Regina Maria Roche’s The Children of the Abbey: Contesting the Catholic Presence in Female Gothic Fiction

I: Locating the Author

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Regina Maria Roche (c. 1764-1845), widely published Irish author of one of the most popular female gothic novels of the late eighteenth century, The Children of the Abbey (1796), was not in fact a Roman Catholic. In order fully to understand my surprise, you have to appreciate that there has been something of a scholarly revisionist craze of late to present her as a Catholic or, at the very least, as sympathetic to Catholicism in her major novel. Maria Purves states unequivocally: “Roche was an Irish Catholic, and it seems probable that she wanted to give her audience an insight into the realities—as opposed to the romantic possibilities—of her Church.” ¹ A few years earlier, George Haggerty had described The Children of the Abbey as having an “actively pro-Catholic … narrative agenda,” while Jarlath Killeen notes that the title of the novel privileges Catholicism and indicates the Catholic basis for Irish and, indeed, Western culture: “we are all ‘children of the abbey.’” ² Finally, Derek Hand has asserted that “there is a Catholic strain running through [The Children of the Abbey] at a subterranean level.” ³ Unfortunately, none of these claims is borne out by an examination of either Roche’s life or her novel.

This is what we do know for a fact: Roche was born in Waterford, Ireland, in either 1764 or 1765 (even that date is in dispute), daughter of Captain Blundel Dalton (or D’Alton) who held the rank of officer in His Majesty’s 40th Regiment, a commission that, given the penal laws in operation in Ireland at the time, would not have been available to him were he Catholic. Later in her life, both Roche and her husband inherited property in Ireland from their fathers, which also would not have been possible had they been Catholics. By the time Roche was around fifteen years old, the British attitude towards Catholics had moderated a bit. As Colin Haydon has noted, by 1778, “grateful that the Irish Catholics had loyally not exploited the difficulties produced by the American war, the administration decided that some measure of relief should be brought in for them.” ⁴ After a number of amendments on these measures, however, the new legislation accomplished little, only “remov[ing] the various restrictions on Catholic holding, inheriting, and leasing land set out in the anti-Popish Act of 1704” (p. 171). All of these historical factors have led her modern biographer, James Shanahan, to write to me and say that he would be “astounded” to learn that Roche had been a Catholic. ⁵ The question becomes: why has there been an attempt to appropriate and reconstruct Roche and her heroine Amanda Fitzalan for the Catholic cause? Or more broadly, why has there been an ahistorical attempt to characterize the gothic, particularly the female gothic, as pro-Catholic? ⁶ This essay will examine both of those questions by using Roche’s The Children of the Abbey as something like a case study.

For those unfamiliar with The Children of the Abbey, I provide here a brief overview of its plot and characters. Structured as a dual-focus tale about two siblings, the novel follows the complex trials and tribulations of Oscar and Amanda Fitzalan—the children of an Irish soldier and a wealthy Scottish heiress, who was disinherited by her family when she married beneath her station. From an Irish convent, to a Welsh mansion, and finally to Dunreath Abbey, the Scottish ancestral estate, Amanda is pursued by the lecherous libertine Colonel Belgrave, all while she is being courted by her true love, Lord Mortimer of Cherbury, who is confused about her class status and relationship with Belgrave. Meanwhile, Oscar, in love with the beautiful Adela Honeywood, watches helplessly as she is handed over in marriage to the odious Belgrave, who finally dies to everyone’s relief. Both siblings regain their aristocratic identities and property only after Amanda ventures into Dunreath Abbey and, amidst what appear to be...