The Monk

by

Matthew Lewis

The Monk: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Raymond’s journey to Bavaria is mostly uneventful. The baron is kind but simple and unworldly. He takes to Raymond, though, and the two become friends. It’s at the castle of Lindenberg where Raymond first meets Agnes, and he is immediately struck by her beauty, intelligence, and talent at music and drawing. The baroness tells Raymond that Agnes is her niece and has been “destined to the convent from her cradle.” The baroness explains that Agnes’s mother became seriously ill while pregnant with Agnes and vowed that, should her unborn survive, she would promise them to serve at a convent or monastery, depending on the child’s sex.
Raymond’s story sheds light on the so-called “particular circumstances” that led to Agnes’s service at the convent of St. Clare: apparently, she was “destined to the convent from her cradle” by her parents, who superstitiously attributed the mother’s recovery to the grace of God and felt obligated to offer up their child to show their thanks. Their sacrifice of Agnes adds to the book’s critique of Catholicism, suggesting that followers of the religion are driven more by paranoid superstition than genuine religious belief.
Themes
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Quotes
Upon her healthy birth (and her mother’s recovery), Agnes is sent away to live at a convent in Germany and trained for her adult life as a nun. Agnes resents the future that has been laid out for her and mostly plays pranks on the nuns and mocks their religious ceremonies. Meanwhile, knowing that Lorenzo would disapprove of Agnes’s fate, his parents kept her future a secret from him.  
Agnes does not share her parents’ superstitious nature but suffers its consequences, nonetheless. This complicates the novel’s moral position somewhat, showing how bad things can happen to otherwise innocent people. 
Themes
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Raymond continues his story. He immediately resolves to rescue Agnes from her future as a nun and suggests they elope. Agnes, however, insists that Raymond ask for the baron and baroness’s blessing. Raymond sets to work ingratiating himself with the baroness. When at last he decides to confess his love to Agnes to the baroness, she cuts him off, admitting that she already knows—but she mistakenly believes that Raymond has fallen in love with her, not Agnes. She effusively tells Raymond that the feelings are mutual. Raymond, flustered, finally admits that he is in love with another woman, not the baroness. Hearing this, the baroness erupts with rage and then faints. Raymond takes this opportunity to flee.
This is the second instance of an older woman developing romantic feelings for a younger man and then mistakenly believing the feelings are mutual—recall that earlier, Leonella misguidedly interpreted Don Christoval’s polite offer to escort her and Antonia back to Elvira’s apartment as a romantic gesture. The older woman’s misunderstanding is played for comedy in both situations, but both situations also reaffirm the book’s stance on the unreliability of appearances to reflect the truth of a situation. Here, the baroness’s feelings for Raymond skew her perception of reality, causing her to detect romantic intentions that do not exist. 
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Raymond runs into Agnes sitting in a parlor and working on a drawing. She invites him to sit with her, and he agrees.  Raymond is shocked when he sees that Agnes is drawing a nun covered in blood. Agnes calmly explains that “the bleeding nun” is a famous legend that her family has believed in for many generations. She proceeds to tell Raymond the nun’s backstory. 
The figure of the bleeding nun inserts an element of the supernatural into the novel. This is a standard convention of gothic fiction. Agnes’s family’s steadfast belief in the bleeding nun further equates the family’s religious beliefs with foolish superstition, adding to the novel’s broader attack on Catholicism.  
Themes
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According to Agnes, the bleeding nun is an apparition who roams the hallways of the castle of Lindenberg at night, knocking over furniture and making frightening howling sounds. Things become so bad that people refuse to live at the castle. But the next baron who moves in brings in an exorcist to cleanse the castle. Things settle down for five years, but then the exorcist dies, and the nun returns—though now she only haunts the castle on the fifth day of the fifth month once every five years. On that day, the room to her bedchamber of choice opens, and she roams the castle freely.
Numerology—that is, using the symbolism of a particular number to predict the future or to suggest something about a person’s character—is prevalent throughout the Bible. Though the number five doesn’t have special significance, its repetition here seems to mock what the book deems to be a superstitious overreliance on numerology.
Themes
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When Raymond asks whether Agnes believes in the bleeding nun, Agnes says she’s too sensible to believe in such superstition. At this point, Agnes rises and retrieves a self-portrait from a drawer. She gifts it to Raymond, who is touched. Not long after this, though, the baroness recovers and, having discovered the true object of Raymond’s affections, angrily informs him that he is to leave the castle the following day. She’ll also return Agnes to her parents, who will turn her over to the convent, where she will spend the rest of her life.
