More Gothic Seduction

Looking ahead to our readings on Gothic seduction in Romantic literature, I wanted to post two contemporary examples from pop culture:

Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera:

 
Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road."  You might disagree about this one, but I see it as being Gothic, especially in its darkness and the ghost imagery at the end. Another Demon Lover here?  What do you think?  Any other examples from pop culture?

The Spiritual World Controls the Natural World in "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere"

Sun Clears: http://vermontdailybriefing.com


After discussing Samuel Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” in length during Tuesday’s class, I figured I would “beat the poem to death” just a little bit more by writing my blog post on the piece. I am truly sorry if you’re sick and tired of discussing said poem, but I hope in attempting to shed new light upon the poem...I will not be completely wasting all of your time. So, without further delay, I shall begin my entry!


After reexamining the poem, I asked myself, “how does Coleridge use nature to reflect the transformation of the mariner throughout his journey?” A reader could deduce from a simple, surface level reading of the work that the natural world holds great power in the poem, whether it be beautiful, frightening, or both simultaneously that natural elements play a large role throughout each stage of the mariner’s journey. During class, we debated whether or not Coleridge had religious motivations for writing this poem, and if so, what was he trying to imply about religious practices. With a more careful analysis, I see that as a reader, we do not have to necessarily decide whether or not Coleridge attempts to make points about Christianity through the tale of the mariner. Now, I see that Coleridge wants to connect the spiritual and the natural worlds by clarifying to readers the ways in which the spiritual world controls and utilizes the natural world. By comparing and contrasting the various literary devices employed by Coleridge in the lines before the mariner kills albatross, the lines in which guilt and/or curse plagues the mariner, and lastly the lines where the mariner finds absolution and redemption, I will hope to answer the previously posed question.


During the time before the mariner kills the albatross, he excitedly declares, "The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared." The alliteration within this line promotes a smooth reading, thus signifying a sense of peacefulness between the mariner and the ocean, the natural world. The use of pleasantries in reference to the natural world dissolve after the mariner kills the albatross, he states, “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down.” The repetition within this line emphasizes the halted breeze, which brings disfavor upon the mariner from the other sailors who blame him for the lack of breeze. Here, the natural world, in the form of the breeze, or lack there of punishes the mariner for his spiritual wrongdoings, thus exemplifying the ways in which Coleridge illustrates how the spiritual world controls the natural world.


Throughout his journey, the mariner battles many of the elements, such as the intensity of the sun, the lack of rain, and the aforementioned death of the wind. But, in the turning point, or what some would consider the climax of the poem, the mariner exclaims, “shinning white....elfish light...Blue, glossy green, and velvet black…O happy living things!" This exclamation with its powerful imagery and use of color illustriously signals the transformative moment within the mariner. In this moment, with his vivid descriptions of the sea creatures’ readers can see the mariner’s newfound appreciation for the beauty within all God’s creations, and so begins his voyage towards redemption.  Yet again, Coleridge creates a link between the spiritual and the natural worlds. Through gaining appreciation and seeing beauty within all of God’s creatures, the mariner slowly begins to redeem himself, and thus explains the alleviation of the natural phenomena’s on the rest of his journey.


At the poem's end, the Ancient Mariner preaches respect for the natural world as a way to remain in good standing with the spiritual world, because in order to respect God, one must respect all of his creations.  Finally through the use of a simile within the final lines, Coleridge connects the worlds once more, “The albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea.” This simile, which credits natural forces for the falling off of the albatross, suggests that God, or the spiritual world has connected with the natural world once again. The albatross falling into the sea through the means of natural force detracts guilt from the mariner, and now relinquishes control back into the hands of God and/or spiritual forces, thus stripping the mariner of his guilt for he has received redemption and deliverance from his sin.

The Spiritual Endeavor: The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere

(http://undoomed.wetpaint.com/page/Rime+of+the+Ancient+Mariner)

Coleridge in his poem “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” juxtaposes Christian religious undercurrents with those of superstition.  The theme of spirituality, one of the more prominent themes of the work, draws material from both religion and secular notions of the sublime.  I would say Coleridge does this in attempt to neutralize spiritual undertaking, without necessarily attacking believers of either camp.

The nature of the character of the marinere for me indicates Coleridge’s attitude towards spiritual wanderers. (Note that this isn’t to say that I think Coleridge agrees with his own character’s conclusions.)  The marinere at sea partially believes the superstition of an augural albatross, praising it for its good humor but also as a bringer of peaceful weather.  However, for one untold reason or another, the marinere kills the bird.  Symbolically, if we the readers take the bird as the sailors do, as some sort of spiritual being, the killing of the bird is an act of provocation.  The marinere, although he does not reveal his motives, chooses to make a move towards connecting or inquiring about this spiritual realm, which he invokes as both “a good Christian soul” and secularly (ln 63-64).

The albatross represents an emblem of the supernatural for the marinere.  The superstition holds that the bird acts as a beacon of fortune, less upon his own accord, but in service to higher forces.  Killing it would merely be an address to its master.  The notion of the marinere seeking spiritual authorities is supported by the nature of the marinere’s situation.  He is literally a wanderer on the sea, unaware of outside forces, and capable only of passivity. Killing the albatross is the least he could do.  We know that the killing of the albatross is important because the tale of the marinere is about its consequences.  The arbitrariness of the marinere’s decision also lends itself to the passive, almost accidental—above all, uncontrollable—interactions with the supernatural that Coleridge sees spiritual seekers finding.

By the marinere’s tale, what stands before him, for the retribution of the albatross, are two secular spirits.  Coleridge in these beings as well, combines spiritual designations.  Death and Living Death, no doubt contrasting with the bride and groom, holds the marinere to his ‘sin,’ but at the same time lets fortune take his fate.

Coleridge puts the marinere in a narrative position of wisdom.   From him, (whether or not the readers and the wedding guest agree,) a moral message is put across.  He comes to another man to tell his story, similar to the goal of a missionary, and comes to him at a singularly important event in life, when advice is always sought and celebrated.  The poem, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” is about what the marinere expresses.  This platform of importance heightens the stakes of what the marinere actually says.  The marinere’s superfluous lesson of “He prayeth best who loveth best, / All things both great and small,” seems hardly related to the situation Coleridge put the marinere in (ln 645-648).  Neither is this revelation related to the wedding guest directly, nor does it adequately portray the experience he has just expounded.  In this way, Coleridge may be mocking the keepers of spiritual advice, by morphing a non-secular truth with a seemingly secular experience.  Not only does the wedding guest fear the marinere as a symbol of death, with specter-like hands, but the marinere is attributing the actions of spiritual entities named Death and Living Death—names completely absent from the Christian canon—to the Christian God.

