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Desiring Difference: Sympathy and Sensibility in Jane Eyre
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2003 by Nandrea, Lorri G
The soul resides eminently in the brain, where all the nervous fibres terminate inwardly, like a musician by a well tuned instrument, which has keys within, on which it may play, and without, on which other persons and bodies may also play. By the inward keys, I understand those means by which the thoughts of the mina affect the body; and by the outward, those whereby the actions or sensations of the body affect the mind. Both these affectations may be called passions in a general way, as either part of the compound is acted upon. (144-45)
Cheyne's image suggests that one's physical sensibilities can be played on by others directly, producing affect, or "passion," without the intervention of imaginative identification (imagining oneself in the place of another). This understanding of the production of affect is also expressed in the philosophy of David Hume. As Adela Pinch argues, for Hume, "feelings ... are neither mimetic nor semiotic in any way nor subordinate to statements of fact. They are quantities of force" (33). This line of thought produced a somewhat different picture of the way feeling might be communicated by a literary text. It inspired an attempt to make the text itself a forceful stimulus that would act directly on the reader's physical sensibilities, without the intervention of identification or imaginative projections. Often this attempt involved typography: experimental typographical effects, including supplemental graphics like pointing fingers; neologistic punctuation or renegade overuse of conventional punctuation; changes in font or type size; and close attention to page layout. Such devices are oriented purely toward affective intensification, inflecting the text. They are in every way superficial, or to use Pinch's term, "extravagant," and the kind of affect they produced was also deemed superficial and extravagant, in contrast to the deep and meaningful feelings produced by sympathy.3
Sterne was clearly interested in the textual possibilities of this second understanding of the transmission of affect. A passage drawn from the most obviously sexual scene in A Sentimental Journey, the chapter entitled "The Temptation," provides a striking example. In this scene, Yorick is at odds with himself. He is attracted to the fille de chambre, who appears to be either seducing him or willing to be seduced by him, but he is resisting; the whole chapter unfolds as a delicate series of approaches and withdrawals. In the process, it constructs a space of hesitation, and the hesitation is pure because we never know the outcome. Though closure is suspended, however, the passage succeeds in constructing a dilatory space-in removing any sense of urgency-so that it does not function to concentrate the reader's desire for closure. The chapter traces a process of erotic disintegration in which the characters seem to break into parts (hands, lips, socks, shoes, buckles, etc.), falling into a pleasurable state of disarray:
There is a sort of pleasing half-guilty blush, where the blood is more in fault than the man-'tis sent impetuous from the heart, and virtue flies after it-not to call it back, but to make, the sensation of it more delicious to the nerves-'tis associated.___
