Critics of The Monk stress its pornographic elements and the opposition of natural, subversive libidinal forces against the cultural order. However, discourses about love and sex prevail against depictions of sexual acts. The Monk exemplifies Foucault's observation of the increasing discursivization of sexuality by transferring confessions and vows from the religious into the private sphere. Significantly, these discourses not only serve to control but also to elicit desire, which is less hidden and repressed but constitutes the focus of an obsessive concern. The lovers do not represent anarchic or innovative forces because they merely repeat the cultural pattern of arousing and hedging desire. Lovers, families and the church rival each other for power in the field of sexuality without any significant differences in the structure of their behaviour, so that The Monk criticizes the sentimental view of the private sphere.