This is one of those novels that I hesitate to comment on, simply because I'm not a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and as you can tell from the title, it's not aimed at me. But it's on the list, so here I go. Please excuse any errors I will probably make.
Our “hero”, if you can call him that, is the monk of the title. His name is Ambrosio, and although he's only in his 30s, he has ascended to the leadership of his monastery in Madrid because of his extraordinary virtue and ability at sermonizing and counseling the people. We quickly learn that he has quite a good opinion of himself, to such an extent that he considers himself immune from temptation, and thus rather superior to everyone in his orbit. Guess what he's going to learn.
His downfall (good guess) begins with a young monk named Rosario at the monastery, who gets quite close to Ambrosio. Turns out Rosario's real name is Matilda, a young woman who fell in love with Ambrosio. She dressed herself as a man and joined the cloister to be closer to him. And boy, does she get close.
Now, of course, Ambrosio has to keep his activities with Matilda highly secret, particularly when his feelings for her begin to subside through over-familiarity, as they tend to do when sex is not combined with any more intimate emotion. So over the course of this novel's 400-odd pages, other characters make their presence felt, including a number of other beautiful women. (Matilda doesn't seem to object too strenuously, to the reader's surprise, but when I tell you that she has a talent for witchcraft that she places at Ambrosio's disposal so he can sleep with other women, you may get an idea of just how this story is likely to conclude.)
There's a convent attached to Ambrosio's monastery, and a few of the aforementioned beautiful women get sent there whether they like it or not. Given Ambrosio's growing appetites, these women's presence at the convent does them no favors, especially when we consider that the mother superior of said convent has more than her share of ambition. You may ask, as I did, how does a nun express ambition in a convent of all places. In this case, the nun in question wants two things in particular: total control over the lives of the sisters in her charge, and utter refusal to let any of them leave, even when the Pope instructs her to. As you can plainly tell, there's not a lot of God's presence in this alleged religious life – there are some Godly people around, but if there are any such in the monastery or in the convent, we don't see them much.
As for Ambrosio's ultimate fate, well, I'll leave you to guess. Unless you guess right away that he goes to Hell, it's worse than you think. (Sorry for the spoiler, but what did you expect?) The good guys, on the other hand, almost without exception, come out of these adventures with their lives, fortunes, and loves intact, whereas the bad guys...well, you get the idea.
You will immediately notice that we have here an English novel, written by an Englishman, that takes place in Spain. Makes perfect sense; as Matthew Lewis clearly wanted to set his work in a monastery, setting it in England would not have worked at all. By the time “The Monk” was published in 1796, England had been a Protestant nation for well over 250 years, the English monasteries had long since been closed, and the people looked upon Catholicism with a good deal of suspicion. So the fact that a novel called “The Monk” had a Gothic approach to it surprised no one. It was such a success that Lewis was sometimes thereafter referred to as “Monk” Lewis.
And it certainly deserved its success. I've said before that I have a low tolerance for sap, and “The Monk” has its share. Nevertheless, as impatient as I am with sap, and as confusing as I find a good deal of the Catholic doctrine on display here, the conclusion still scared the heck out of me. Apart from that emotional punch, what I came away from "The Monk" with was mostly the question as to what it has to say about the best path to God might be. Good question. Lewis doesn't really answer that in any affirmative manner, but he certainly told us that the proper path to God is not Catholicism.
Benshlomo says, take note of the biases of your author before you get to Page 1.
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