Monk-a-long Week Three, or In Which Things Get Even More Ridiculous

Look, I suck at getting read-a-long posts up on time. I admit this. But I'm here now. Have a Neville.

Damn right.

This week's reading was short, but so much happened!

I'm starting to really hate Ambrosio. My god, what a skeeve. "I'm going to have sex with you! And then blame you for it! And then ditch you for someone else as soon as I get bored with you!" I'm probably not supposed to but I'm Team Matilda all the way. Okay, so she's tempting him or whatever because she's the devil, but I'm still blaming Ambrosio for the whole thing.

I had my suspicions about Matilda, but as soon as she said "I'm going to cure myself of this deadly poison, don't ask me how" I knew, yep, she's the devil. I think I'm actually disappointed? I went into this book with my lit student head on, looking for themes to do with gender and religion and to have Matilda as the devil just seems like a bit of a cop out. Anyone else get the sense M G Lewis is just making this up as he goes along?

Antonia and Elvira return. I can't think of Elvira without thinking of this Elvira.

Ambrosio would probably hit that.

Ambrosio reminds Elvira of someone, but she can't think who. HMMMM. Seriously, is there any doubt that Ambrosio is secretly her son? M G Lewis, subtlety is not your strong point. But, I guess we've already established that.

Ambrosio doesn't know this yet though, so now that he's bored of Matilda he moves swiftly to the next female shaped object under thirty. God, Antonia- her extreme naivety about love just makes Ambrosio's advances worse. And he knows full well what he's doing. Are we supposed to read him as possessed at this point? He's just coming across like an rapist asshole. 

Just... just fuck you, Amrosio.

So, Matilda is actually pretty chill with this and wants to help Ambrosio out with witchcraft, and he agrees, because again, he's an asshole. I suspect he knew all along what she was doing. I mean, he could have guessed. Aren't monks supposed to be on the lookout for things like this?

Thus concludes the section! I've already read next week's (okay, this week's) section so I know what happens. And damn, shit goes down.