The Monk - A Romance

The habit of dipping into Project Gutenberg might seem to some a dry one - so many people have a tendency to think public domain books, being old, must be dusty.

Somehow or other - I think it may have been a few months back after a discussion of 19th century literature online, in which Louisa May Alcott's darker works came up, I found myself bumping around Wikipedia (this is not a pastime for which I feel the currently-vogue requisite shame to indulge; though I know Wiki drives some people to seething snobbery, I rather enjoy its brevity, and have MANY times found its links and resources to be extremely useful), and found something or other about a 1790 novel called The Monk.

Having finished it a few days ago, I'm still doing a bit of gobsmacked blinking.  And not just because it revealed to me the shocker that my generation didn't invent sex, perversion, rape, nor even naughty priests.  No, the thing that strikes me most about this Guignol of sensationalistic plot and pretty stunningly explicit voyeurism is its psychology.

The female characters are, of course, by and large ignored except as vessels to catch and, indeed, runneth over with The Male Gaze.  Toward the end we see a nice bit of exception to this, where a passage is dedicated entirely to a woman's plight - but, of course, even 222 years ago, only in a plight is a female character of interest.  So we have The Woman In Peril to go with that Gaze business - but feminist diatribe is not the point of this post.  The thing was written by a twenty year old man in 1790:  of COURSE he was interested in fantasizing about girls.

Looking, though, at the minds of the men in The Monk, the acuteness of the author's observation is deep and seriously considered.  Flashy as this thing gets - and it gets astoundingly sensational - when the author delves into the mind, the result is very persuasive.  This is exceptionally so in the case of the title character, Ambrosio, whom it's no spoiler really to reveal as the villain of the piece.

What rings truest, and most frightening, in these passages - the thoughts of, the reactions of, this monk - is the combination of perfect self-awareness and utter heedlessness.  Ambrosio moves from a position of purity by default - he is sinless because he has been hermetically sealed off from "The World" - the source of temptations - into willful debauchery at top speed.  The voluptuousness both of his seduction AND of his guilt are starkly, clearly delineated.  His awareness of his guilt never flags, never interferes with his desire, even as the remainder of religion in his faith still fights to squeeze through loopholes and avoid reckoning and punishment.

In the world of 2012, of course, these things read with almost excessive identifiability.  This was my reading at a time when Sandusky was found guilty of his crimes, and the political undertones in a novel condemning, not faith, but many aspects (not, oddly enough perhaps, all) of the Catholic religion might have unsubtle resonance for many of us reading today.  Even a scene of almost-justice become street riot contains such modernity it's sickeningly recognizable.

Reading The Monk was a moment's lark turned into a bit of exploration, some admitted prurience, and finally a page-turning quest to see what this author would do next.  I have to say, I'd recommend it to anyone looking for their next open-minded read.  But be warned - the view inside the mind of a determined rapist doesn't lack for giddy shock.