57 pages • 1 hour read
Matthew LewisThe Monk: A Romance
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1796A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Veils
Content Warning: This section references rape.
Veils function as important symbols of sexual purity or chastity in The Monk, developing the theme of Sexual Desire, Danger, and Deviance. The expression “taking the veil” refers to a woman committing herself to life in a convent. While nuns make a variety of religious vows, most depictions of nuns focus on vows related to chastity and virginity; thus, “the veil” typically symbolizes protection against or a rejection of sexuality. When women in The Monk are unveiled, it is because their sexual purity has been violated: Antonia becomes a sexual object for men to admire once Don Lorenzo unveils her; Agnes tears apart her veil when her sexual transgressions are revealed to the prioress; after Matilda removes her monk’s cowl (a stand-in for a veil), she begins her sexual affair with Ambrosio; and Ambrosio tears away the shroud that covers Antonia before raping her. Such veils mark women as sexually chaste, yet they are easily torn away, suggesting the vulnerability of women to sexual desire. Similarly, the Bleeding Nun’s blood-stained veil represents her violent rejection of the chastity her order requires.
Veils also take on a secondary symbolic meaning, standing in for the difficulty of accessing truth and distinguishing between Appearance Versus Reality. While a veil may advertise a woman’s purity, it may also conceal her sinfulness. For example, Don Raymond mistakes the veiled Bleeding Nun for Agnes, and he finds himself “married” to a hideous corpse instead of a beautiful young woman. Characters in The Monk often fail to recognize each other; a veil of ignorance renders characters oblivious to the true consequences of their actions. This is the symbolic meaning of the veil that Satan employs in the novel’s final scene when he declares that he will “unveil” Ambrosio’s “crimes,” or reveal the true extent of his transgressions. In The Monk, the tearing away of a veil can symbolize both a loss of sexual innocence and a confrontation with the truth.
Icons
Icons—or images of religious figures—represent a recurring motif in The Monk. The novel references physical representations of religious figures throughout the narrative. For example, Ambrosio admires his beautiful icon (a painting) of the Virgin Mary, the processional at the Feast of St. Clare parades a jeweled throne occupied by a beautiful woman representing St. Clare before the populace, and Don Lorenzo discovers Agnes hidden beneath a sacred statue of St. Clare. Each of these icons proves false or artificial in some way, suggesting the hollowness and deceit of the religious orders portrayed in the novel and illustrating its critique of Religion, Power, and Hypocrisy. Ambrosio admires his icon of the Virgin Mary not out of religious feeling but out of lust, and Matilda reveals that the “icon” is actually her own portrait, specifically intended to incite Ambrosio’s passions. Similarly, the woman representing St. Clare in the parade is chosen for her beauty rather than her virtue, and her presence is clearly meant to entertain the crowd rather than inspire religious devotion. The statue of St. Clare (which the nuns insist is made of stone, performs miracles, and will bring death to anyone who touches it) turns out to be made of painted wood and—rather than performing miracles—conceals a hellish dungeon. These revelations of false icons suggest that superficial performances of holiness cannot measure or encourage true religious devotion. In this, the novel echoes Protestant criticisms of Catholicism broadly and Catholic iconography in particular. The average 18th- or 19th-century English reader of The Monk would likely have associated Catholicism with ostentatiousness and superficiality: an emphasis on the trappings of religion that was at best irrelevant to faith and at worst detrimental to it, replacing the appropriate focus of religious contemplation—God—with a series of idols.
Dreams and Omens
Throughout The Monk, characters receive supernatural warnings of the dangers that will befall them. In the opening chapter, Don Lorenzo’s dream in the Capuchin church reveals the ultimate fates of both Ambrosio and Antonia; simultaneously, a fortuneteller reveals that Antonia will soon die at the hands of a man who appears virtuous (Ambrosio). Antonia receives similar warnings from her mother’s ghost, who even names the time of Antonia’s death. The poems and ballads performed throughout the novel (especially Theodore’s) similarly function as omens of death, despair, and violence; for example, the story of the water-sprite’s seduction of a human woman echoes Don Raymond’s ordeal with the Bleeding Nun and foreshadows Ambrosio’s rape and murder of Antonia. However, characters consistently fail to heed these warnings, ignoring their dreams or dismissing ghostly visitations as hallucinations. Although The Monk frequently criticizes religious “superstition,” the novel does not advocate for a purely rational, scientific understanding of reality. This motif of dreams and omens suggests the existence of a very real supernatural realm that offers valuable knowledge to those who know how to interpret it. How to distinguish these valuable supernatural omens from the deceitful manipulations of Matilda and Lucifer, however, is a problem that The Monk leaves unresolved.