In depicting the marinere as a man of spirituality in secular and non-secular ways, and also acting in his situation of parallel flux, for me, Coleridge does not establish his work as leaning towards one religion or another.  The charge of the marinere’s rhyme is in his emotional experience of the circumstances that come with inquiring of the spiritual realm: uncertainty, but power of belief. 

Perspectivism in Coleridge

Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” is a ballad—it recounts the mariner’s “ghastly aventure” (618) at sea as he retells it in his own words to the present wedding-guest—despite its one-sided story telling qualities, the poem retains multiple perspectives and utilizes several other voices besides just the mariner’s.  This perspectivism is the manner in which the audience is engaged in the story and further asked to observe their own observations.  

The voice of the wedding-guest is a perfect example.  His presence is acknowledged foremost at the beginning of the poem to frame the mariner’s story being told.  The wedding-guest’s actions interrupt the story just a few stanzas later as he “here beat his breast,/ For he heard the loud bassoon” (35-36).  Here, it is the guest’s impatience which is noted; even if he desires to be at the wedding, he is bound both by his own childlike curiosity and by the mariner’s persistence to tell his story.  The emotions of the wedding-guest at the surface of the story properly mirror the reader’s; though the audience/reader has other things to do, we are bound by the entrancing effects of story-telling and are unable to turn away from the start of such a story.

The beginning of part IV, halfway through Coleridge’s ballad, the wedding-guest enters back in at a shocking and disturbing point in the story, when the mariner’s crew drops dead.  This serves to recognize the eeriness both of the story being told and of the fact that the mariner is alive and in front of the wedding-guest/the reader to tell his story to begin with.  It re-situates the reader outside of the context of the story in a manner of reminding us that what we’re hearing/reading is the recount of a strange adventure at sea.  The wedding-guest’s growing fear at the tale being told again reflects the emotions of the reader as events in the poem get stranger.

“‘Marinere!’” explains the wedding-guest, “‘thou hast thy will:/ ‘For that, which comes out of thine eye, doth make/ ‘My body and soul to be still’” (363-365).  It is noted here that throughout the process of the story-telling, the listener and the teller trade places: by the end the listener is agitated instead of the mariner in desperate need of an audience to whom he can relate his tale of loneliness, and the teller is calmer, perhaps from the relief of having a listener, especially since the story is about his desolation and loneliness which was so sever “that God himself/ Scarce seemed there to be” (632-633).  Interestingly, the description of the wedding-guest’s discomfort with the story is noted by stillness—an adjective used to describe the witnessing moon over the sea as well as, at times, the sea itself.  The ocean is irrefutably a symbol of the sublime in its natural unpredictability and fear-inducing uncertainty by sailors and mariners whose lives depend on the ocean while they are traveling.  Consequently, the times it is silent and still in the poem (such as to emphasize the ship’s idleness in lines 111-114 and to describe the approaching harbor “clear as glass” in line 477) re-emphasize the subliminal-ness of the ocean—stillness does not devalue its unpredictability but instead symbolizes wisdom.  The ocean as a natural entity of wisdom in the face of humans is, indeed, an characteristic of the sublime.

The poem ends with a stanza that describes the effects the story has on the wedding-guest, not the mariner, and the effect is that the reader leaves the poem with a sense of their own reflected observations of the poem.  Gothic literature, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” included, utilizes this perspectivism and self-awareness of the audience to distinguish itself from other romantic works at the time and make a commentary or questioning on values not previously investigated.  This unique quality gives the narrator of a poem the chance to interact directly with the reader.

                                     

Sound and Personification in "The Haunted Beach"

Claude Monet: "Beach in Pourville"(1882)

            Sound plays an important role in the movement and atmosphere of Mary Robinson’s “The Haunted Beach”, and it also serves to create a sublime setting. Coupled with instances of personification, the sounds of the poem hint at a deeper mystique and power working through the natural and inanimate, from the cliffs to the ocean itself. Even more, the sounds (or lack thereof) that the humans make are unusual and contrast with the noises of the inanimate. In all, the audible points of this poem – and who or what supplies them – reveal a powerful form of communication, even one devoid of human-constructed words.

            Personification and sound go hand in hand throughout the poem. In the first line, to be exact, the beach is described as “lonely” (l. 1), a characteristic that already depicts human unrest and isolation. Two lines following this description, the shed is given a “head” (l. 3), and in the next stanza, a cavern wide is supplied with jaws (ll. 15-16). Fittingly, both jaws and a head are gateways to communication, and at the least, they join the chorus of personified yet naturally-occurring features on the beach. Certainly, the most prominent of these is the ocean, with its green billows that “play’d”, as referenced six times during the poem. The sublime, then, is allowed to manifest through the personification of otherwise inanimate bodies.

            The ocean engages in two forms of discourse: roaring and yawning. Each of these come from a mouth but have different meanings. Yawns usually exude tiredness, a lack of interest or boredom, and what is more, they can be attempts to energize the body and gain more oxygen. Roaring is much more beast-like and is a total emission – a release of epic, loud proportions. That the ocean balances between these disparate sounds signals the awe and epic nature of the scene. As expressed in the first stanza, the green billows produce “the deafening roar /re-echoed on the chalky shore” (ll. 7-8), and the interplay with a “chalky” surface seems intentional, as to intimidate human instrumentation of language. This cross blend of communication and nature is also present earlier in the stanza, as “lofty barks were shatter’d” (l. 4), with the word “barks” playing on both trees and the talking or noise made by outsiders, lofty and separated from the beach.

            The apparitions are termed a “band/ of spectres” (ll. 25-26), which may also supply a musical connotation in addition to one of camaraderie. This would also be an interesting addition to the conversation between the ocean and outsiders, as the green billows “play”, perhaps musically. Unlike the winds that moan, the spectres howl, which is a decidedly less humanistic verb. In relation to the ghosts, the ocean exudes the same power of its “deafening roar” (l. 7), but does so with its “yawning” (l. 55), in which “the spectre band, [the mariner’s] messmates brave, /Sunk” (ll. 54-55). With the sound of this yawn, as defined earlier, the ocean both exudes its lack of concern for the humans, and perhaps attempts to re-energize itself.

