Examples Of Gothic Horror In The Monk By Matthew Lewis

Matthew Lewis’s novel "The Monk " is considered to be an ideal example of Gothic horror. This novel is certainly filled with grotesque images of violence, sex, and terror. In fact, terror and horror are gendered in order to express existing worries regarding virtue. Edmund Burke, a Philosopher of gothic novels is often contrasted with no emotion and is portrayed stronger than fear and terror, which is the true inspiration of the sublime.
Terror is a sense of uneasiness and is produced by fear. Horror is physical, accompanied by shock, the realization of fear. In the novel, The Monk, women are more likely to experience terror, while men were more likely to experience horror. An increase for romance appears often in Gothic novels written by women. Romance identifies with the heroine associated with the villain and what events inspire awe, fear, and terror. Building on the tradition set by Ann Radcliff, terror is portrayed as a faculty within peculiar feminine mind. During the riot, Lorenzo lectures the nuns for their foolishness: “Excuse me…. If I am surprised, that while menaced by real woes you are capable of yielding to imaginary dangers. These terrors
The Bleeding Nun, the Wandering Jew, and the Devil all represent the sublime. The Bleeding Nun is both the ancestor of Raymond and his ghostly wife. Raymond once mistakes her for his lover Agnes, but after a near-fatal crash, the Bleeding Nun returns to him night after night slowly draining him of all his strength. The Bleeding Nun also brings horror to Raymond because her reasons for attaching herself to him are mysterious, “I gazed upon the Specter with horror too great to be described” (Lewis, 140). This continues until the Wandering Jew explains the Bleeding Nun's history and that her bones must be put to rest, after which her spirit becomes dormant. Because of her relation with Raymond, their union is not only sacrilegious but loosely