Essay On Gender In The Monk

Steven Hogue

Professor Oliver

Gothic literature

03/10/2014

Gender in the Monk

The social construction of gender can be identified in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, which plays a critical role in the establishment and perpetuation of system sustaining phallocentric power. Lewis destroys the concept of gender being a biological attritute and plays with the idea of learned “rules” of society that individual must follow in order to gain recognition and respect with a specific culture. As gender models “progressed” throughout the years, the social classes that differentiated gender began to coalesce in a homogenous notion of normalcy Matilda/Rosario’s gender-bending showcases the fluidity of gender and the performativity of the cultural constructs Transgendering in the work disrupts the ordered binary of traditional roles and defines a new space—a third space.

The categorization of gender creates a space of normalacy that needs replication for sustainment. The gender binary i a cultural tool that implements that reproductive power. The communication of gender is what creates the normalcy and applies the use of performance assigned and learned gender roles. The assignment of the gender binary is examined in Judith Butler's Bodies that Matter, where performativity is connected to Derrida's theory of citationality and authenticity/inauthenticity. These concepts and the regard to materiality is what made the obscene nature of the book so subjective to the individual reading: “The classical configuration of matter as a site of generation or orginination becomes especially significant when the account of what an object is and means requires recourse to its originating principle” (Butler 31). The nature of matter is Western thought is to presc...

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...eeply rooted these ideologies run. Lewis plays with socially constructed ideals of gendered and how they are manufactured and reproduced through a cultural interpellation, where deviating or adhering to the gender subscribed sex categories can have cultural rewards and punishments. The negation of gender roles in the text helps creates gender confusion that expands the dimensions of Ambrosio’s sexuality.

The relationship between Matilda/Rosario and Ambrosio functions off of the Master/Slave paradigm, where Ambrosio takes on the roles of femininity—passivity, subservience, and coquettish ignorance, and Matilda assumes the masculine gender role of the authoritative master. These types of roles unravel the stasis in gendered sexuality. The character Elivra shields her daughter of certain aspects of life, and only permits the attainment of certain types of knowledge