Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

ecalls Bataille’s emphasis on creating a text that blurs the boundaries between language
and experience, where the experience of language (reading) becomes itself a physical
experience. Moreover, what Napier calls “a deflection of sympathy” is the absence of a
“happy ending”—a remark that had earlier been voiced by one of the contemporary
critics of the novel. She bases this observation on both her belief that “Lewis seems
reluctant even to restore Agnes to perfect tranquility: her return to happiness is expressed
as a transition she must ‘bear with fortitude’” (123) and the fact that “Ambrosio is
refused his author’s mercy” (124). In contrast to Napier, I would argue that these brief
clarifications do not diminish The Monk’s tenure as an innovative work of both the
Gothic and the transgressive, nor do they affect its stock as cultural capital.
140
On another level, Napier’s in-depth analysis of the character of Ambrosio—who
she seems to believe, is a reflection of the author—appears to weaken her thesis
regarding the failure of the Gothic and the “overreading” of the psychoanalyst critics, for
it perfectly illustrates the concepts and patterns of sexual repression, specifically as they
lead to violence and aggression. She claims that “the novel’s most important and
interesting patterns of imagery (especially sexual ones) are predicated on transference
and indirection, suggesting not only Lewis’s initial conservativeness in depicting sexual
activity but mirroring (and again, confusing, imitating) Ambrosio’s strongly repressed
sexual side” (126). She refers to several passages of the novel where the repressed nature
of the main character is clearly depicted, such as his describing his need to resist
temptation when acting as the confessor of the “noblest Dames of Madrid” (40) or the
passage which implies that his upbringing in the convent triggered the mechanisms of his
repression (237-9). She continues by arguing that “Ambrosio’s repeated attempts to