Susan Bernstein examines the gendered power relationships embedded
in confessional literature of the Victorian period. Exploring this
dynamic in Charlotte Bronta's
Villette, Mary Elizabeth
Braddon's
Lady Audley's Secret, George Eliot's
Daniel
Deronda, and Thomas Hardy's
Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
she argues that although women's disclosures to male confessors
repeatedly depict wrongdoing committed against them, they
themselves are viewed as the transgressors. Bernstein emphasizes
the secularization of confession, but she also places these
narratives within the context of the anti-Catholic tract literature
of the time. Based on cultural criticism, poststructuralism, and
feminist theory, Bernstein's analysis constitutes a reassessment of
Freud's and Foucault's theories of confession. In addition, her
study of the anti-Catholic propaganda of the mid-nineteenth century
and its portrayal of confession provides historical background to
the meaning of domestic confessions in the literature of the second
half of the century.
Originally published in 1997.
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