            Of course, the green billows are in conversation with other elements. For example, “the moaning wind / Stole o’er the summer ocean” (ll. 19-20), with the moaning again signaling both personification and unrest. Moreover, as the ocean yawns late in the poem, the storm above produces a “commotion” (l. 57). This continued implementation of unsettling noises could be a precursor to the dark murder of the mariner. Even more, it is arguable that the silence of the fisherman/murderer dehumanizes him in the poem and strips him of his ability to express or emote. In addition, the silence could be symbolic of how the expressive natural world has supplanted him.

            Sadly for the fisherman, it seems an unhappy partnership, as his “liquid way/ bounds over the deeply yawning tomb” (ll. 69-70). The tomb is not pleased; rather, it yawns and almost seems like the embodiment of an unenthused master. Perhaps, this theory of natural dominance over the humans (the fisherman and the apparitions) explains the dreary servitude the murderer inhabits in the final stanza. No explanation is perfect, but what can be ascertained is the dramatic role sound and personification play in the sublime setting of Mary Robinson's “The Haunted Beach”.

Superstition vs. Christianity, According to Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” told in seven parts, reveals itself to be a lesson to Coleridge’s readers about the implications of mistrusting God and placing stock in superstitions and myths.  This message is unsurprising when readers realize that Coleridge lived his life as a Christian.  He first believed in the doctrine of Unitarianism, which postulates that God is just one person, starkly contrasting the Trinitarian belief of God as three beings existing consubstantially as one (“Unitarianism”).  Later, Coleridge did actually subscribe to the orthodox Trinitarian beliefs.  According to The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse, Coleridge had abandoned belief in one God for belief in the Trinity by the time he wrote “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” (Franklin).  It is, however, difficult to discern this fact based on the poem’s text.  There is no doubt, though, that Coleridge was promoting Christian ideals in this verse.

            The plot of the poem, which employs the unique literary form of a frame narrative, begins with a scene in which an old mariner accosts a guest outside of a wedding and entices him to listen to a tale.  The mariner’s story is of an ocean voyage on which he lost his entire crew and suffered supernatural torture because he violated a superstition concerning an albatross, a bird of great size.  The crew had been struggling through fog, mist, ice, and stormy weather.  Then an albatross appeared during the tempest and accompanied them on their journey, at which point a south wind blew and buoyed them onward.  It accompanied them, that is, until the mariner shot the albatross with his crossbow. 

            The crew had varying reactions to this incident.  Initially, they feared for their lives that the mariner, upon killing the albatross, had upset the balance and fate would plague them on their travels.  However, the wind continued to blow and the sun continued to rise so they determined that killing the albatross actually rid them of the foul weather.  Things took a turn for the worse, however.  The wind eventually stopped, the ship was stuck on the ocean, and drought set in.  Then the supernatural curses took effect; a ghost ship visited the crew, all the men dropped dead, and the surviving mariner realized his curse to endure a living death.  After days of this and once progress had resumed, a band of seraphs animated the corpses until they abandoned the bodies to serve as a beacon to a Hermit on the shore who would help the mariner.  The mariner is then destined to relay his story to every deserving soul so that God’s message may be realized.

            The juxtaposition of superstition and Christianity in this poem sets forth an interesting situation for readers to consider.  The poem deals outwardly with sailor superstitions and their consequences.  Shooting an albatross, a mythically good omen for sea travelers, supposedly brings misfortune upon the offenders.  That seems to be the case for the mariner, as the wind stops and travel becomes impossible following the heinous act.  Then things spiral further downward as the crew all die and play bodily hosts to spirits.  In the mariner’s mind, it is no wonder that he sees all these calamities as a direct result of his shooting the albatross.  He is, after all, a sailor and likely buys into the belief that the status of a bird can determine the fate of a voyage.

            It is intriguing, however, to view the happenings through a different lens, a Christian lens.  This lens posits the idea that God controls all of the events of the adventure.  God would have been the one treating the sailors to an array of weather: mist, fog, storms, ice, breezes, and waves.  This would have simply been following his plan.  In other words, all of the weather would have happened regardless of the presence of the albatross.  The mariner’s killing the albatross is still a grievance, though not one defying superstition.  Rather, it is one that defies God’s commandment not to kill.  It is because the mariner sins against God’s will that he and his crew must suffer tribulations.  As God is an almighty being, it would not even be outside of his power to kill the crew and reanimate them with seraphs, or to conjure a fictitious ghost ship to frighten the mariner and teach him a lesson.  Fate avenging the superstition-plagued albatross or God punishing the mariner for his disobedience to the faith could both explain all of the occurrences in the mariner’s tale.

            Evidence to support the position that God was the cause of the mariner’s mishaps, rather than the supernatural, comes from a careful interpretation of Coleridge’s text.  First, the circumstances become really bleak once the mariner employs the albatross in an almost blasphemous manner.  After his crew decides to blame their troubles on his superstition violation, the mariner enacts his own form of penance.  “Instead of the Cross the Albatross/About my neck was hung” (Coleridge 137-8).  Where upon a good Christian a cross should be seen, the mariner dons the albatross.  This likely angers God even further; not only did the mariner kill one of God’s innocent creatures, he now wears the dead creature in place of a cross.  It is immediately following this revelation that the ghost ship appears and the curse begins to set in, very possibly God’s work. 

Further evidence comes with the fact that the mariner only ever calls upon God in his times of need, when he is especially trouble-laden.  He does not think, when the breeze is blowing and the sun is shining, to acknowledge God then.  A final supportive example is in the fact that the Hermit saves the mariner.  The seraph-band emerges from the corpses and gives off a light that beckons to the Hermit, who knows they are a signal: “’Where are those lights so many and fair/That signal made but now?” (Coleridge 558-9).  Fate would have no reason to guide the Hermit to the mariner for rescue.  God, however, would want the mariner to be saved and given a chance to live out his faith properly.  Thus, God arranges the seraphs to steer the Hermit to the mariner for redemption. 

