This invocation to the inhabitants of a ruined abbey sums up what is commonly believed to be the theology of the Gothic novel, combining as it does Protestant triumphalism and an Enlightenment critique of Catholicism as engendering superstitious darkness. It is undeniable that the Gothic heroine is at particular risk from the tyranny of monastic power and flees murderous monks in a Catholic country where the Roman faith still holds sway as the Gothic participates in what scholars now call ‘the long Reformation’ (Tyacke 2011), a process still not completed in the eighteenth century. In her essay on monastic institutions the poet Anna Laetitia Aikin similarly views the Reformation as ongoing, and the corruptions only ‘gradually clearing away’ in her own time (Aikin and Aikin 1773: 118). Such a perspective seems to differentiate Gothic from later Romantic poetic treatment of religion, such as William Wordsworth's 1802 sonnet's ‘quiet time […] holy as a Nun / Breathless with adoration’ (Wordsworth 1898: 224), or John Keats's pious beadsman in The Eve of St Agnes (1820). Yet not only does the beadsman die unmourned in a pile of ashes but Wordsworth's little daughter is more holy than a nun, since she lives in constant and unmediated converse with God. And Byron's disdain for superstition in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18) is as thoroughgoing as that in Francis Lathom or Ann Radcliffe.

Aikin's essay, however, develops well beyond her initial deprecation of monastic life to develop a much more positive reading of its educational importance, practical social contribution and even its role as a secure resort for women.