Confessional Subjects

Susan Bernstein examines the gendered power relationships embedded in confessional literature of the Victorian period. Exploring this dynamic in Charlotte Brontâ’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 secular