Coleridge’s intention to portray the mariner’s misfortunes and eventual salvation as acts of God becomes clear when the mariner reveals his intentions to the wedding guest at the end of the poem, when the frame story comes back into prevalence.  The mariner confides to the wedding guest that he has “strange power of speech” which when “anguish comes and makes [him] tell/[His] ghastly aventure,” men cannot help but listen (Coleridge 620; 617-8).  It is his duty to impart his tale on certain people so that they may become wiser and will know and obey the power of God.  He, and in essence Coleridge, wishes to convey the message that superstitions are superficial interpretations of God’s actions and that they serve no redemptive purposes, as God does. 

Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.  “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere in Seven Parts.”  Lyrical

Ballads: With a Few Other Poems (London: Printed for J. & A. Arch, 1798).

Franklin, Caroline, Ed.  The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse (Great Britain: Pearson

Education Limited, 2011).

“Unitarianism.”  Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 13 April 2012. Wikimedia             Foundation, Inc. 23 April 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism>

Photo Source

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/The_rime_of_the_ancient_Mariner_-_Coleridge.jpg

Rhyme and Rhythm in Mary Robinson's The Haunted Beach

Source

            Mary Darby Robinson's The Haunted Beach is a charmingly creepy poem. Written in response to Henry Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, the poem is also about a sunken ship and a lot of dead sailors. However, as an interesting twist, the curse in this poem is not on the sole surviving sailor, but on a fisherman who has murdered that sailor. The poem opens on the image of a desolate and deserted beach, but quickly moves to the lone fisherman's shed. Inside it is the body of a sailor, plundered treasure still held in his arms, but blatantly murdered, as seen by the number of gashes in his skull. Around the corpse wails the ghosts and specters of the man's fallen crewmates, who all died in the storm that caused the sailor to become shipwrecked and fall at the hands of the fisherman.  In the last two stanzas, we finally get some description of the fisherman in whose hut this dead sailor is entombed. However, these lines are rather vague, and don't tell us very much. It mentions that the fisherman "has not the pow'r to stray" (line 78) and is trapped within the walls of this shed, and that he "toil'd in vain" (line 65) for a "full thirty years" (line 73), but it isn't particularly descriptive of what his punishment is or what he is trying to accomplish via his toiling.

            Present in this poem are plenty of your traditional gothic elements, including ghosts/specters, a skeleton, a mystery and doom (namely the fisherman's doomed fate). However, I think that this poem is most interesting when analyzed from a structural perspective. The poem consists of nine nine-line stanzas, all of which include rhymes. I'm not too certain about the significance of the nine here, which strikes me as intentional because not only are the stanzas all nine lines long, but there are exactly nine of them. The end of the poem feels a little too open-ended/vague to me, so I can't help but feel that the nine stanzas was very intentional or held some kind of meaning to Robinson. Her other interesting choice however was the repeated use of rhyming. Robinson used not only end stop rhymes (rhymes made using the last word of a set of lines) but in the third line of every stanza also rhymed the last word with a word in the middle of the line. This kind of rhyming pattern gave each stanza a bit of a momentum push, which is caused by the fact that one line was suddenly split into two shorter lines. This creates a bit of a rushed feeling when reading the poem, because it suddenly speeds up just a little bit. This sort of feeling, combined with the regular patterns of rhyming throughout the rest of the poem gave a very ocean-like feeling, where the rhythm of the piece felt very much like the ebb and flow of the tide, pushing and pulling the reader through the poem. At the same time, the rhyming also establishes a very monotonous feel that can be said to mirror the punishment of the fisherman, which is to waste "in Solitude and Pain/A loathsome life away." (line 80-81)

            I think that Robinson instills a chilling and creepy feeling in the reader through this poem and does so to great effect through her structuring of the poem. On the whole however, the poem does not seem to have any overbearing meaning or theme (other than the obligatory and obvious moral reading of "do not kill", the sin for which the fisherman is punished). Although my opinion/thought process might be biased since I knew going into the poem that it was a response poem, it is still entirely possible that this poem's purpose was nothing other than to entertain, which it certainly accomplished.

The Mythological/Supernatural in Coleridge and Lewis

One of the things that stands out most about "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and The Monk is the authors' blatant infusion of supernatural elements into their works. While the two authors handle this differently, both works are markedly changed by the inclusion of things out of the realm of human possibility.

Consistent throughout both pieces is the invocation of higher powers. Lewis' Matilda, it is revealed, has the ability to summon Satan to carry out certain grotesque rites, and Satan himself is enough of a presence to be able to mercilessly fling Ambrosio onto the rocks, resulting in his death. Noticeably absent from all of this is the presence of God. This seems to be a hallmark of Gothic literature--much of the misery that occurs affirms the existence of Satan, but any joys or successes are carried out through indomitable willpower, or (at the risk of sounding cliched) through "the triumph of the human spirit". While it is less tangible in Coleridge, the ancient mariner's repeated references to heaven and angels shows a degree of acceptance towards the idea of deities or greater forces.
Each of these works also has a vitally important female character who also happens to be spectral and terrifying. Lewis' bleeding nun, to me, shares a good number of characteristics with the Death-woman in the mariner's story.


Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.


Such is the description from Coleridge's poem. In what is perhaps an illustration of the misogyny that is also present in a lot of Gothic literature, I think the authors' uses of bewitching and powerful spectral women are so interesting because they play off of the notion that it is unsettling or unnatural for a woman to wield such terrible power. 

A final supernatural element that bridges these two works is that of human-animal interaction, and the implications these interactions have. The most blatant of these is Coleridge's albatross, the bane of the mariner's existence. I couldn't help but wonder while reading the poem, why shoot the albatross? All indications point to it having been a positive sign for the men aboard the ship, and no real explanation is given for its death. However, this incident and the ones that follow illustrate the idea of supernatural forces at work, as it suggests some otherworldly importance to the mysterious bird whose death brought so much retribution. It is less pronounced in Lewis' work, but I think the serpent shouldn't be overlooked either. The serpent doesn't play a huge role in the book other than its importance in setting up the first sexual tryst between Ambrosio and Matilda, but it does (through its action, attacking a holy man as he attempts to pick a flower) suggest agency given by the devil or some other force to begin creating mayhem and sinister deeds. 

Iron Maiden and Coleridge: Exploring Adaptation through Narrative Perspective

As a major Iron Maiden fan, I was a bit disappointed by Dr. T highlighting the very adaptation of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” that I hoped to draw the class’s attention to. Still, Dr. T refrained from going into a detailed analysis of the connections between the song and the poem – connections I plan to freely explore in this blog.

