Gothic Gender Roles
Please enjoy this mood music, because there's nothing more terror inducing than the expectation to conform to a binary.
Societal Expectation
The Monk is set in Spain in a monastery, and as such the patriarchal status of society when the story was written in the late 18th Century is elevated. Religion naturally plays a large role in this piece, increasing the expectation of piety and innocence placed upon all characters. In this setting, women would have been considered subservient. Their piety, beauty, and youth would have been considered their only qualities of value. In this religious setting men would have had even more power than in a traditional social setting, not only do they chose women's lives for them but in this case their modes of penitence and salvation as well.
The Gothic Feminine
The Gothic Feminine is often a young, sentimental woman. She is interested in the arts and the beauty of nature. She may be prone to fainting, a byproduct of her unregulated sentiment. Often this damsel is the victim of many cruelties but emerges from jeopardy physically and morally strengthened. The Gothic Feminine is usually the heroine of her own story, though not without the help of other supporting men and women by her side. She is usually held in a captivity narrative for at least part of her tale, often alongside her supporting characters. Her defining characteristics are innocence, coyness, and an unparalleled ability to sense the supernatural.
The Gothic Masculine
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The Gothic Masculine is an authoritarian figure, often one who poses a significant sexual threat to the Gothic Feminine. He is usually concerned with the legitimacy of his inheritance and plays into the patriarchal society in a role of tyranny. The Gothic masculine tends to exhibit libertine sexuality, living for the gratification of their own lawless sexual appetites. The terror he creates is often derived from his virility or social position of power. The Gothic Masculine is deeply misogynistic and wreaks havoc on the Gothic Feminine by assaulting her virtue in one way or another.