Ambrosio, the titular character, is a proud monk led to sin who plunges headlong into cruelty, sadism and depravity. Ambrosio delves into Black Magic and the worship of the devil after his seduction by Matilda, arranging for murder and kidnapping the object of his lust, murdering her mother in the process. Ambrosio remorselessly rapes Antonia, later murdering her as well to conceal his crime. Devoid of true remorse, Ambrosio later sells his own soul to Satan to escape justice for his crimes, his only attempts at redemption self-serving falsehoods, leaving him irrevocably damned and irredeemable.
Satan, the Fiend himself, is the author of all the misery of the novel. Sending the temptress Matilda to tempt Ambrosio while leading others to pain and ruination, Satan oversees the ruination of Ambrosio and helps to lure him into sin, depravity and dark magic. Making himself party to the rape of the innocent Antonia, Satan sways Ambrosio and manipulates him into murdering Antonia's mother before having him rape and eventually murder Antonia as well. Later tricking Ambrosio into signing over his soul, the Fiend gleefully reveals that Elvira and Antonia were Ambrosio's mother and sister, and sentences him to an agonizing death before claiming his damned soul.
Cry for the Devil: Despite being an awful human being, reading about Ambrosio's torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition and his fate and the Awful Truthfrom Satan himself, can make one feel that his punishment is a trifle excessive and that the society he committed these crimes in, is scarcely better than him. The fact that they initially wanted to cover-up his and Rosario's crimes for fears of angering the mob (who had by then torn apart the -admittedly culpable- Prioress and likely also killed several of her nuns heedless of their complicity in the Prioress' crimes) even more, and that Ambrosio was apparently pardoned at the last moment, if Satan is to believed, proves thatSociety Is to Blame.
Fridge Horror: The conspiracy of nuns who knew Agnes was still alive were all killed by the angry mob. If Lorenzo hadn't come across the secret of the statue, she might have never been found.
To add, finding Agnes was the reason he ventured deeper into the vault. If he didn't, no one would have ever found Antonia, and Ambrosio and Matilda would have been free.
Harsher in Hindsight: The over-the-top nature of this novel's portrayal of church corruption and cover-ups, and priest and nuns abusing and torturing their charges becomes a lot less mild when compared to the revelations of the Magdalene Sisters and the sex-abuse scandals.
The scenes between Raymond and the Bleeding Nun are interestingly similar to Jonathan Harker's encounter several decades later with the three brides of Count Dracula...
Agnes' narrative style when she tells the story of the Bleeding Nun also bears a striking resemblance to Henry Tilney's in his famous monologue parodying Gothic literature in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which also references The Monk at a different point.
Values Dissonance: Inevitable when reading an 18th century work as a 21st century reader. Sex Is Evil and Defiled Forever are in effect, to an extent, Arranged Marriages are the norm, and the tale relies heavily on the Religious Horror of Ambrosio's gradual corruption and ultimate damnation in Hell, which may not be particularly effective depending on the reader. There's also the fact that when Ambrosio is considering, and then using, Matilda's witchcraft to get the chance to rape Antonia, both characters and the narrator treat the use of magic as a worse sign of his moral degeneration than the rape itself, where a modern audience is likely to have less of an immediate revulsion for magic but be disgusted by rape. That being said...
Values Resonance: The tale's unequivocal condemnation of hypocrisy, particularly religious hypocrisy, has sadly proved timeless. Likewise, one of the subplots subvert Defiled Forever, with the victim of a rape and forced marriage being welcomed back by her father, and shown living happily. Similarly, another victim feeling glad that she is about to die because her own rape makes her unworthy to be wife to the man she loves is completely rejected by the man himself, who is utterly heartbroken by her death and her ordeal before, with the loss of her honour being a matter of total irrelevance compared to her suffering and death. And on a less serious note, another subplot deals with a bishop dealing with a superstitious, exaggerative whiner, and taking it about as seriously as you'd imagine.
