Confession in "La Regenta": The Secular Sacrament

Abstract

Leopoldo Alas’ La Regenta (1885) is the story of a failed confession, of the seductive, suspenseful, and ultimately suspended relationship between a confessor (Fermin de Pas) and his devout penitent (Ana Ozores). The thrilling final scene of Alas’ first novel finds Ana shunned at the confessional, denied hope and forgiveness by her confessor and would-be suitor. Macabre and terrifying images of death mark the final depiction of the priest and his personified confessional booth: De Pas is the satanic Christ figure, linked by virtue of his fiery eyes to the ‘Jesus del altar’, who springs from the centre of a sarcophagus-like ‘cajon sombrio’ animated only by murmurs like the buzz of flies and by the creaking of bones.1 This highly dramatic death of the Christian sacrament underscores central themes of Clarin's novel; it reflects a pervasive sense of disillusionment with spiritual renewal and thus mocks the search for what De Pas calls ‘el hombre nuevo’ and what Ana Ozores refers to as her ‘vida nueva’.2