How does the French Revolution act as a framework?

. In the socio-historical framework of the French Revolution, Gothic novels like Matthew Lewis’s The Monk serve as metaphors for the individual rebel/tyrant dynamic, the phenomena of the mob, and the experience of sexual response and sexual energy. The figure of Ambrosio is especially representative of this. The Monk reproduces the trajectory of the revolution and the experience of the revolutionary himself. There is ambivalence in symbols like the rioting crowd and Ambrosio. They embody the distortion of oppression found in the French Revolution. It becomes difficult to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed, as the victims of oppression begin to perpetuate it.The repressive cruelty of Ambrosio and the crowd invert their original positions as victims of religious institutions. In the same manner that the Gothic does, the French Revolution exemplifies the violence of the revolters against the primary oppression.The Gothic represents the tyranny that the revolutionaries sought to change, as well as the savagery that resulted from seeking such liberty. The energy of the revolution itself is in the Gothic novel.