                Primarily, I would like to complicate Dr. T’s claim that Coleridge’s narrative is primarily first person, while Iron Maiden’s version is told in third person. Coleridge does, in fact, write the Mariner’s tale in first person in his poem. However, one must also remain aware of the fact that in both works, the story is being relayed to the audience by a third party who is neither the “Ancient Mariner” telling the tale nor the wedding guest(s) listening to it. Though the Mariner’s tale is told in first person in Coleridge’s poem, the Mariner’s words are actually being quoted and relayed by another guest at the wedding.  In the first part, Coleridge establishes this by writing, “The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:/ He cannot choose but hear; / And thus spake on that ancient man, / The bright-eyed Mariner” (20-23). The narrative that follows, though told in first person, does not come from the same voice that opens (and closes) the poem.  Ostensibly, Coleridge writes “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in the first-person, but having the narrator of the poem be a separate character from that of the Mariner complicates the traditional first person perspective.  The Mariner does not directly relate his story to the audience, as traditionally occurs, but instead has his story related to the audience through a third party.

                Similarly, the Iron Maiden version of the poem also tells the tale of the Ancient Mariner through a mediator – a mediator who, similarly to Coleridge’s version, is not the Mariner’s primary audience. Iron Maiden writes, “And the music plays on, as the bride passes by / Caught by his spell and / the Mariner tells his tale.”  Just like Coleridge’s version, Iron Maiden has transferred the Mariner’s tale to a larger audience.

                An important difference exists between the two texts, however: Coleridge’s narrator simply relates the events of the wedding night and the Mariner’s tale to the audience, while Iron Maiden commands the audience to listen. Compare Coleridge’s above introduction of the Mariner’s story to Iron Maiden’s: “Hear the rime of the Ancient Mariner / See his eye as he stops one of three / Mesmerises one of the wedding guests / Stay here and listen to the nightmares / of the Sea”.  In Coleridge’s introduction, he does not command the audience to listen. He simply notes that the wedding guest “cannot choose but hear”. The narrator relates the Mariner’s story to the audience, but he does not directly comment upon it. Iron Maiden, on the other hand, implores the audience to listen. They command the audience to “Hear the rime of the Ancient Mariner” and to “Stay here and listen to the nightmares of the Sea”. Iron Maiden wishes to educate the audience; Coleridge simply wishes to relate a story.

                This difference between the two texts also appears at the end of the Mariner’s tale. Coleridge ends his poem by having the narrator comment thusly on the wedding guest’s fate after hearing the mariner’s tale: “He went like one that hath been stunned, / And is of sense forlorn: / A sadder and a wiser man / He rose the morrow morn”.  Iron Maiden similarly notes that the wedding guest has become wiser, writing, “And the wedding guest's a sad and wiser man,” but concludes by saying, “And the tale goes on and on and on”. Coleridge’s narrator simply relates the story of the wedding guest being affected by the mariner’s tale. Iron Maiden’s ending creates the implication that the Mariner’s story has and will continue to affect more listeners than just the wedding guest. By saying that the “tale goes on and on and on”, Iron Maiden creates the implication that this story will be repeated continuously. The Mariner in Coleridge’s version mentions that he has been forced to walk the Earth and tell his tale, but the poem ends with the reaction of a singular individual. The Iron Maiden song, conversely, ends with the idea of the tale being retold.

            Having established the difference in narration between the two works, one can begin to explore what effect that difference creates. Coleridge’s version puts a heavier emphasis on the Mariner’s tale itself, while Iron Maiden places greater importance on the act of telling the tale. Unlike Iron Maiden’s version, Coleridge does not begin by imploring the audience to listen or end by reinforcing the repetition of narrative. Instead, he focuses completely on establishing the Mariner as a narrator and the effects of the narrative he tells on the wedding guest. Though the Mariner establishes that it has been fate to roam the world and tell his story, Coleridge’s version focuses only on the telling of that story to an individual. To this end, Coleridge presents the entirety of the Mariner’s narrative. By then establishing the wedding guest as having become “sadder and wiser” by hearing the story, Coleridge implicates that the Mariner’s story has great import. The text of the Mariner’s story becomes preeminent, rather than the manner by which it is told. This could help to explain why, as Dr. T points out, Coleridge writes the majority of the poem in first person (despite the fact it is not actually a typical first-person narrative): he wants the audience to identify with the Mariner’s story. Coleridge wants the audience to focus on the Mariners narrative and to identify with it. As such, it is not much of a stretch to assume that Coleridge saw the poem as applicable to readers of the day. What the lesson was that Coleridge tried to impart is immaterial to this argument, but one cannot escape the fact that Coleridge very much saw the Mariner’s narrative and lessons as being applicable to a wider audience.

            Iron Maiden, on the other hand, wants to focus on the importance of the act of telling the story, rather than the story itself. By commanding the audience to listen to the story, they are implying that the act of telling is in and of itself important. If one commands another to listen to the story (“Hear the rime of the Ancient Mariner..”), then it follows that the act of telling that story is itself important. By placing import on the receiving of the story, Iron Maiden has also place import on the telling of the story. Iron Maiden reinforces this notion by concluding that the “tale goes on and on and on”. According to Iron Maiden, the tale will continue to be told long after it being related to the wedding guest. By drawing attention to the fact that the story being related in the song has and will continue to be told, Iron Maiden references the fact that the song itself is a retelling of Coleridge’s original narrative – a point reinforced by the band directly quoting the poem in the song. Though the band finds the content of the tale important, they find the simple retelling of the tale in a different form as important itself. Iron Maiden seems to be indicating that it is important to reiterate the works of the “masters” – even if that reiteration comes in the form of a heavy metal song.

            Though, on the surface, Iron Maiden and Samuel Coleridge’s different versions of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” appear to be told from different narrative perspectives, that position is only partly true. Iron Maiden explicitly breaks from the narrative perspective of Coleridge, but the band does so to reinforce the importance of retelling classic narratives – in this case, the retelling of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. 

The Albatross and the Mariner

Julia and Antonia

The Flying Buttresses of Notre Dame by gselmes

When The Monk, by Matthew Lewis, was initially published in 1796, the lewd nature of the novel and its risqué themes made it extremely controversial. An extension of the already burgeoning gothic tradition, The Monk took many themes present in other Gothic works and darkened them, often presenting the worst possible outcome of nearly every scenario. Emma McEvoy states in her introduction to The Monk that, “The battleground on which most of the controversy about The Monk arose was the issue of its morality. A novel had not only to please, but also to instruct” (Lewis vii). Comparing Lewis’s Antonia and Ann Radcliffe’s Julia in her novel, A Sicilian Romance, can illustrate this dark difference between The Monk and its predecessors.

