The Gothic Genre

Throughout the late twentieth century, and now into the twenty-first, critics have expressed growing anxiety about the slippery boundaries of the Gothic genre. (Rintoul 701)

The capacity of the Gothic to survive, and particularly to interbreed with other imaginative modes so as to engender much more complex and valuable literary phenomena than itself, was extraordinary. (Moynahan 110)

Overview of the Gothic Novel

The Gothic novel is said to "flourish in disrupted, oppressed, or undeveloped societies, to give a voice to the powerless and unenfranchised" and therefore "often carries a heavily political or metapolitical charge" (Moynahan 111). For this reason, particular groups of writers, such as women (Ellis 48) and Anglo-Irish people (Moynahan 111), were often associated with the genre. While the relationship between Anglo-Irish writers and their usage of Gothic conventions may be related to the formation of the genre of the national tale, it may be less clear why and how women employed the genre. Although it is uncertain whether women actually did participate in reading more Gothic novels than men did the Gothic romance in particular has long been associated with women. The other major genre associated with women at the time -- the novel of Sensibility -- may actually be understood by some scholars as being in conflict with the genre of the Gothic. Patricia Meyer Spacks, for instance, suggests that "the relationship between sublimity and sensibility presents real complications...[and while] Gothic novels typically attempt sublimity, [they] rely heavily on sensibility [instead]" (198-199). As sites of contradiction and contentment in this regard, and with the great propensity of female Gothic writers, it is unsurprising that the genre "became the site of a heartfelt and, at times, bitter debate about the nature and politics of femininity" (Ellis 48).

The Children of the Abbey as a Gothic Novel

I would like to suggest that the Gothic romance is a way of reinscribing the basic Pamela situation, in which a young lady is cut off from the controlling and protecting influence of her parents, is threatened (in life, limb, and virtue) by a villain; partly by good fortune and partly by the skillful use of her own native resources, the young lady is ultimately able to overcome and surmount the threat and is rewarded by being married to a young man of good family, wealth, and ethical standing.