History Literature / MelmothTheWanderer

!! ''Melmoth the Wanderer'' contains examples of the following tropes:

* AnimateDead: the dead hermit who lives in the monastery performs a wedding ceremony between Melmoth and Immalee,[[spoiler: the day after he is murdered.]]

* BadSamaritan: Melmoth. He offers help on the condition his victim sells their soul. [[spoiler: It doesn't work out.]]

* BlackAndGrayMorality: The world is portrayed as evil, selfish and thoughtless. The monks repress anyone they consider heretics, Don Francisco is worldly and money-minded. [[spoiler: But they can't beat Melmoth, who sells his soul to the devil and then persuades other people who are suffering to take his place.]]
* BreakTheCutie: Having lived in bliss on an island, Immalee's thoughts are disturbed by Melmoth, who tells her about the world of suffering he comes from. Then she becomes unhappy because she misses him every time he leaves the island. She can't even enjoy nature now. Then he tells her to marry her in darkness and in fury. Because she resists, he leaves her for three years. In the meantime she is rescued by a ship and sent to her family in Spain, where she yearns for her old life. Her mother is cold and unsympathetic and her father wants her to marry a man she doesn't love. [[spoiler: Eventually Melmoth tempts her to marry him, who is shunned by people, without declaring their marriage to her family. She is grieved that she is not made an honest woman. At the wedding ceremony between her and the arranged bridegroom Melmoth kills her brother and she is sent to the Spanish Inquisition to be interrogated and imprisoned. She gives birth to a daughter who dies soon after. Then Melmoth visits her in prison to ask her to sell her soul, because she is vulnerable and more likely to do anything to become happy. She refuses and dies in prison afterwards.]]

* DerelictGraveyard: Melmoth and Immalee marry in a graveyard at the dead of night in secret. The priest who performs the wedding ceremony is a hermit living in an abandoned monastery. [[spoiler: The creepy thing? The priest had died the day before. "She felt that the hand that united them, and clasped their palms within his own, was as cold as that of death."]]
* DestructiveRomance: Immalee and the Wanderer. She was happy until she met Melmoth. Melmoth seeks her partly because he wants her soul to save his, and though Immalee is unaware of his real evil yet, she is upset that he will marry her only in secret and will not declare his intentions to marry her openly to her family and make her a respectable woman. They marry in secret and Immalee becomes pregnant with a half-demon child. When Melmoth turns up at her arranged marriage, he kills her brother, and Immalee is sent to the Inquisition as [[spoiler: she is the wife of their enemy, Melmoth. She is starved in prison, her baby dies, she is accused of infanticide and she dies in agony. Not long before her death, she tells her priest that Melmoth asked her to sell her soul, just when she was at her most vulnerable. ]]

* IntrepidMerchant: Don Francisco.

* LoveMartyr: Immalee. [[spoiler: she marries a murderer who is trying to get her soul.]]

* PortentOfDoom

* RunawayBride: When Isidora is forced to marry a man she hasn't met, Melmoth agrees to take her away during the wedding ceremony. [[spoiler: It ends badly.]]

* ShipwreckedOnAnIsland: Immalee and her nurse are shipwrecked on an Indian island and separated from Immalee's family. She is only sent back after many years of having lived in nature.

* TragicVillain: Melmoth

* YouAllMeetInAnInn: Someone who has been gathering stories about the Wanderer meets Don Francisco at an inn and tells him the story of Guzman. The storyteller [[spoiler: is then murdered by Melmoth the Wanderer.]]

In 1816, young John Melmoth returns to his dying uncle's house to hear the story of John Melmoth, his ancestor, who lived in 1664 and is still living. While he is rescued by a Spaniard during a storm, the Spaniard, Alonzo Moncada tells him his own story as a reluctant monk during the Spanish Inquisition and his efforts to escape from the violent priests, and how he is involved with old John Melmoth, the ancestor, also known as Melmoth the Wanderer. Old Melmoth had sold his soul to the devil in return for 150 years of life and supernatural abilities - to travel fast, through doors and prisons. There is one way he can get out of the contract: if he gets another person to exchange their soul for his. Melmoth preys on those in difficulties and offers to help them out if they sell their souls instead. [[spoiler: However, he is unable to persuade any of his victims to do so and dies at the end in damnation.]]

* TheCynic: Melmoth the Wanderer.

* HaveAGayOldTime: "From my window I saw them running through the garden in every direction, embracing each other, ejaculating, praying, and counting their beads with hands tremulous, and eyes uplifted in extacy."

* ShoutOut: Numerous allusions to contemporary culture. Immalee, the island maiden who lives in nature and is secluded from the world, is a shoutout to Rousseau, who proposed this philosophy of raising children. Every chapter has an epigraph in the form of poetry (like Southey and Scott, Romantic poets) or classic quotes foreshadowing the themes of the novel e.g. hell, even though it's not stated till the end that Melmoth sold his soul to the devil. The titular character is also a Shoutout to Goethe's ''Theatre/{{Faust}}'', as he trades his soul for knowledge and supernatural powers, like Faust.
* UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition: The setting for much of the story. After trying to annul his vows as a monk, Moncada is sent to the Inquisition jail and is interrogated by severe judges who accuse him of devilry, as the mysterious Melmoth only appeared in the prisons after Moncada's arrival. The Inquisition officers also target Don Fernan di Nunez, or Solomon the Jew, accusing him of worshipping Judaism instead of Catholicism. They threaten to burn his house and throw his son into a convent if they shelter a prisoner of the Inquisition.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Stanton's story ends with him being freed from imprisonment, but still obsessed with tracking down the Wanderer and bearing mental scars from their final encounter. His manuscript ends shortly after his visit to the Melmoth family, so it's uncertain whether he ''ever'' fully recovered in his lifetime. Ultimately, however, Melmoth's dream near the end of the book gives Stanton an EarnYourHappyEnding (or at least heavily implies that he'll get one.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Stanton's story ends with him being freed from imprisonment, but still obsessed with tracking down the Wanderer and bearing mental scars from their final encounter. His manuscript ends shortly after his visit to the Melmoth family, so it's uncertain whether he ''ever'' fully recovered.]]

* DyingAlone: Melmoth does this after jumping from a cliff.