Agnes’s skepticism about the bleeding nun sets her apart from the rest of her family, who are ever beholden to their various superstitious beliefs. The baroness’s anger at Raymond highlights the dangers of pride: she is essentially punishing him for unwittingly wounding her pride, which is not only unjust but indirectly leads to dire consequences for Agnes and Raymond’s romance in the novel’s present.
Themes
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The Folly of Pride Theme Icon
Morality  Theme Icon
Quotes
Just as Raymond is leaving Strasbourg, Theodore intercepts him to covertly deliver a letter from Agnes, in which she instructs Raymond to hide out in a nearby village. She’ll find him, and they can elope from there. Raymond travels to Munich, where he shelters at a small inn. Later, he encounters Agnes and her servants, who have stopped there on the way to one of Agnes’s routine visits to the convent of St. Catharine. They discreetly acknowledge each other and arrange to meet in secret one night back at the castle of Lindenberg. Finally, the night arrives, and Raymond and Agnes convene in the castle’s gardens. There, Agnes informs Raymond that she can’t stay for long: her servant Cunegonda watches her so closely that she is practically a prisoner. Agnes does have a plan to escape, though.
Agnes and Raymond’s secret romance is yet another subplot that reinforces the novel’s broader focus on the unreliability of appearances, which both resonates thematically and builds tension, leaving readers perpetually uncertain about which characters are being truthful and which have something to hide.
Themes
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Agnes tells Raymond her plan. It’s now April 30—meaning the bleeding nun’s arrival is imminent. Agnes plans to disguise herself as the nun on that night, and her frightening appearance will allow her to escape the castle without anybody stopping her. Just then, though, Cunegonda appears behind the couple, having heard Agnes sneak out of her bedchamber. Cunegonda also overheard the couple’s entire conversation. She scolds Agnes for her impiety and promises to tell the baron and baroness everything. Raymond has no other choice but to take Cunegonda captive. He orders Agnes to return to her chamber, then he subdues Cunegonda and travels with her on horseback back to his lodgings in Munich.
Agnes schemes to weaponize her family’s superstitious beliefs against them, using their gullible belief in the bleeding nun to orchestrate her escape and freedom. The logic of her plan contributes to the book’s emphasis on superstition to criticize Catholicism. It also further highlights the unreliability of appearance, operating on the assumption that the family’s superstitious beliefs will skew their perception of reality and cause them to believe the disguised Agnes is the “real” bleeding nun. With Cunegonda subdued, Agnes and Raymond are free to set their plan in motion.
Themes
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Raymond keeps Cunegonda at the inn over the next five days. Theodore delights in tormenting the old woman, and everyone back at the castle, save Agnes, have no idea what has happened to the old woman. On the fifth of May, Raymond travels to the castle of Lindenberg and waits at the spot he and Agnes have agreed upon. He spots Agnes at the gates, dressed to resemble the bleeding nun, and draws her into a deep embrace. “I am thine!” he cries out to her. Agnes, though, is too shocked to speak, so Raymond hoists her into the carriage, and they begin the journey back to the inn. Before they can get there, though, the carriage is involved in a horrible crash, and Raymond loses consciousness.
Agnes’s silence is rather odd, and it raises the possibility that the figure whom Raymond has driven away from the castle of Lindenberg is not Agnes disguised as the bleeding nun, but is in fact the bleeding nun herself. If this is the case, then it drives home the novel’s broader point about the reality of a situation being different from how it appears at a first glance. The possibility that the supernatural figure of the bleeding nun might really exist also adds to the book’s unsettling atmosphere, a hallmark of gothic fiction.
Themes
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When Raymond comes to, he asks the peasants who apparently rescued him about Agnes. The peasants, puzzled, inform Raymond that was traveling alone. Days pass, yet still Raymond hears no news of Agnes. One night, Raymond is alone in his sleeping quarters when the door blows open to reveal the bleeding nun herself. Raymond looks upon his spectral visitor with horror as she repeats back to him the words he’d uttered nights before: “Thou art mine!” Then she sits down at the edge of his bed and watches him silently for a while before exiting the way she came. This same ritual repeats every night and goes on for several months, all while Raymond remains bedridden. 
Raymond’s account seems to confirm the existence of an actual bleeding nun. Suddenly, his earlier overconfidence in his ability to trust his instinct that the woman he picked up was indeed Agnes comes back to bite him. Though he thought he'd promised himself to his beloved (“I am thine!”), he has actually committed himself to a ghostly figure whose intentions, though yet unclear, don’t seem particularly great for Raymond. What is more, the real Agnes’s whereabouts remain unknown.  
