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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. Ambrosio’s 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 unfamiliar’s ability to shroud humanity in monstrosity, Dracula’s “long” and “sharp” teeth, his ability to “rip” and “tear” akin to Ambrosio’s “violation” and “sucking” of Antonia, the semantic field of inhumane violence exemplifying the monk’s utter moral collapse and Dracula’s sheer inhumanity. Dracula’s 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 Dracula’s ability to reinstate desolation. Pathetic fallacy intensifies Ambrosio’s 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 Dracula’s dehumanization, Stoker infuses the supernatural into the novel, and the dangers of the uncanny intensify as, unlike Ambrosio, he’s unconfined by contingent limitations. Unrestricted by English societal norms, “Transylvania” void of superficial civility, Dracula’s inhumanity curates a wholly destructive force, his reckless fearlessness resulting in his death and paralleling Harker’s snobbery of the “ridiculous(ness)” of the Landlord’s 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 Antonia’s “ivory” flesh implies unconcealed feminine “otherness,” ivory’s 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 Antonia’s 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 Mina’s contamination, her inability to “hate” implying innate female weakness- something unchangeable.
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