Considered so lewd, profane, and obscene that the author censored further editions to prevent being charged with indecency. It caused such an outrage it naturally became a bestseller. Today I’m going over The Monk by Matthew Lewis.

Published in 1796 it is considered an exemplar of the Gothic fiction genre. I read the Penguin Classics publication which used the text from the pre-censorship first edition. And, actually yeah, I can see what they were upset about.

This book has scenes of:

• Murder
• Incest
• Torture
• Rape
• Blasphemy

It’s also got:

1. Ghosts
2. Demons
3. Sorcery
4. Dark misty tombs

Sounds like a fun time, let’s dig in!

I’m going to spoil the first 2 chapters of this 200 year old book. There are some great moments in there that I’d like to share. Abbot Ambrosio is the most amazing monk in a Capuchin order in the Spanish city of Madrid. Everyone in town is abuzz with his amazing sermons and how pious, humble, generous, and handsome he is. Never leaving the Abbey, the church is packed every time he gives a sermon and the girls swoon.

He is reported to be so strict an observer of chastity, that he knows not in what consists the difference of man and woman.

He has every appearance of righteous goodness.

Ambrosio is the best character in the book and the villian. He has depth, desires, and tremendous internal conflict that bear out over the course of the story.

I also liked Lorenzo, the main character of the first third. Yet I couldn’t tell you any particular reason why I liked him. Maybe I just like the name? LORENZO. He’s referred to as a cavalier as are a number of male characters. Are they pirates?

Lorenzo hangs in the back of the crowd with his friend Don Christoval. They meet a pair of women: one the beautiful Antonia and her annoying, older, and uglier aunt Leonella. Lorenzo barters his buddy to fall on the grenade, as they say, to chat up the aunt so Lorenzo can flirt with Antonia.

After the sermon the women bid them goodbye. Antonia is not quite sure what to think of Lorenzo yet, but Leonella is absolutely convinced that the friend distracting her is going to be her husband. This joke is repeated later in the book to pretty great effect.

Antonia’s character traits of innocence and naivety border on unbelievable. And when she is murdered later in the book, she’s replaced with another female character who’s only reason for being there is to be a romance in the happy ending.

Personally I didn’t think it was so bad. The author makes a point to drip moments of flirtation and interest with the new girl in their brief time on the pages together. It would be different if, say, at first sight - bam! - the male character falls head over heels or something equally stupid.

The two gentlemen are still feeling frisky so they go to the nunnery next door to ogle some hot habits. I guess guys must’ve been starved for titillation back then. They watch as two nuns come into the church and start praying at the altar. One of them has a finer figure than the other and while facially turned from view is clearly the prettier nun. You know how you can sometimes tell that someone’s beautiful without even seeing their face, but by the way they walk and hold themselves? Apparently that was this nun.

She turns toward them and Lorenzo realizes he’s been ogling his sister. I honestly laughed out loud at that revelation.

The next scene has Ambrosio in his personal cell in the Abbey mulling over his success. He has this painting of the Virgin Mary hung in his cell and he practically worships it.

I have to point out that he’s an orphan with no knowledge of his family. He has no mother or sisters and he was raised since infancy in the Abbey surrounded by men. On top of all this, he’s in a lifelong celibate vow. Mother Mary is the only woman he’s allowed to love. His agape has devolved into sexual love.

Ambrosio doesn’t have many friends at the Abbey. The only one he does, Rosario, interrupts his reverie with a terrible secret. Rosario is a newly ordained monk in the last year or two and takes his vows so seriously he never reveals his face. The shocking twist comes when Rosario reveals himself not to be a man, but a woman! Matilda is her name and she has loved Ambrosio from afar like so many women in Madrid. But Matilda took it further. To get close to him she disguised herself as a man and joined the convent. But that still wasn’t enough. She needed him. Taking off her mask, she looks exactly like the painting! She had the painting commissioned and gifted to the Abbey as an anonymous gift to Ambrosio.

Here we have right before Ambrosio- his obsession made flesh. The temptation would prove too much to overcome. Yet he is wracked with guilt and knowing that if it were found out, his image in the public would be ruined. As Ambrosio is obsessed with the painting, so too was Matilda obsessed with Ambrosio. The two will work nefariously together to consummate Ambrosio’s immoral desires of Antonia later.

Preventing further spoilers, the next third of the novel takes an out of nowhere pivot where we recount the tale of Don Raymond and his supernatural adventures to wed Lorenzo’s sister before she became a nun. The problem is we had only just learned of this character late in the previous chapter and we then spend the next three in his voice. But it’s actually engaging and well told, just jarring to take such an abrupt narrative voice shift. Both plots intertwine in the latter third before a climatic scene involving an angry mob and a deal with the devil.

Mixed in there is a standout scene where a demon is summoned in the Abbey’s crypts. It was full of that kind of classic horror imagery you find in 40s Universal horror movies. In the time when that was new. It had all the assurance of freshness without the weight of avoiding tropes or cliches. I love the halloween aesthetic so this scene was a real treat for me.

The nunnery and the Abbey are only separated by a garden and cemetery. I’m sure there’s metaphorical meaning in a garden full of life and a crypt full of death between the two sexes.

This was my second Gothic novel after Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’m still trying to figure out what makes a Gothic novel Gothic. Apparently well stocked descriptions of mouldering castles, lecherous male villains, and dainty female leads who faint a lot. I’ve got 2 or 3 more Gothic novels in mind before I read Jane Austin’s scathing parody Northanger Abbey.

Overall I enjoyed my time with The Monk. The pacing was always moving and the scenes of sorcery and supernatural kept my attention glued to the page.

So did it warrant such a panic amongst the pearl clutchers of the time? I wouldn’t give this book to a child, but I would give it to a modern high school upper-class. I think the main critique was in the message it was trying to send. Naimly it sucks to be under societal obligation preventing you from living the way you want to. This was seen as immoral and a dangerous influence on the populace.

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!