and the outside are mutually exclusive, Lewis shows that former can infiltrate the latter.
Such is Lewis’s insistence on destablising the dichotomy between the inside and the outside that closing a door does not necessarily help Ambrosio to keep his public persona at bay. Instead, precisely because closing his door enables Ambriosio to indulge his private fantasy, it also exacerbates the conflict between his private and his public selves. After Ambrosio closes his door and retreats to his private world, he goes to worship the Holy Madonna, whose portrait Ambrosio hangs in his own room.
As the only female presence in the male-dominated monastery, this portrait arouses passionate and inappropriate desire in Ambrosio’s heart. Musing upon the link between spiritual passion and erotic desire in The Monk, Joseph Drury argues:
Ambrosio is not just the object of . . . erotic adulation; it quickly becomes clear that the “blind idolatry” (375) he himself feels for the picture of the Virgin Mary he keeps in his cell is also rooted in sexual rather than spiritual passion. Though he tries to reassure himself that it is the “Divinity” the image represents that he adores, he cannot help fantasizing about “such a creature” actually existing, so that he might run his fingers through her “golden ringlets” and kiss her “snowy bosom” (39). Just as idols in The Monk turn out to be made of flesh and blood, so idolatry is revealed to be a precariously mediated form of sexual desire. Far from acting as an example to others that opens a path towards piety, the virgin idol is a provocation, an incitement to erotic fantasy that seduces rather than transcends the body. (223)
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Drury’s observation emphasises Ambrosio’s transgression. He should not have allowed his pious worship to descend into erotic desire. He should have seen the Virgin Mary as a disembodied divinity rather than as a beautiful woman.4 In addition, what deserves our attention is the painting per se. It presents itself as a genius device inasmuch as it is based upon the portrait of Rosario/Matilda.5 The belated disclosure of the model for the painting once again shakens up the boundary, one between holy and secular; between carnal and spiritual. Also, considering the androgynous manner exhibited by the character of Rosario/Matilda, Ambrosio’s homoerotic6 inclination can be further probed into as well.
Essentially, Drury points out the formulaic Protestant rhetoric grounded in Lewis’s narrative. The erotic representation of Ambrosio’s icon worship blatantly exposes the traditional Protestant fears and Catholic stereotypes. The anti-Catholic prejudice is almost unmistakable. It seems that under Lewis’s pen, the articulation of Protestant fantasy about Catholic idolatry is resurrected7, and it serves as a reminder that there existed an ongoing Protestant-Catholic conflict in England in his time. This is, of course, a conventional way of reading the episode. But Drury’s interpretation overlooks the fact that Ambrosio’s descent from pious worshipping to indulging impure passion is not straightforwardly smooth. He does struggle inwardly and oppose blasphemous thoughts. Interestingly, this struggle takes place in his own room and behind a closed door. Lewis dramatises this inner struggle in great details.
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 references regarding his religious belief. Nevertheless, David Lorne Macdonald does mention in his biography of Lewis that he “regarded his Christian names with ‘horror’ and ‘abomination’ (30). See also the epistolary writing of Lewis to his mother in A Life of Matthew G. Lewis by Peck, Louis F.. In several letters, Lewis affectionately writes “God bless you, my dear Mother” (183; 258; 266).
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impure ideas! Let me remember that Woman is for ever lost to me. Never was Mortal formed so perfect as this picture. But even did such exist, the trial might be too mighty for a common virtue, but Ambrosio’s is proof against temptation. Temptation, did I say? To me it would be none. What charms me, when ideal and considered as a superior Being, would disgust me, become Woman and tainted with all the failings of Mortality. 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! Are not the passions dead in my bosom? Have I not freed myself from the frailty of Mankind? Fear not, Ambrosio! Take confidence in the strength of your virtue. Enter boldly into a world to whose failings you are superior;Reflect that you are now exempted from Humanity’s defects, and defy all the arts of the Spirits of Darkness. They shall know you for what you are!
