Hey,
I'm interested in how the empathy is explored in classic or modern novels/short stories (I guess in poetry the list is quite big). Empathy has not to be the main topic of the novels, though, I'm more interested in passages or situations that come to your mind from books that you have read and might be relevant for this community.
Talking about TV series, for instance, I remember an episode of the US series "Easy" in which an average couple decide to open their relationship and at some point after everything was sort of messed up, they met in a pub and had a chat about how they were feeling. Then, the girl shared with her partner her feelings, and he seems to understand her even to the point of saying explicitly "I understand how you are feeling". Her reply, nevertheless, is (sort of) "I don't think so".
This kind of situations is what I have in mind but in the field of literature. Please feel free to share your thoughts, knowledge, etc, here!
by dapias
1 Comment
I only know it where it’s woven into stories as part of other themes. But here are some that stand out for me:
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s *A Little Princess* is largely about empathy and its opposite.
Helen Fielding’s *Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason* has a journey to empathy. [Spoiler:(#s “Bridget Jones is in a struggle to understand others, to feel understood, and to deal with having to live in a world of rules she doesn’t understand. Moments of empathic connection are few and far between but powerful when they happen – to me anyway.”) ]
Similarly in Sophie Kinsella’s *Can You Keep a Secret*, the protag struggles not to be seen or known, but [Spoiler:](#s “has her transformative moment after an empathic event.”)
Alexandra Sellers’ *Wife in Demand* is a very intense, angsty romance that has two protags struggling unsuccessfully to trust each other and finally arriving at their Happily Ever After, which is essentially about their coming to understand each others’ experiences.
As you see, a lot of these are romances. A lot of the romance genre does focus on how the protags come to feel each other’s pain. 🙂
ETA: Eek! I can’t figure out how to format the spoilers!