Themes
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Theodore eventually learns where Raymond has been staying and visits him to explain what happened the night of the thwarted scheme. According to Theodore, Agnes was waiting for Raymond at the designated spot and was shocked and dismayed when he never arrived to rescue her. Theodore watched as Raymond’s carriage departed for the village with the false Agnes. Back at the castle, Cunegonda revealed Agnes’s plan, and everyone agreed that it was the real bleeding nun who had left with Raymond. With no other choice, and having been convinced by her aunt that Raymond abandoned her and was only ever interested in her for her wealth, Agnes agreed to leave for the convent.
Theodore confirms that Raymond indeed mistook the real bleeding nun for Agnes disguised as the bleeding nun. This mix-up further highlights the unreliability of appearances, suggesting that a person can’t trust what they see before them even when all logic points to the contrary. Adding insult to injury, Raymond and Agnes’s plan backfires, resulting in Agnes’s family sending her away to the convent ahead of schedule and seemingly putting an end to Agnes and Raymond’s ill-fated romance.
Themes
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Morality  Theme Icon
Appearance vs. Reality  Theme Icon
Sometime later, Theodore remarks to Raymond about a strange visitor who has arrived in Munich. The stranger calls himself “the Grand Mogul.” The other day, the stranger gave an odd speech in which he claimed to have a message for Raymond. Intrigued, Raymond agrees to see the stranger. When they meet, Raymond observes that the man has dark, “sparkling” eyes. He is dressed simply and has a “melancholy” demeanor. The stranger tells Raymond that he knows about his secret and that the bleeding nun won’t visit him again after this coming Saturday. The stranger promises to return then. With that, he leaves.
The strange visitor builds intrigue and adds to the novel’s unsettling atmosphere. His lack of identity and his “melancholy” demeanor have caused Raymond to distrust him under more ideal circumstances, but Raymond’s dire situation—he has been forcibly separated from his beloved, and a vengeful ghost won’t stop tormenting him—drives Raymond to desperate measures, and so Raymond agrees to accept the stranger’s help, even though he has no way of knowing whether the man is trustworthy.
Themes
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Finally, Saturday night arrives. The stranger comes to Raymond’s room, carrying a small chest, from which he removes a goblet full of blood, a crucifix, various bones, and a Bible. He makes a circle on the floor with blood from the goblet and beckons Raymond to step inside it. Then the stranger calls the name Beatrice three times, and the nun—Beatrice—appears. The stranger threatens Beatrice with the crucifix and demands that she explain what has disturbed her slumber. Beatrice explains that her bones are rotting unburied in Lindenberg Hole and that only Raymond can lay them to rest—it turns out that Beatrice is the great aunt of Raymond’s grandfather.
The ritual the stranger performs using the objects from his chest adds another supernatural element to the novel, further adhering to  typical genre conventions of gothic fiction. Though the ritual seems ominous at first, it ends up humanizing Beatrice somewhat, transforming her from a vengeful spirit to a poor soul who is merely unable to rest in peace as a result of her unburied remains. The detail of Beatrice’s relation to Raymond is shocking but untimely lends some clarity to Raymond’s mission: now he knows exactly what he must do to resolve at least this conflict. 
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The stranger explains Beatrice’s scandalous and tragic past. Her parents forced her to become a nun when she was young, but she hated it and didn’t take her responsibilities seriously. She declared herself an atheist and preferred to act out of her personal desires instead of honoring her vows. Eventually she fled the convent to elope with the baron Lindenberg. They settled at the castle of Lindenberg. Not long afterward, she caught sight of the baron’s younger brother, Otto, and began to desire him. Beatrice and Otto schemed for Beatrice to kill the baron so they could be together. Beatrice murdered the baron and then met Otto at the Lindenberg Hole, where they’d arranged to meet, but Otto turned on Beatrice, stabbing her to death. Afterward, Otto became baron of Lindenberg; nobody suspected his role in his brother’s murder.
Beatrice’s story has strong parallels with Agnes’s, with both women forced into religious service at a young age, rebelling, and facing unjust consequences as a result. Beatrice follows her passion to ruin, ultimately paying with her life. Agnes’s fate remains unknown in the story’s present, leaving open the possibility that she may be spared Beatrice’s tragic fate. At least for now, Otto’s murder of Beatrice goes unpunished. This is yet another example of the novel subverting conventional understandings of right and wrong, showing how people sometimes get away with immoral acts.
