Confessional Subjects: Revelations of Gender and Power in Victorian Literature and Culture

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 secula...