            As Lewis is a self-proclaimed fan of Radcliffe’s work, it is not surprising to see some similarities between Radcliffe’s heroine and Antonia (Lewis xxii). Julia is extremely sheltered by her Marquis father before the events of the novel. All she knows of the world is what she can see from her castle window. She is very sheltered, and so, is very innocent as well. However, despite her very narrow upbringing, she is able to challenge male patriarchy as well as the power of the church by rejecting her father’s arranged marriage to the Duke and escaping the clutch of the abate. While this entails many frightening episodes including a run-in with some very nasty banditti, a murderous father, many cases of imprisonment and the perceived loss of her beloved, Julia’s story has an ideal happy ending. She marries her lover Hippolitus, is freed from her tyrannical father and the Duke, is reunited with her long-lost mother, her sister, and her brother, and moves away from her once-imprisoning castle with her innocence still relatively intact (Radcliffe). In A Sicilian Romance, Julia’s innocence is valued and ends up aiding her.

            In contrast, Lewis’s Antonia has a much darker, tragic ending. Antonia’s innocence is fiercely protected by her mother, Elvira as she even goes so far as to give her a censored version of the bible, remarking, “that unrestricted no reading more improper could be permitted a young Woman [as the bible]” (Lewis 259). Her innocence is also of great importance in the novel as it is what attracts Ambrosio to her in the first place. Ambrosio even remarks, “ How enchanting was the timid innocence of her eyes” (Lewis 242-243). Because of her innocence, Antonia is unable to perceive Ambrosio as a threat, even as he unabashedly flirts with her. When he begins to kiss her, she is “startled, alarmed, and confused at his action” (Lewis 262). Unable to properly defend herself, she must be saved by her mother. Finally, when Ambrosio rapes Antonia and she loses her innocence, she is not even allowed to survive. Ambrosio kills her while she tries to escape. The lure of her innocence is the cause of her demise.

            The bleak contrast between the fates of Julia and Antonia are highlighted by the stunning similarity of their circumstances. Along with being raised in fairly similar situations and eventually having their innocence threatened, the setting of their final acts are eerily similar as well. Julia is temporarily trapped with her mother in the dungeon of her father’s castle while Antonia is trapped in the Vault with Ambrosio. Julia and her mother narrowly avoid death by not eating the poisoned food while Ambrosio ultimately stabs Antonia. One is able to escape from the confines of her imprisonment and live a fulfilled and happy life while the other is condemned to die after having endured a very violent rape.

            The initial similarities and then startling differences between Julia and Antonia accurately demonstrate what is so different and similar between The Monk and A Sicilian Romance. Julia’s character had already proved that the innocent heroine, who is nearly undone by men, is a sympathetic character that audiences can root for. Perhaps this is why Antonia’s fate is so disturbing in The Monk. Readers easily sympathize with her and see her likeness in previous Gothic heroines. However, she does not get the typical happy ending, or rather, she does not get a happy ending at all. The parallelism and then stark contrast between the two is particularly unnerving.

           

Works Cited

Lewis, Matthew. The Monk. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1796. Print.

Radcliffe, Ann. A Sicilian Romance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1790. Print.

The Loss of Innocence

            The loss of innocence and the entrance into the harsh truth around you is a common theme in some Gothic Romantic works.  In William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” we get polar different views on the city of London.  In one, Blake gives us a picture of a green area, likely a park, where there are children playing and laughing and enjoying the day.  In this poem, “The Ecchoing Green”, the scene is given to us from one of the children playing, and the atmosphere of it is overall very light and happy.  The poem opens with the lines “The Sun does arise,/ And make happy the skies” which sets the tone for something that is very upbeat and happy.  The poem itself is about children playing on “the ecchoing green” with older people sitting under a tree reminiscing happily about when they were children.  The scene is quite happy and peaceful, and the use of rhyming couplets throughout adds a childlike quality to the whole thing. 

            This is heavily contrasted by another of Blake’s poems titled “London”.  This poem takes a much darker look at London.  The speaker here is much more experienced and is saddened by the state of affairs in the city.  He describes everyone he passes as having “Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”  It seems as though the entire city here is crying out in sadness and agony.  In this collection of poems, a more innocent poem is generally connected to another poem that is fits a more experienced or depressing tone.  So we can compare “London” and “The Ecchoing Green” in terms of speaker and the type of message being portrayed about the city.  The speaker in “London” is much more jaded about the world around him and recognizes that everything isn’t a nice sunny day where you can play outside.  However, all that is seen is the dark and upsetting side of London and thus the poet in this case has lost all his innocence. 

            This loss of innocence theme can be seen in other works as well.  In Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, the fall from grace and innocence is quite important.  One of the main characters, Ambrosio, is a monk who has lived all his life away from the perils of the world.  Therefore, he is looked upon as a pillar of holiness and piety.  While seemingly untouched by the “corruption” of sexuality, Ambrosio is still not a great a pillar as people think he is because of his incredibly vanity in holding himself above those around him.  But he truly is innocent when it comes to his sexuality as he is completely inexperienced and cannot properly cope with the situations he is faced with in the novel.  Another character in the novel, Antonia, is also quite sheltered and innocent and because of it cannot see bad in the people around her, which ends up being her downfall.  The loss of innocence in this book is quite drastic and painful, and proves to be detrimental to all those who go through it.

            Another novel that covers the loss of innocence is A Sicilian Romance.  In this novel, the loss of innocence isn’t as painful an experience as in The Monk, but it still focuses around innocence being lost through sexuality.  Here the main character, Julia, has been kept inside her father’s castle away from the rest of the world, and she develops into a beautiful and intelligent woman.  However, she has had little contact with those outside the castle, and eventually sees and falls in love with a man at a party that her father throws.  She changes from an innocent, unknowledgeable girl to one who is star struck in love and comes to discover quite a lot about her family throughout the novel.  As innocence is quite important to the Romantics, especially in in Gothic tradition, it is good to recognize its use when implemented.  It can provide us with an insight into powerful character changes and sometimes provides a dialogue on the human experience.