Themes
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Beatrice began to haunt Otto, standing before his bed each night holding the dagger that killed his brother. Meanwhile, her bones remained in the Lindenberg Hole. Otto died of fright, and the castle moved into the hands of distant relatives. Eventually the exorcist was called in, and he convinced Beatrice to limit her hauntings to once every five years. Now, it’s up to Raymond to end her haunting by finally laying her bones to rest. Before the stranger can leave, Raymond demands that he answer one puzzling implied detail in his story: that he was personally acquainted with the exorcist, who would have lived 100 years ago. The stranger doesn’t offer any satisfying answers, though, and leaves before Raymond can inquire further. (In the present, Lorenzo asks Raymond about the stranger, and Raymond offers his theory that the stranger may be the mythical figure of the “wandering Jew.”)
Otto pays for his misdeeds eventually, dying of fright, though Beatrice’s conflict persists as long as her remains can be laid properly to rest in the family burial plot. The unresolved detail of the stranger’s apparent immortality—how could he have possibly been personally acquainted with the exorcist who would have lived 100 years ago?—adds another supernatural element to the novel. Raymond’s explanation that the stranger is the “wandering Jew” derives from a myth that began to spread throughout Europe in the 1200s. According to legend, a Jewish man who taunted Jesus on the way to his crucifixion was then doomed to wander the earth until the Second Coming.
Themes
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Raymond continues his story. He locates the bleeding nun’s remains inside the Lindenberg Hole and, upon burying them, her apparition no longer haunts him. Raymond learns that Agnes has since taken her holy vows, and so he heads to Madrid in the hopes that he can persuade her to leave the convent. Returning to his hotel one night, he’s accosted by some assassins. A band of cavaliers intervene, saving Raymond’s life. One of the men turns out to be Agnes’s father—though the man doesn’t know Raymond’s relationship to Agnes, as her family only knew him as Alphonso. Agnes’s father, Don Gaston de Medina, confirms that Agnes is at St. Clare convent.
Raymond’s good deed of laying the bleeding nun’s remains to rest leads to reward when her apparition ceases to haunt him. In another fortuitous stroke of fate—perhaps an indirect continuation for the reward he reaps for laying the bleeding nun’s remains to rest—Raymond runs into Agnes’s father and learns her exact whereabouts.
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The next day, Raymond heads to St. Clare. Theodore accompanies him and attacks the convent’s gardener. Raymond takes over the gardener’s job. One day, he spots the prioress speaking sternly with Agnes about the sin of pining over the loss of an unfaithful lover. After the prioress leaves, Raymond approaches Agnes, but she flees when she recognizes him. He later gets her to agree to meet with him, though, and after he tells her his story, she accepts it and forgives him. But she says it’s too late for them to be together, as she has already taken her holy vows. Raymond, in turn, promises to get his relative—the cardinal-duke of Lerma—to excuse her of her holy duties. 
Raymond’s disguise as the convent’s gardener is yet another instance in which disguise and deception feature prominently in the plot, foregrounding the novel’s focus on the unreliability of appearances. Agnes’s refusal to elope with Raymond despite her feelings for him speaks to her self-discipline: at least at first, she demonstrates a higher level of  self-control and religion than, say, Ambrosio.
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Agnes and Raymond continue to meet in secret for several weeks, though Agnes initially resists the possibility of abandoning her holy vows. Eventually their mutual passion is too much to suppress, and they have sex during one of their clandestine meetings. Afterward, Agnes recoils and scolds Raymond for his wickedness. She orders him never to see her again. And later, after word spreads of Raymond’s illicit activities with Agnes, he is let go as the convent’s gardener.
Like Ambrosio, Agnes, too, eventually succumbs to temptation, breaking her holy vows to have sex with Raymond. The reoccurring theme of religious characters breaking their vows of celibacy suggests that human nature has more power to influence a person’s behavior than their personal morals or religious beliefs. 
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A few months later, Raymond receives a letter from Agnes informing him that she is pregnant. She pleads for him to return and rescue her and their child from the wrath of her superiors. Upon receiving the letter, Raymond returns to St. Clare, kidnaps the current gardener and locks him in his hotel, and switches places with him. And that, Raymond explains to Lorenzo in the present, is how the events Lorenzo witnessed earlier that day came to be.  
Raymond’s story ends here. In addition to providing important insight into Raymond’s character, his story also highlights the importance of not placing too much weight on first impressions. At first, Lorenzo thought ill of Raymond based on claims his aunt (the baroness) made about Raymond’s intentions with Agnes. Having heard Raymond’s side of the story, Lorenzo may now see his acquaintance in a far more sympathetic light.
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