THE UNVEILING GAZE AND THE SUPERSTITION OF SEXUALITY IN THE MONK
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In this paper, I analyze some key scenes in The Monk to argue that sexual desire, as represented in the text, acts as a superstition that defies the normativity of culture. The narrative may then be understood as the spectacularization of the conflict between unveiling desire and veiling cultural norm that becomes reformulated in the text as the conflict between superstition and religion. I rhetorically highlight the figure of the “veil” as the locus of contention between sexuality and cultural norm and contrast the gaze of Lorenzo with that of Ambrosio to show how the former gaze negotiates cultural norm, while the latter disavows it as they both veil and/or unveil their respective objects of desire. Yaşar University, Department of English Language and LiteratureThe Spectacle of Superstition and True Devotion The Monk begins with an ironic rendering of the spectacle of the sermon to be given by Ambrosio at the Church of the Capuchins. Despite the remote time in which the narrative is supposed to take place (sometime perhaps in the fifteenth century, at the time of the Inquisitions), there is hardly an indication that the following lines at the very beginning of the narrative may not apply to our present time: Scarcely had the Abbey-Bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Women came to show themselves, the Men to see the Women: Some were attracted to hear an Orator so celebrated; Some came because they had no better means of employing their time till the play began; Some from being assured that it would be impossible to find places in the Church; and one half of Madrid was brought thither by expecting to meet the other half. (Lewis, 2008, p.7) The ironic gaze of the narrator contemporizes: we are told, in this story of many centuries ago, that superstition still “reigns with …such despotic sway” in Madrid. There is no attempt to render Madrid of the past: the narrator situates the reader in a relation of contemporaneity with the city, which one might as well identify as the Madrid of the twenty-first century. The mention of “superstition” presumably manipulates the distance between those times of darkness in the past and our own enlightened times; and the “despotic sway” reminisces upon those retrograde practices of past oppression long overcome in the ever-improving progress of history. Yet, this heavy emphasis on superstition remains unexplained and unmotivated, particularly in view of the contrast between this solemn remark on the despotic sway of superstition and the ironic cast of the following lines that describe the scene of a spectacle, or more precisely, the scene of the spectators. “Superstition” and “true devotion” set up an odd opposition, since the meaning of both terms appears ambiguous and somewhat overlapping. “True devotion” remains unexplained in the same way as “superstition” and there seems to be hardly anything in the novel that suggests a sense of opposition between superstition and “true devotion.” The supernatural elements are never explained away, as they would be in a Radcliffe novel: The Monk is overindulgent in its excessive use of the supernatural. In fact, “true devotion,” insofar as it is represented by the overly gullible nuns of the church, appears as a variation of superstition itself. It would also be hard to ascribe “true devotion” to the narrator of a novel that persistently flirts with the discourses of obscenity and blasphemy through its sensuous portrayals of sexual desire and its irreverent treatment of the Bible. In light of the entire novel, it is best to consider the reference to “true devotion” in terms of an elaborate irony, a metanarrative device that discloses the duplicity of the narrator. The narrator, while being critical about the deficiency of true devotion, is perhaps as ignorant of it as the spectators around him. Indeed, his ironic gaze at the spectacle can be turned back upon him to reveal that he, himself, is an imposter of “true devotion.” These opening lines initiate an endless play on the word “superstition,” which remains ironic throughout the narrative. In one revealing scene, the reference to “superstition” becomes truly preposterous: Matilda, the potion-and-spell-dealing sorceress employed by Satan, accuses Ambrosio, the monk, of being superstitious, when she sees him ponder the dire consequences of his immoral, blasphemous actions. She accuses the monk of being on the side of superstition when he becomes fleetingly swayed by considerations of true devotion. Superstition, as seen in this instance, is the rhetorical figure of manipulation: no one, and certainly not the reader, wants to be on the side of superstition. In fact, the work of manipulation is visible in the very lines that precede the reference to superstition: “Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information.” Considered in relation to the next sentence, both “motives of piety” and “thirst of information” seem to oppose superstition, but in two very different ways: while the “motives of piety” represent the “true devotion” of a distant past before enlightenment, the “thirst of information” appeals to the more scientific sensibilities of a disenchanted age, which continue to be those of our contemporary one. The opposition between superstition and true devotion, perhaps, becomes less elusive when understood in relation to a much more obvious opposition that the ironic gaze of the narrator in these opening lines and in the first chapters explores: that between appearance and reality. This is also an opposition that constitutes the first modality of representation of The Monk, or its initial genre: social comedy. Perhaps, in keeping with the spirit of the genre, one observes an intense engagement with spectacle and spectacularity most explicitly here in the beginning, at the spectacular gathering in front of the church just before the spectacle of the sermon. This spectacularization of the spectators may also be thought to suggest, at a metanarrative level, the spectacularization of readers and the readership of the novel, most clearly manifested in the direct Without elaborating on the function of “superstition,” Punter points out the inconsistencies in the representation of superstition in The Monk: “Lewis is at the same time inveighing against superstition and depicting its manifestations as real. In a sense, both [Lewis and Radcliffe] are playing a confidence trick on the reader, by using all the resources in their power to convince us of the reality of phantoms and then sneering at belief.”(2009, p. 67) Punter makes a similar point, noting that “[the reader] is required to see himself as a spectator at a dramatic entertainment which deliberately highlights and parades the more spectacular aspects of life.” (2009, p. 79) More generally, Miles observes that “Spectacle, not narrative, is Lewis’s motivating force.” (2010, p. 54)
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