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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Monk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Catholicism and Hypocrisy
The Folly of Pride
Morality
Appearance vs. Reality
Human Nature
Summary
Analysis
Raymond and Lorenzo head to Raymond’s hotel room to discuss Raymond’s relationship with Agnes. Lorenzo treats Raymond coldly, upset the latter has put Agnes’s reputation at risk. Raymond asks if Lorenzo has heard of Alphonso d’Alvarada before. Lorenzo explains that, according to his aunt, Alphonso d’Alvarada is the reason Agnes decided to join the convent. Agnes and the man met after he found his way to the castle of Lindenberg, where Agnes had been brought up, but he ran off before they could elope together. He left upon discovering that some estates in Hispaniola belonged to Lorenzo, not to Agnes (as Alphonso had thought). Lorenzo now realizes that Alphonso d’Alvarada and Raymond are the same person.
Raymond’s assumed persona of Alphonso d’Alvarada adds to the book’s point about the unreliability of appearances to reflect the truth. Although the narration has yet to reveal Raymond’s reasons for assuming a false identity, his deceitfulness might raise a red flag about his personal morals. The aunt’s story about Alphonso/Raymond casts further doubt on his character, assuming she is telling the truth.
Themes
Raymond explains that the aunt’s story is full of ill-intentioned falsehoods. He tells Lorenzo his story now in order to set the record straight. After leaving university in Salamanca, Raymond traveled around Europe. On the advice of one of his father’s advisors, he concealed his noble rank to get a true sense of the lives of real people. This is how he got the name Alphonso d’Alvarada. His first stop was Paris, and he was disappointed to find people of the higher classes whom he met there were in fact base and immoral. Next he headed to Germany, where he saw a baroness (Lorenzo’s aunt) returning to her husband’s castle in Strasbourg. Raymond decided to head that way, too.
It's yet unclear whether Raymond or the aunt is lying about Raymond’s relationship with Agnes. Either way, this subplot bolsters the novel’s position that there’s often more to a situation than what appears on the surface. Whereas Raymond’s dual identity as Alphonso at first seemed morally dubious, for instance, here he offers a more innocent explanation for hiding his identity: he wanted to conceal his noble rank in order to experience the world without receiving special treatment.
Themes
En route to Strasbourg, Raymond’s carriage breaks down. Strasbourg is still quite a ways away, and so, per his carriage driver Claude’s advice, Raymond takes shelter in the nearby home of a woodsman named Baptiste. Baptiste is friendly, but his wife, Marguerite, is cold and unwelcoming. The baroness whom Raymond saw earlier arrives at the cottage with some of her servants, and they take shelter there, too. A while later, the woodsman’s sons and Marguerite’s stepsons, Robert and Jacques, arrive. Raymond notes that Robert and Jacques travel armed with guns, and the sons explain that the forests are full of robbers and are dangerous at night. Despite this, the baroness asks Claude to deliver a letter to her husband in Strasbourg that night. Raymond is puzzled when Claude agrees.
The novel has repeatedly shown how the truth of a situation is often not as it appears on the surface, and so readers should take Baptiste’s friendliness and Marguerite’s coldness with a grain of salt. Claude’s choice to venture into the night to deliver a letter despite the danger is rather odd, suggesting that something untoward is going on. Claude, after all, is the one who insisted that Raymond stay at Baptiste’s cottage overnight—could there be some reason for this to which Raymond is not yet privy?
Themes
After the others have gone to their rooms, Marguerite discreetly hisses at Raymond to look at the sheets on his bed. Raymond is alarmed to find that the sheets are stained with blood, and he becomes immediately suspicious. Upon opening his window and catching Baptiste and Claude—who apparently never left—discussing the wealth of Raymond and the baroness, Raymond realizes that Baptiste and his sons are in fact the aforementioned robbers: they merely feign hospitality to lure in unsuspecting travelers who they then murder for their wealth. At this point, Claude leaves to fetch more bandits to overpower the baroness’s many servants, and Baptiste returns to the cottage.
Raymond’s first impressions of Marguerite and Baptiste turn out to be completely false: in fact, Marguerite is concerned for his wellbeing as Baptiste actively schemes to cause him harm. Claude, too, whom Raymond previously seemed to trust, turns out to be deceitful. Tension mounts as Raymond, now knowing that his life is in danger, must formulate a plan to protect himself against Claude and Baptiste’s scheme.
