Antonin

Antonin is a monk in the secluded convent where Thérèse is held captive, and one of the four men who direct its regime. The narrative distinguishes him from the more deliberately cruel Clement by presenting his conduct as less malicious in intention, but not less complicit in the convent’s organized abuse. As Officer of the Day, he turns routine inspection into a mechanism of submission; his authority makes him both an individual participant in the women’s suffering and a functionary of the institution that perpetuates it.

Identity and Place in the Convent

Antonin is forty years old, slight in build but described as vigorous and powerfully constituted. He is the third of the four monks associated with the convent’s secret practices. The narrator’s account sets him beside Clement, whose cruelty is characterized as an end in itself: Clement seeks to tyrannize and distress, whereas Antonin is said to use force for pleasure and to intensify the experience he imposes. This distinction explains a difference of disposition, not a moral defense. Antonin remains part of the same group and exercises power over women who cannot refuse or leave.

Officer of the Day

The convent’s daily system gives Antonin an official role in enforcing its rules. Each morning, at nine, the women assemble for inspection by the Officer of the Day, who examines them, hears the superintendent’s report, selects those assigned to the evening’s activities, and helps determine punishments. The account presents these procedures as regular and institutional: the women’s time, clothing, and availability are controlled by the monks, while outsiders are kept away. Antonin’s office therefore links his personal conduct to the convent’s machinery of confinement, making abuse a scheduled exercise of authority rather than an isolated incident.

Treatment of Thérèse

When Antonin takes his turn as Officer of the Day after Thérèse has arrived, he counts the assembled women and follows the customary inspection. He notices her distress and asks how she likes her latest misfortune; when she cannot answer except through tears, he dismisses her suffering with a laugh and boasts of the convent’s ability to train girls. He then orders the superintendent to prepare Thérèse and directs the other women to take part in the assault he initiates. Thérèse’s account emphasizes the collective arrangement around Antonin: the women are made to serve his wishes, while his authority sets the scene and determines what follows. Her silence and distress do not alter his conduct.

The episode establishes the practical meaning of Antonin’s supposed distinction from Clement. He may be described as less malign in intention, but he willingly uses the convent’s power and the women’s enforced participation for his own pleasure. The narrative places his conduct inside a repeating pattern in which the monks are attended by the group of women, ensuring that individual acts are supported by a wider system of obedience.

Religion, Hypocrisy, and Narrative Significance

Antonin’s role also belongs to the book’s contrast between religious appearance and institutional conduct. The convent maintains a public reputation for austerity and hospitality, while its members conceal their practices behind seclusion, controlled access, and religious authority. The daily inspection he conducts exposes how that authority operates internally: its language of order does not protect the women but makes their exploitation routine and difficult to challenge.

His characterization should be distinguished from the anti-religious arguments spoken elsewhere in the narrative. The book includes both attacks on religious belief and Thérèse’s account of her own faith; Antonin’s significance lies in the monks’ conduct, not in establishing that their behavior represents the narrator’s judgment on all religious belief. Thérèse’s horror at the convent’s abuses and her continuing religious feeling make the contrast especially sharp: the institution claims sacred standing even as its officers use that standing to dominate its captives.

Antonin is thus neither an outsider who merely observes the convent’s system nor its sole architect. He is one of its empowered participants, and his morning authority shows how personal appetite and institutional routine reinforce each other. The difference the narrator draws between him and Clement sharpens rather than softens the indictment: cruelty may be deliberate in one man and differently rationalized in another, yet both operate within a structure that denies the women meaningful freedom.