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.