My confessor has besieged me
Early nineteenth-century English anti-Catholic prejudice stressed the
hierarchical conformity of the Roman Church as against the individual
self-witnessing or examination of conscience that the growing evangelical
movement especially emphasized. Yet if this confessor is manipulative and
reminds one of that staple of Gothic fiction, the obdurate inquisitor, he
seems to stand in contrast to the earlier confessor, who acted as a
kindly mender of family fences to convince her mother after the deaths
of her other children to take Justine back into her home (1.5.4). Of course, he could be the same
priest, only apparently kind in his offices, but essentially
superstitious in interpreting God's will and actively supporting firm social
structures to curb errant individual desire.
