Satire in The Monk: Exposure and Reformation

Matthew Lewis punctuates the plot of The Monk (1796) with several bizarre, grisly and pornographic episodes; this "excessive, maniacal movement from one orgiastic episode to another," as Alok Bhalla has described it, makes it difficult to discern any clear narrative progression in the novel. A plot synopsis of The Monk would probably follow Ambrosio's moral debasement, necessarily excluding most of the characters that populate the novel. These minor characters and forgettable exchanges are frequently satiric. Satire permeates the novel, obtruding into even the most gruesome scenes, but seems most significant when incidental. Episodes like Raymond's adventure at the inn with Baptiste and Theodore's visit to the convent disguised as a beggar distract from the story of Ambrosio. The bluntness of the satire displayed by these and other secondary characters in minor episodes, however, highlights the centrality of satire to the main narrative. Lewis aligns himself with the tradition of reformative verse satire by introducing the novel with an imitation of Horace, and he continues to mimic Horace's urbanity throughout the novel. He models his narrator's stance on Juvenal's. Though few readers would describe Lewis's tone of ridicule and disgust as "declamatory grandeur," he seems to be attempting just that, especially in scenes like the opening Cathedral scene. Lewis, however, asserts his place amongst satire's most venerable figures to make his repugnant subject matter palatable rather than to reform a corrupt society or religious institution. As a satirist it is Lewis's responsibility to expose whatever he finds beneath any deceptive exterior. The most vicious discoveries are supposed to act as purgatives for his readers: harsh but salutary. Lewis dissects the objects of his satire as if he were performing an autopsy of them, exposing layer after layer of corruption in a relentless process. The trajectory of satire, inwards and penetrating, is also that of the novel's narrative structure; Lewis penetrates forcibly into the Abbey, into Ambrosio, and Ambrosio forcibly penetrates the female body by raping Antonia in the novel's climactic scene. Bakhtin, in his discussion of laughter, examines the way in which social interrogation can be viewed metaphorically as a dissection. Although Bakhtin primarily addresses comedy, his observations are equally applicable to the learned wit of satire. He treats the definitive characteristic of satire: it forcibly exposes an essential quality of an institution, class, etc., which individuals associated with the ridiculed body have concealed either through ignorance, hypocrisy, or affectation. He describes this process as a metaphorical "dismemberment" of the object of ridicule, an image particularly apt for the Gothic novel, a subgenre in which metaphorical dismemberment becomes literally enacted: Bakhtin describes the process by which laughter, as Habegger describes it, "punctuates choice lies," leaving the artificiality of social codes exposed and vulnerable. Although satire may free the reader from slavish obedience to the object of ridicule, it offers no replacement for the degraded object. Exposure contains potential both for the radical undermining and conservative reinforcement of social conventions: satire disrupts the social order by "dissecting" it and revealing its arbitrariness, but ultimately reinforces it by offering no natural (or unarbitrary) alternatives to convention. Bakhtin's observations complicate Lewis's pretensions as a reformative satirist. The classical satirists and their neoclassical imitators claimed that their verses would shame readers out of deceit and folly, a stance hardly credible but long accepted by many readers. The standard of virtue which satirists adhered to and which readers were supposed to imbibe is usually termed conservative, the political and social equivalent of the "middle way." The satirist's authoritative tone and control over his verses helped establish his moral superiority over his readers; the terse, highly structured …