The Monk By William Lewis: Sensuous Gothic At Its Best

Murder, rape, incest, debauchery, and witchcraft made up the bulk of the wonderful Gothic novel The Monk. This book is far better than its better-known Gothic predecessors, The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Both of these books are read and studied in universities and have rarely gone out of print in the over two hundred years since their publication, while The Monk has moldered like one of its own prisoners, and has never found a champion in the academic world. Otranto is forgettable, full of flat characters and laughable situations (I mean, a giant hat brings about the villain’s downfall!), and Udolpho is painful in its detailing of scenery and its glorification of silly women virtuous to the point of nausea. The Monk is full of real characters: a nun who succumbs to true love, a monk repressed to the point of violence, the holy driven cruel and crazy with power.

Not that The Monk does not suffer from the typical Gothic conventions. Its 19-year-old author was a devoted fan of Udolpho, and the banal poems and ballads that dot its pages are nothing but a syrupy ode to Radcliff. And there is no real mystery to its pages; every revelation is foreshadowed to the point that it becomes contemptible (which is still better than the ripoff of a mystery we get in Udolpho; I struggled through 700 pages to find out our heroine was upset over a scary painting!). But with The Monk, mystery is not the point. The descent of a man of God into the worst sin, the selling of a soul, the desecration of innocence: these are worth reading about. And Lewis treats them in a sophisticated and modern manner that makes Otranto and Udolpho seem not just from another time, but another planet. If not blinded by the literary conventions and conceits of his time, I don’t doubt that Lewis would have produced a powerful novel that would have ranked above Measure for Measure in detailing the fall of a religious man and the wickedness that can exist in a seemingly holy institution.

Lewis’s women are not merely the physical embodiment of virtue. They are allowed to fall, to become pregnant out of marriage or to break their word to God and their parents, and still live lives of respect. The blame is placed equally on the society that drove them to desperate acts as to their own “sinful natures.” And even more shocking, they are not cast off by brothers and lovers; they are still cherished for the people they are, not hated for the “sin” they have committed. Victims of rape are seen as innocent, men are not allowed die because of love foiled, and no meaningless sacrifices are made. Lewis’s characters are really very sensible. And, so dear to my heart, the plot actually ties together in a meaningful way, making this a standout among Gothic novels.

At times the Gothicism of The Monk touches on Naturalism. Lewis satirizes the Bible, calling it “improper reading for innocent minds, being full of all manner of vice.” This touches on why this book has largely been forgotten: it was considered impious, sensuous, and unwholesome. A superior book was allowed to decay while inferior works flourished. But two hundred years later such qualities rarely drive off readers used to Henry Miller and Graham Greene. This eminently readable and rather sexy book deserves a second life.