The Psychopathology of Envy: A Nietzschean Reading of the Monk’s Ressentiment in Browning’s Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Abstract

Robert Browning’s Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister (1842/2009) is a defining Victorian dramatic monologue that probes the human psyche’s dark corners, especially the collision of religious piety and moral hypocrisy. Through an unnamed monk’s voice, the poem exposes a mind consumed by hatred, yet traditional labels like “envy” or “evil” fail to explain his psychological contradictions. This essay argues the monk embodies Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ressentiment—a chronic, repressive hatred rooted in powerlessness. Using Nietzsche’s master-slave morality framework, this study analyzes how the monk, paralyzed by inner weakness, twists resentment toward Brother Lawrence into imagined moral revenge, ultimately poisoning his own spirit. This analysis reveals the poem’s critique of how repressed hostility corrupts individual consciousness and moral-religious systems, with enduring relevance to modern struggles with powerlessness, moral grandstanding, and ideological polarization.