Lilia Trifonova. Concealment and Gender: Matilda from The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis

Matilda is the key character in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ novel “The Monk”: she is the seductress, the femme fatale, who sets in motion the series of sins committed by the monk Ambrosio. The text examines Matilda as a figure of seduction in Lewis’s novel, defining the heroine’s fatality through questions of the instrumentalization of gender, the exposure of the body, the dynamics between disguise and revelation. By outlining several techniques of seduction that the heroine employs in the realization of her goal (disguise of self, gender, virtues, face) it will appear that the use of disguise and the play of concealment and revelation are the temptress’s primary tools.