(M 41)
This long passage stages a conflict between Ambrosio’s private desire and his public persona. First, having spent thirty years cultivating his reputation as a venerable saint apparently impervious to worldly desire,8 Ambrosio feels weary of such sustained efforts and wishes for a change, however briefly it lasts: “Should I not barter for a single embrace the reward of my sufferings for thirty years?” (41) But he soon realises that his reputation and religious calling outweigh the satisfaction of his desire:
“Fool that I am! Whither do I suffer my admiration of this picture to hurry me? Away, impure ideas!” (41) Even in his private room, Ambrosio clings onto his public self.
He draws on his widely-celebrated religious piety to crush his yearning for a female companion: “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!” (41). Closing the door, for Ambrosio, does not mean obtaining a space where he can indulge his private self. On the contrary, by exposing him to the intrusion of private desires and arousing an earnest attempt to suppress them, it reveals how domineering Ambrosio’s public persona is.
8 For a more detailed analysis of the ways Ambrosio’s desire plays out in the convoluted plots in the novel, see Wendy Jones’s article “Stories of Desire in The Monk,”ELH 57 (1990): 129-50.
DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900604 Monk when Ambrosio’s private fantasy is disturbed by someone knocking at his door:
Here his Reverie was interrupted by three soft knocks at the door of his Cell. With difficulty did the Abbot awake from his delirium. The knocking was repeated.
‘Who is there?’ said Ambrosio at length.
‘It is only Rosario,’ replied a gentle voice.
‘Enter! Enter, my Son!’
The Door was immediately opened, and Rosario appeared with a small basket in his hand. [. . .]
‘Pardon my intrusion, Father,’ said Rosario, while He placed his basket upon the Table; ‘I come to you a Suppliant. Hearing that a dear Friend is dangerously ill, I entreat your prayers for his recovery. If supplications can prevail upon heaven to spare him, surely yours must be efficacious.’
In this passage, the sound of knocking9 confirms both the existence of boundary and the instability of it. The fact that Rosario needs to knock at Ambrosio’s door suggests that Ambrosio’s privacy is not completely open to all prying eyes. But, penetrating into Ambrosio’s room and interrupting the monk’s fantasy, the sound of Rosario’s
9 Lewis was not the first one to muse upon the act of door-knocking, of course. Preceding him was William Shakespeare, who already explored it and subtly manipulated the auditory dimension of knocking when writing Macbeth (Act II, Scene 3). Thomas De Quincey wrote a famous short essay,
“On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (1823) to analyse the effect of door-knocking after the murder of King Duncan in the play. He argues that Shakespeare exploits the sound of knocking to focus the audience’s attention on the murderer rather than the murdered. Whilst De Quincey is intrigued by the affect the knocking produces and by how it serves as a mediator to solicit or even shift readers’ sympathy, I am more interested in the issue of merging boundaries propelled by knocking in Lewis’s text. For a more detailed analysis of Shakespearean use of knocking, see De Quincey’s essay.
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knocking indicates that this boundary is not iron-cast. Ambrosio’s door fails to secure him a perfectly private space away from unwanted disturbance. In other words, the untimely knocking once again implies the destabilised line between the inside and the outside.
By opening his door and welcoming Rosario in, Ambrosio further complicates the apparent dichotomy of the inside and the outside. For one thing, the dialogue between Ambrosio and Rosario suggests that Ambrosio is in his public mode. Rosario comes to Ambrosio to ask him to pray for his ill friend. Ambrosio’s consent suggests that he has already assumed his professional role as a benevolent abbot and that he has banished his illicit fantasies. Ambrosio and Rosario, that is, appear to inhabit what Madoff describes as the “outside”, a “civilized, orderly, banal, decorous place” (51).
But in reality they stay in Ambrosio’s room, which, as the monk’s recent fantasy suggests, more closely resembles what Madoff classes as the “inside”, “the ancient, barbaric, disorderly, passionate, indecorous place” (51). There is another detail suggesting that Madoff’s classification of spaces in Gothic novels does not apply here.