Connotations and Emotions in Percy's "Sweet William's Ghost"

Connotations surrounding the word “ghost” are inevitably going to make most people think of terror and become afraid when they are presented with it and especially with an image or story of one. When ghosts appear in stories (both old and new), the plot seems to always revolve around the idea that they are haunting a place or an individual and that they are threatening or destroying someone’s life. These supernatural beings are unfathomable, unnatural, and are often considered to have lost all humanistic elements. The fear of the unknown and fear of death are pulled together in the image of a ghost. Therefore, when this ballad opens with “There came a ghost to Margaret’s door,/With many a grievous grone,” this sublime image should invoke fear in the reader (Lines 1-2).

However, the title, which is often an indicator of what can be expected in a story, contradicts the usual allegations relating to ghosts because of the incorporation of the simple word “Sweet.” When I first read the ballad, I thought that was unusual. There are some ghosts, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, that are not terrifying, but traditionally they seem to be more like Lewis’s Bleeding Nun whose clothes are stained with blood, who carries a dagger, who horses try to run from, and whose carriage is surrounded by tempest weather, complete with thunder and lightning (Lewis 155-6). The diction that Percy uses to represent the ghost here and further on in the piece, such as in line 10 when he says “tis thy true love Willie,” suggests that he is not the terrifying creature that readers have come to expect. In this case, Percy breaks away from the traditional to emphasize the romantic love that exists between William and Margaret.

Their love remains even after William has become nothing more than a spirit. The emotion and passion that Margaret feels is strong enough that she follows him around “a’ the live-lang winter night” asking if there is room in his coffin for her (Lines 43-48). This seems to be entirely irrational, which is often the case in romanticism because these works celebrate emotion over reason. Margaret begs for a kiss and to be married to William, even after he reveals that if he kisses her, she will die (Lines 23-32). Percy is displaying the intensely persuasive capability that emotion has over every human.

While their love still exists, it is impossible for them to remain together. The juxtaposition of the lighter, romantic love aspect of the ballad with the hopeless situation and the darkness of death force Percy to create a darker tone to love. With phrases such as “grievous grone,” “winter night,” “dead corps,” “creep,” “coffin,” “cloud of mist,” and “alone,” he creates an image of despair that originates from the love that these two have for each other. In a way, the story that this ballad presents seems to question the positive connotations that love has. If she will die for love, is it such as good thing? Percy cannot seem to answer this question, but he does reveal the true power of a love that is so strong it can defy even the death of one partner.

The ballad concludes with William leaving Margaret alone crying, and she “stretch’d her saft limbs, and died” (Lines 60-64). Death and despair go together and this ballad displays that perfectly: the death of a true love creates despair, which then leads to the death of the one left alone, completing the circle. Although the emotion, the love lasts even in the grave, the physical, rational person cannot continue to survive. 

thelotusneverdies

Lewis, Matthew. The Monk. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Percy, Thomas. "Sweet William's Ghost." The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse. Ed. Caroline Franklin. Harlow: Pearson, 2011. 20-22. Print.

The Uncanny in The Monk

In his essay “The ‘Uncanny,’” Sigmund Freud asserts
that “there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than
there are in real life (Freud, 248). In light of the fact that the uncanny is
defined, in part, as that which is “undoubtedly related to what is frightening-
to what arouses dread and horror,” it seems that Mathew Lewis’ Gothic novel The Monk substantiates Freud’s claim to
the ease at which impressions of the uncanny can be produced in fiction.

The concept of the uncanny was first introduced by
Ernst Jentsch in 1906. In his essay “On the Psychology of The Uncanny,” Jentsch
equates the uncanny with intellectual uncertainty stemming from unfamiliarity.
The limits of Jentsch’s theory of the uncanny, however, do not extend beyond
this ‘uncanny equals unfamiliar’ formulation. Freud’s theorization of the
uncanny is undertaken as a response to the supposed inadequacy of the Jentsch
equation. Freud points out that by virtue of the fact that it is not the case
that everything new is necessarily frightening, an additional factor, aside
from unfamiliarity, must be taken into account if the true nature of the
uncanny is to be discerned. An investigation into the literal meanings of the
German words “Unheimlich,”(unfamiliar) and it’s supposed opposite “Heimlich,” (familiar)
leads Freud to conclude, rather surprisingly, that it is familiarity in combination with unfamiliarity which accounts for the
nature of uncanny impressions. By glossing the various definitions of the two
terms, Freud shows that “heimlich is
a word the meaning of which meaning develops in the direction of ambivalence,
until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich” (Freud, 225). Freud asserts that the uncanny is
something which is both familiar and unfamiliar to the mind simultaneously; it
is “something which is familiar to the mind and has become alienated from it…”
(240). Freud hypothesizes that it is processes of psychological repression and
recurrence which subject an individual to such a seemingly paradoxical
impression.

In an attempt to test his hypothesis and thereby
substantiate his speculation , Freud looks at undeniable instances of the
uncanny and concludes that the uncanny results either from the confirmation of
an animistic belief system which was thought to have been surmounted, or from
the recurrence of repressed psychological processes. Freud points to instances
of doubling, involuntary repetition, animism, and uncertainty as to whether an
object is animate or inanimate as illustrations of sources of uncanny
impressions. Freud relates the uncanniness of doubling and involuntary repetition
to the development of the ego, and animism and animacy/inanimacy uncertainty to
the supposed surmounting of primitive belief systems.

The embedded narrative of the Bleeding Nun
illustrates all four of the aforementioned examples. Prior to this
sub-narrative however, Ambrosio’s admiration for the image of the Madonna
serves as an illustration of the recurrence of a repressed psychological
complex. Ambrosio’s outright lust for
the Virgin Mother calls forth the repressed sexual desire for the mother figure
that Freud lays out in his famous, Oedipus Complex. So long as it remains
repressed and confined to the sub-conscious, such an incestuous desire is not a
threat to the conscious mind. However, once the repressed desire recurs, or
emerges, an uncanny sensation is experienced by the subject; hence the
unsettling nature of Ambrosio’s lust.
The narrative of the Bleeding Nun is a more poignant
instance in which the uncanny is illustrated. On the simplest level, the
incorporeal existence of the Bleeding Nun confirms
a belief in the supernatural that was thought to have been surmounted. According to Freud, when supposedly surmounted beliefs
are later confirmed, an impression of uncanniness is experienced. On a perhaps
more sophisticated level, the doubling of Agnes and the Bleeding Nun calls into
question the true nature of a self that is psychologically divided. The
existence of a double in literature accentuates the uncertainty felt by a
reader as to what his or her true self consists in. When this uncertainty
becomes manifest on the page, in the story, an uncanny impression is created.
Additionally, the numerous examples of repetition in the narrative of the Bleeding
Nun, i.e., the repetition of May 5th, her repeated appearances to
Don Raymond, and her repeated use of Don Raymond’s own words all illustrate an
unconscious compulsion to repeat. Like instances of doubling, literary repetition
draws the reader’s attention to his or her repressed and unconscious compulsion
to repeat. When this repressed compulsion emerges, again, an uncanny effect is
created.

