The chapter I chose to read was from the book, Masked Atheism Catholicism and the Secular Victorian Home written by Maria La Monaca. The chapter out of the book in which I read was chapter two titled “Sick Souls.” La Monaca discusses Catholicism and Protestant views on confession. In this chapter she is referencing Charlotte Bronte and Lady Georgiana Fullerton. What she discusses is the “juxtaposition” (68) between the two artists and how they view idolatry, or erotic “creature worship” (68) and how it affects the way society feels it affects the home. La Monaca also highlights the punishment and consequences associated with this belief.
She suggests that both Bronte and Fullerton assert in their writings that one’s guilty conscience was the most passionate form of punishment for sins committed. She goes on to say that Protestant Victorians didn’t understand auricular confession; it was a feared and misunderstood sacrament. Anyone who practices Catholicism knows it is a very important religious rite in the Roman Catholic Church.  Catholics are taught that in order to absolve your sins you had to go and confess them to your priest. This confidentiality is what La Monaca says Protestants feared would “infiltrate” (71) the Church of England. La Monaca points out the controversy of confession and how it added to the anxiety of Victorian paradigms on femininity, marriage and domesticity.  She says opponents of confession believed that this ritual was a way for priests to weaken and destroy the ties daughters had with their fathers and husbands with their wives.  The reason behind this notion was that people didn’t know exactly what was happening behind those closed doors. This brought to mind a picture of a woman revealing her deepest darkest secrets, which Protestants saw as a way of humiliation. They felt these secrets should be only discussed between a man and wife and fathers with their daughters. This in turn, brings in the morality issue, which of course the Protestants felt the ritual challenged.  They felt, according to La Monaca, that since women were discussing deep dark secrets, this could only lead to conversations on sexuality, which led to sexual transgressions, “whether in thought or in deed”(72).  Protestants viewed the confession as way for a priest to plant questionable ideas in the minds of the penitent. 
La Monaca goes on to discuss what she called, “Secret Desires of the “Sick Soul.  This portion of the chapter highlights the notion of confession focusing on the victimized female. Suggesting that only a female can be victimized because she is weak and since the male is considered the stronger of the sexes he cannot be subjected to the same treatment. She also discusses the meaning of virtue and what that meant to young Victorian women. La Monaca tells us of the moral training these women endured in order to understand importance of self-monitoring.  This idea was important since confessing your sins to someone other than your father and husband was not acceptable. 
La Monaca suggest that this creates a type of pressure within a person that cause them to react to the idea of self monitoring or confessing in a negative way.  As a result the person will become obsessed with the idea of confessing and can sometimes take it to far referencing Elizabeth Missing Sewell’s experience as a child.  She says that Elizabeth’s self-examination caused her become what we would call today OCD, with her need to confess.  She suggests that Fullerton’s novel proposes the belief that Victorian woman craved auricular confession.  They saw it as a “convenient, and completely secret, respite from the afflictions of the “sick soul” (75), in other words it seemed easier to confess to someone who didn’t know you and you didn’t know them.
La Monaca goes on to highlight Fullerton’s Ellen Middleton saying she was a victim of unconfessed sin. She says that if Ellen had confessed her sin of murder she would not have been subject to heartbreak.  She suggests that since Ellen finally did confess on her deathbed she reconciled her sins and was able to die peacefully.  Therefore, Ellen was unable to comply with the Protestant ideals governing opinions of confessing to a loved one.  Ellen was unable to confess to Edward Middleton that she killed his sister out of fear of losing him, leaving her open to manipulation from Henry Lovell.  
Bronte and Fullerton both wrote about fictional character experiences with confession in their novels but they had different ideas as to what that meant to their characters. In Charlotte Bronte’s novel Villette, Lucy has her own experience with confession. La Monaca tells us that in this novel confession is seen as a comfort to women. Bronte unlike Fullerton gives the perception in her novel that confession is a representation of Christ, not a substitution to God. As a result, this goes against the Protestant’s belief that Catholicism is a form of idolatry. Bronte according to La Monaca is using confession as way to validate her heroine because it brings her together her “fragmented self,”(77).  La Monaca suggests that Lucy finds salvation in her love for M. Paul Emmanuel, bringing up the point that confession is a representation of Lucy’s Catholicism in that it acknowledges and understands female desire.  This however, is in contrast to the ideal of Protestantism.  Bronte uses Lucy according to La Monaca to highlight the idea that confession is not subject to only the father/parents or husband.  She says that Lucy was able to confess her sins out love.  And unlike Ellen, who was unable to reach ultimate happiness, Lucy through her confession was able to attain it, even though if it was for a brief time.
La Monaca points out that although Lucy’s “sins” had been forgiven she received absolution in much different manner than Ellen Middleton. Even though Ellen’s desires to confess were natural, they disrupted the social order in which La Monaca says destroyed both self and others. According to Protestant belief, although this desire was natural, it must be restricted in order to have a close relationship with God.  Simply stated women could only confess to their parents/husbands, unlike in Villette. Lucy didn’t have a close relationship with God compared to that of Ellen.  
Finally, La Monaca says that what brings all the elements in this chapter together are, the “acknowledgement of the fragility and precariousness of the middle-class British home”(94). She says that both writers discuss home, as being fragile but that confession “shores” up the home not threatens it.  She emphasizes that confession no matter the format is a necessity for the wellness of the soul.