The conversation between Ambrosio and Rosario, characterised by the latter’s innocent request and the former’s consent to lend her a professional hand, seems perfectly civil and above board. This seems to indicate that their interaction takes place in the “outside” world, where “appearance and reality are trusted as a reliable match, where word and deed seem to complement each other” (51). But the presence of Rosario in fact introduces mystery. The narrator tells us that “A sort of mystery enveloped this Youth” (M 41) and that “no one had ever seen his face” (M 42) due to the fact that “[h]is head was continually muffled up in his Cowl” (M 42). Significantly, the veil here is used as a device to build up suspense. The veil registers some calculation, withholds the real motive of the boy novice, and enables Rosario’s penetration to Ambrosio’s room as part of the grand workings of Satan’s plan.
In effect, the timid novice Rosario carries a secret with him and will later reveal himself as a woman, Matilda. And his/her innocent request here in fact is his/her first attempt to seduce Ambrosio. There exists a gap between his/her appearance and reality, between his/her word and deed. In other words, the boundary between the outside and the inside no longer holds. On the face of it, by opening the door of his room, Ambrosio chooses to suspend his inner fantasy and enters the outside world.
But in fact this move only merges the outside and the inside. Not only does the effect of such merging frustrate the dichotomy between ordinary life and the extraordinary
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experience. On the face of it, Ambrosio’s ability to close and open his door at his own will confirms a common assumption that opening a door is an easy activity that clearly evidences human agency and one’s ability to control his/her own life. But the Bleeding Nun episode in The Monk overthrows this facile assumption, not least by situating the simple act of door opening in the context of the supernatural forces beyond human control. Agnes first tells us the story of the Bleeding Nun:But at the end of five years the Exorciser died, and then the Nun ventured to peep abroad again. However, She was now grown much more tractable and well-behaved. She walked about in silence, and never made her appearance above once in five years.
This custom, if you will believe the Baron, She still continues. He is fully persuaded, that on the fifth of May of every fifth year, as Gates of the Castle open, out of respect to the Apparition: Not that this is thought by any means necessary, since She could easily whip through the Keyhole if She chose it; But merely out of politeness, and to prevent her from making her exit in a way so derogatory to the dignity of her Ghost-ship. (M 133)
In this passage, human agency is doubly undermined. First, legends have it that, human beings have consistently and persistently tried to shut the door of the room where the Bleeding Nun resides. However, all human efforts are in vain. Every five year, “the Door of the haunted Chamber opens” automatically to let the Bleeding Nun out, mocking the presumption of humans to control a single door. In addition, the Porter’s decision to “leave[] the Gates of the Castle open” no longer simply testifies to human power to control a single object. This door-opening in fact evidences the Porter’s awareness of how powerless humans can be in front of the supernatural forces. The Porter “respect[s]” “the Apparition.” He opens the castle gate not because
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that unjustifiably prioritises supernatural forces over human agency. Dismissing this superstition as nonsense, they nevertheless wish to exploit it to help Agnes escape from the castle. The plan is that, on the night when the Bleeding Nun supposedly will visit the castle and when the castle doors are opened for this unusual visitor, Agnes will dress up like a Bleeding Nun and walk out of the castle easily. And her lover Raymond will stay outside of the castle and elope with her. Their plan, however, backfires. The real Bleeding Nun does visit the castle, as legends predict. Mistaking the real Bleeding Nun for his lover Agnes, Raymond elopes with the apparition. Their carriage breaks down and Raymond is seriously injured. Raymond’s refusal to believe in the existence of the Bleeding Nun and his arrogant presumption that humans can fully control their own fate incur serious punishment. Remarkably, door opening plays an important role in this punishment. In particular, the Bleeding Nun returns to haunt Raymond, opening the door forcibly despite Raymond’s attempt to close it.Raymond tells us this horrifying experience: “I now heard the heavy steps ascending the staircase; The Door [i]s thrown open, and again the Bleeding Nun st[ands] before me” (M 162).” Opening and closing a door no longer testifies to human autonomy.
Raymond tells us this horrifying experience: “I now heard the heavy steps ascending the staircase; The Door [i]s thrown open, and again the Bleeding Nun st[ands] before me” (M 162).” Opening and closing a door no longer testifies to human autonomy.