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A Gendered Experience

Chapter 4 examines confession in the first half of the nineteenth century through the lens of gender. As men often served in the military or held government positions, they were more likely to be suspected of conspiracies or treason and to experience confession as a means of discipline and surveillance. As a result, their depictions of confession showed its external, social, and political side. By contrast, women came to approach confession as an autobiographical narrative and a form of private literary production, seeking closer relationships with their father-confessors. Sacramental confession became part of a textual process of Russian women’s reading, devotion, and life-writing. Both in women’s going to confession in larger numbers and in their desire for a more meaningful confession, confession became an increasingly feminine phenomenon.