Because the reader is subjected to the fictional
world created by the author, he or she is more susceptible to uncanny effects.
By placing the supernatural in the world of common reality, the reader is
vulnerable to the confirmation of a belief system he or she has thought to have
surmounted. Moreover, through the manifestation of common, repressed
psychological complexes on the level of the page, the reader is also subjected
to the psychological disturbance resulting from the emergence of what has been
repressed. The author possesses a degree of directive power over his readership
and he is therefore freer and more equipped to subject said readers to Freud’s
theory of The Uncanny.

The Representation of Satan in Lewis' The Monk

"Fallen Angel" by Alexandre Cabanel

In M.G. Lewis' novel The Monk, there is a constant focus on morality and the deceptive appearances which evil can don.  In Catholic teaching, morality is a black and white issue.  A strict moral code exists which, if one undertakes to live by this code, is supposed to allow one to differentiate easily between what is good and what is evil.  However, as Lewis illustrates in his novel, drawing this distinction is not always so simple.  Lewis would argue that when it comes to morality, there are shades of gray.  Things can appear to be nonthreatening when in fact they are the most detrimental to one's moral character. By depicting the ever-changing appearance of Satan throughout the novel, Lewis illustrates this fact.

In Catholic tradition, Satan is oftentimes represented as a serpent (ie. Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden/The Fall of Man).  With this knowledge, it is not surprising that the first embodiment of Satan that we see in the novel is that of the Serpent.  This instance comes about when Ambrosio is in the garden with Matilda and she is pleading with him to allow her to stay and to love him.  At first, Ambrosio comes to the conclusion that she must leave at once, however, the more Matilda implores, the more his rationalization causes him to believe that allowing her to remain is harmless.  As soon as he comes to this decision, he goes to pick a rose from the garden.  The rose represents everything virtuous: purity, piety, beauty and goodness.  Behind the appearance of this beauty, Ambrosio does not see the danger lurking.  As soon as he goes to pick it, he gets bitten by the Serpent, which is illustrated as he states, "I have received my death...Concealed among the Roses…A Serpent…” (location 863).  This moment marks the Fall of Ambrosio and his descent into Satan's power.  Much like the rose, Matilda is outwardly beautiful and appears to be nothing but goodness.  However, as we learn, Matilda is a "subordinate but crafty spirit" who assumed human form, in the likeness of his Madonna, in order to seduce Ambrosio (location 5560).  She is Satan's instrument and works much like the Serpent in the roses to "bite" Ambrosio, putting him under the sway of Satan's power.

Image from nephilim.vip-blog.com

The next time that we encounter Satan within the novel is when Matilda summons him in the basement of the Abbey.  This time, Satan "borrowed the Seraph's form to deceive Ambrosio" (location 5470).  At this point in time, Ambrosio has not yet fully descended into Satan's power.  He still needs to be persuaded into taking the next step in his Fall and raping Antonia.  Because Satan needs to sway Ambrosio into enacting this sin, he takes a form that is breathtaking and inspires awe instead of one that is terrible in its repugnance.  Lewis depicts Satan as, "a figure more beautiful than Fancy’s pencil ever drew.  It was a youth seemingly scarce eighteen, the perfection of whose form and face was unrivaled.  He was perfectly naked: A bright star sparkled upon his forehead; two crimson wings extended themselves from his shoulders; and his silken locks were confined by a band of many-coloured fires, which played round his head, formed themselves into a variety of figures, and shone with a brilliance far surpassing that of precious stones” (location 3474-3477).  By taking the form of an angelic creature, rather than the terrifying demon that he truly is, he makes Ambrosio more comfortable with his decision to enlist his aid.  After all, how could a creature so beautiful be truly evil?  With the vision of this awesome being, Ambrosio is once again deceived into misrepresenting the evil that can lie in beauty.

Finally, when Ambrosio calls upon Satan to help him escape imprisonment, we see Satan in his true form.  Instead of the beautiful youth who appeared to Ambrosio before, Satan "appeared in all that ugliness which since his fall from heaven had been his portion: His blasted limbs still bore marks of the Almighty’s thunder: a swarthy darkness spread itself over his gigantic form: his hands and feet were armed with long Talons: fury glared in his eyes, which might have struck the bravest heart with terror: over his huge shoulders waved two enormous sable wings; and his hair was supplied by living snakes, which twined themselves round his brows with frightful hissings” (location 5470-5474).  Ambrosio, who is caught off guard by this visage, is repelled by the creature which he calls to his aid.  No longer is evil disguised by beauty and the appearance of goodness.  With this new appearance to evil, Ambrosio is less inclined to give in to the temptation of Satan's aid.  He rebuffs Satan's offer and sends him away.  However, as Satan knows in his coming to Ambrosio in his true form, Ambrosio has already fallen too far into his sinful ways and is fully under Satan's power.  Thus, when the time comes for Ambrosio to be led away, he gives in and summons Satan to him again, signing away his soul in order to gain freedom.  Once he has been delivered from his captors, he learns the truth of his situation.  Freedom can only come through God and His mercy.  If Ambrosio had sent Satan away instead of signing away his soul, he would have been pardoned and free to spend his life in repentance.  Instead, he gave into evil, even when it had no disguise, and suffered his death because of it. 

 

Satan's appearance changes throughout the novel, but his evil designs remain the same.  Evil is still evil, even when it is rendered ambiguous by the appearance of goodness.  Ambrosio learned this lesson from Satan himself.  Lewis, by portraying his downfall, instructs his readers not to fall into the same fate.  

Note: I read The Monk on my Kindle so instead of "page" numbers, citations are listed in "location" numbers.