Emotion in Literature

Frequently, fiction is aimed at portraying, describing and analysing individual emotions. It is also manipulative of a reader’s emotions. While the psychologist is usually concerned to characterize the average person, the writer of fiction is often concerned to portray the best possible example of a type of person or event or situation. Frequently, in fiction, emotion is characterized as precipitated by a startling event. Following this, however, it is usually quite clear that the writer is as aware as the psychologist that emotion involves physiological arousal and behavioural, particularly facial, expression. Also, it tends to be almost axiomatic that some process of cognitive evaluation precedes the experience of emotion. And following this, fictional characters are then often shown as having to act on their emotions. So even in sophisticated modern times, fictional characters are gripped by passion and carry on fierce battles between the rational and emotional sides of their make-up. Emotion is also typically seen as an important motivator.

The reader’s emotion can be manipulated in a number of ways. It is apparent, for example, that an absorbing work of fiction prompts much vicarious emotional experience for the reader. Also, the experience of emotion through fiction can allow the satisfaction of a temporary escape from the less pleasant aspects of daily life. This is the sense of escapist fiction. From the crudest romance to the most spellbinding tale of high adventure, the reader is invited to suspend reality and to identify with larger-thanlife characters whose experiences command great pinnacles of emotional satisfaction. In fact, it is identification that seems crucial for the experience of vicarious emotion. If a reader can find no grounds for identification then a work of fiction seems curiously flat. Such identification is perhaps allied to the projection and empathy that allows us to gain some understanding of the emotional experiences of those around us in the everyday world. In practice the emotional effects of fiction can be powerful, lasting and even harrowing. Moreover, as Oatley (1992) suggests, it is through fiction that we came to a non-scientific, but important understanding of emotion, through verstehen.

An issue that remains and that has been enjoined more by philosophers than psychologists concerns what exactly it is that we are made emotional about when we are made emotional by fiction. If we know that something is a work of fiction, if we know that what is happening to a fictitious character is by definition itself fictitious, then how is it that we react emotionally? As Levinson (1997) puts it: “we have emotions for fictional characters; we normally believe in the existence of objects for which we have emotions; we don”t believe in the existence of fictional objects.’ Neill (1993) makes an interesting analysis of this matter based on the view that our emotional responses are themselves founded on belief. He describes this as representing current philosophical orthodoxy as far as emotions are concerned. In passing it might be noted that if orthodoxy is defined as what is believed by the greatest number, then this view comes close to current psychological orthodoxy as well. Of course, the problem with respect to the emotional impact of fiction is that since I know that a fictional character does not exist in reality then how, for example, can I have beliefs about events in her fictional life so that I pity her? Neill answers this question with the suggestion that our emotional reactions to fictional characters and events are based on beliefs, although they are beliefs about what is fictionally so. It then follows that our emotional reactions to fiction are themselves explicable by a cognitive theory of emotion.

Neill makes a convincing case that pity, as a significant emotion that seems to be frequently generated by fiction, can be seen in this way. And he argues that it is reasonable to generalize from this to other emotions. The emotional reactions we have to fictional characters and events may be slightly different from those that we have to events in real life and to actual people, but we do have them nevertheless. We do pity, envy and fear for fictional characters (although we might not fear them), and such reactions can be accounted for cognitively. Of course, to have beliefs about fiction we do have to first do what the novelist and dramatist frequently wishes us to do, and that is to suspend disbelief.

Neill’s is but one view. Levinson (1997) lists the entire set of possible accounts:

1. Our emotional reactions to fiction are not real.
2. We suspend disbelief, as mentioned above.
3. Our emotional reactions to fiction take as real things that we know not to exist.
4. Emotions toward objects do not need to rely on beliefs, but merely on weaker forms of cognitions. It then follows that emotional responses to fiction are like any other emotional responses.
5. To account for emotional reactions to fiction we might only need the belief that, in the fiction, the character exists. The question then becomes whether or not this means that our particular emotional reaction is also fictional.
6. It may be that when reading fiction we become irrational and so have emotions directed toward non-existent characters.
7. Finally, emotion to fiction might only be make-believe emotions (i.e., we are moved by fiction to non-standard emotional reactions). Levinson makes the point that the answer to the “paradox of fiction” could well be “all of the above”, but suggests that the best single possibility comes from the idea of “make believe” emotions.

Following Radford’s (1975) answer to the question, “How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina?”, Hartz (1999) asks “How can we be moved by Anna Karenina, Green Slime, and a Red Pony?”, thereby broadening the matter a little. His general thesis, which somehow does away with the problem altogether, is that brain mechanisms in emotion do not “. . . abide by preconceived rational strictures.” So, they simply do respond to the various circumstances in fiction, and there it is. This is not irrationality or inconsistency. In other words, there is no paradox of fiction.