Themes
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Frazzled and nervous, Raymond heads downstairs for supper and pretends that everything is normal. He glances at Marguerite to show that he has understood her message and now recognizes her initial coldness for what it really was: disgust at her husband’s immoral scheming. Raymond tries but struggles to act as though everything is normal. At first he thinks he might try to alert the servants to what’s going on, but he realizes this is impossible: Robert and Jacques are watching his every move. When Baptiste offers everyone a special wine, Raymond accepts but only pretends to drink, suspecting it has been tampered with. Raymond’s suspicions prove correct when the baroness falls into a deep sleep. Not wanting to give himself away, Raymond pretends to fall asleep, too.
Like the other characters, Raymond acts one way to conceal his true emotions: his survival depends on his ability to fool Baptiste, Jacques, and Robert into believing he is not privy to their murderous scheme. However, he seems to be in a bit of a bind here, as he won’t be able to fight back without giving up the charade of feigned sleep.
Themes
While Raymond feigns sleep, he hears the sound of approaching horses and realizes the bandits Claude summoned have arrived. Baptiste orders his sons to join the other bandits in the barn to dispose of the servants there. Baptiste, meanwhile, will take care of Raymond and the baroness. While Baptiste’s back is turned, Marguerite hisses to Raymond to act. Raymond opens his eyes in time to see that Baptiste has fetched a knife from the cupboard. Baptiste is caught off guard, and Raymond easily overpowers and kills him.
With Marguerite’s help, Raymond successfully outsmarts and conquers Baptiste. Had Raymond stuck to his initial impression of Marguerite as cold and unfriendly, he may not have survived the night. However, he is not yet in the clear, as he and Marguerite must now face the gang of bandits whom Claude has brought to the cottage as backup.
Themes
Marguerite, Raymond, and the unconscious baroness escape on horseback and head toward Strasbourg, which is nearer than Claude had made it out to be. When the bandits realize what has happened, they pursue them, but the escapees avoid capture when they encounter a band of cavaliers just outside town. Among the cavaliers, by coincidence, is Marguerite’s son Theodore. The escapees are brought to Strasbourg, where the baron greets them. The travelers learn that the baroness’s two female servants and a small boy—Marguerite’s younger son—managed to escape the slaughter unscathed.
The close proximity of Strasbourg is further evidence of Claude’s deceitful nature: he lied and claimed the city was farther away in order to persuade Raymond to stay the night at Baptiste’s cottage. Marguerite and her children’s survival suggests that good people are rewarded for their honest deeds, but later events in the book will complicate this perhaps oversimplified understanding of morality.
Themes
Overjoyed at hearing that her younger son has survived, Marguerite explains her life story. She was born in Strasbourg to a wealthy family but eloped with a man of noble birth who had frittered away his wealth and since been disowned by his family. The elopement caused Marguerite’s family to disown her, as well. Marguerite and her husband went off to live in a cavern in the woods and had two sons. The man turned to banditry to make ends meet, though he kept this from Marguerite, knowing she wouldn’t approve. After Marguerite’s husband died on the job, the other bandits refused to let her re-enter respectable society. Instead, they forced her to marry another bandit, Baptiste. A bandit who used to be a monk officiated the wedding ceremony. Baptiste was a cruel husband who threatened to have Marguerite’s two sons killed if she tried to escape.
Marguerite’s story parallels Elvira’s somewhat in that both women elope with a lover only to later suffer great consequences for getting swept away in a moment of passion. Thus far, the novel has espoused a conventional understanding of morality, wherein virtuous people are rewarded for their good acts while sinners are punished for their immoral behavior.
Themes
It was not until Raymond arrived at the cottage that Marguerite formulated a plan to flee. After making Raymond’s bed with the bloodstained sheets, she discreetly ordered Theodore to travel to Strasbourg to inform the authorities that the escapees would be headed their way and to assemble a group of cavaliers to intercept them.
Marguerite’s calculated efforts to outsmart her husband’s murderous scheme reinforces the book’s stance on the unreliability of appearances: Raymond once believed that Marguerite was cold and cruel while Baptiste believed that his wife was entirely under his control, yet both assumptions turned out to be decidedly untrue.
Themes
Marguerite’s story ends here. Though she fully expected her father to reject her, he happily accepts her and her children back into his life. Theodore convinces his family to let him serve as Raymond’s page for a year. The baron and baroness are grateful to Raymond for his role in rescuing the baroness, and they agree to let him and Theodore travel with them to stay at their castle in Bavaria. And this, explains Raymond to Lorenzo in the novel’s present, is how “Alphonso” made his way to the castle in Lindenberg.
Marguerite’s story ends happily, with her father showing her mercy despite her past disobedience. It’s notable that Marguerite’s father seems to be more capable of forgiveness than Ambrosio, whose Christian morals and status as a religious authority figure ought to make him more merciful than the average person.
Themes
