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However, a mere simulacrum’s ability to divulge insatiable desire foreshadows the power of the unfamiliar to eradicate virtue, implying Ambrosio is dissatisfied, desperately seeking the untainted woman. Ambrosios fragile humanity is implicitly threatening- animalistic imagery used later in the novel depicting his demise, like Dracula, exaggerating his fall, likened to an archetypal Gothic creature, acting out the repressed fantasies of the other5 -the pure embodiment of the uncanny. Using anthropomorphism to describe Dracula and Ambrosio amplifies the unfamiliars ability to shroud humanity in monstrosity, Draculas long and sharp teeth, his ability to rip and tear akin to Ambrosios violation and sucking of Antonia, the semantic field of inhumane violence exemplifying the monks utter moral collapse and Draculas sheer inhumanity. Draculas actions isolated, and incredibly mundane, incite fear because he personifies a terror of being simultaneously unknowable and known, threatening to breach the definitive constraints of living through pure personification one evil thrown into a pure society, as Podinsky opines, beginning an onslaught of corruption6; like Ambrosio his inherent humanity, contrasting with physical metamorphous, embodying the immoral unfamiliar. Ambrosio becomes the licentious monk, the adjective insinuating his sexual deviations to be unprincipled; Lewis use of hyperbole exaggerates this transgression. As Dracula is the embodiment of pure evil, Ambrosio is excessively personified. The motif of ruinous, stifling weather, such as thunder and fog describing the two antagonists show the unmerciful omnipotence of the uncanny, suggestive of utter nihilism, a return to the Dark Ages void of metaphorical enlightenment, expressing the moral darkness of Ambrosio and Draculas ability to reinstate desolation. Pathetic fallacy intensifies Ambrosios power, possessing the omnipotence of a Deity ironically at his most satanic, but one devoid of benevolence and humanity and therefore, demonic. Ambrosio is compared to a force of nature in his corruption; the Romantic ideals of the Sublime highlight the human conscience’s fragility.
Contrasting Ambrosio, Dracula is characterized as the complete embodiment of the unleashed Id7, an externalized other exploiting natural weakness within the conscious and, despite both novels citing superstition as resulting in declining civility, Dracula embodies apprehensions of Darwinian evolutionary thought- the concept of evolving spurring an assumption that one can de-volve8, becoming a modification of pre-bourgeois fears9. Indicative of collapsing tradition, Dracula evokes xenophobic ideas from a society fearing corruption, a motif in both novels lured from the Unconscious, Dracula is not only physically intimidating but a non-cognitive threat preying on erring morality. Fluctuating from man to beast suggests the external uncanny to be feared because of its ease of assimilation, this physical transition threatening the established order, usurping normalcy because his non-contingency lacks the weakness of mortality. Through Draculas dehumanization, Stoker infuses the supernatural into the novel, and the dangers of the uncanny intensify as, unlike Ambrosio, hes unconfined by contingent limitations. Unrestricted by English societal norms, Transylvania void of superficial civility, Draculas inhumanity curates a wholly destructive force, his reckless fearlessness resulting in his death and paralleling Harkers snobbery of the ridiculous(ness) of the Landlords superstitious wife; this nationalist arrogance scorned by both authors as ignorance masked in arrogance, exposing characters to ready manipulation by the other, fearing diminishing imperial prowess.
In addition to this, explicitly alluded to within both novels is the sacrilegious woman craving the uncanny as a form of macabre liberation. Purely objectified in The Monk, women are stripped of their ability to physically participate, simultaneously worshipped and abhorred; dehumanized into unfamiliarity, and subject to intransigent masculine desires. Matilda and Antonias ivory flesh implies unconcealed feminine otherness, ivorys rarity introduces this idea of profit, its off-whiteness and softness implying easily exploited weakness; female sexuality is something to be gained and purity revered but desired. Miles opines Ambrosio imagines women conditioned by textuality10 the semantic field of material in Antonias description implying her purpose being to be surveyed and touched, the act of concealing more important than the concealed, expressing contemporary views of feminine otherness exploiting masculine virtue, concealment deflecting blame to female incompetence. Her neck is notable for its symmetry, her beauty a dazzling whiteness, and her figure light, airy, implies an emptiness, female worth reduced to aesthetics; the interplay of light and dark imagery signifies how her otherness is veiled she is ethereal, suppressing the uncanny meaning its repressed within the male unconscious also. Juxtaposing her whiteness and the blackness of her veil, Lewis implies, as understood by a modern audience, physical societal restrictions to fuel the uncanny not feminine otherness. Her veil and body are intrinsically linked, the veil’s superficial protection, the ability for it to be forcefully stripped away making her an object of wanton desire. Lewis becomes the complex revealer11 the motif of removal forcing blame of otherness upon man, reiterated in Dracula, the ease of Minas contamination, her inability to hate implying innate female weakness- something unchangeable. Â
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