Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister Sex Quotes

The speaker is juxtaposing two different tasks that he sees Brother Lawrence carrying out in the garden: trimming a myrtle-bush and refilling a vase of roses. One of those tasks, the "trimming," is repressive – it involves cutting back, denying growth. But roses, on the other hand, often symbolize sex and beauty, and Brother Lawrence moves from the repressive task of "trimming" to refilling the sexy rose's vase so that it's "brimming" and overflowing. It's possible that the speaker wants us to read Brother Lawrence's seemingly innocent chores as a sign of his unspoken sexual desire.

The speaker describes the women down by the river with a lot of physical detail – he clearly has been checking them out himself!

The speaker says Brother Lawrence's eyes "glow" at the sight of the women outside of the monastery as brightly as a lustful pirate ("corsair"). Pirates had a reputation for being lusty, so the simile makes some sense, although it does seem strange to compare a religious monk in a monastery to a free, lusty pirate on the open sea.

The speaker owns a "scrofulous," or morally corrupt, French novel. Why would a monk, who has sworn a vow of chastity, own an erotic novel? Especially one that would get you in trouble with the demon Belial after a single glance? ("Gripe," by the way, means grip here.)

The speaker is awfully familiar with this erotic French novel... he knows exactly what page has the really naughty parts in it. It's like the one book in the school library with a sex scene in it that always falls open right to that page.