[Giovanna Clairval]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

Honestly, I don't see much evidence that readers are identifying with the victims as much as the aggressors.

I was referring not to the voluntary--so to say-- identification with the victim (poor thing--I wish she could punch the aggressor in the face / escape / become wiser) but to the involuntary variety of identification.

In this unconscious identification, the reader is the aggressor and the victim—as it happens in sadomasochism, where the double noun does not describe two persons, but one, who inflicts (in her mind) and receives pain (and vice versa).

During a rape, the raping one is also the raped one, as weird and kinky as it may sound (it is kinky: it’s a perversion).

Well, a certain amount of perversion, which does not act out, is in everyone’s mind.

I was saying that:

1) Our time is permissive when it comes to giving people the opportunity to experience sensations, as other times were.

2) A great amount of suffering in novels is linked to the authors’ own suffering.

I agree with you, Teresa, on the fact that several authors use 1) for sensationalism = dollars. And, of course, sensations and sensationalism are not the same, and the first trend does not justify the second.

As for Edmond Dantès and Jean Valjean, I simply said that they were subjected to torture, but—and once again, I agree with you—the great, enormous difference between those two characters and others soulless heroes, is that the first undergo a personal growth.

I think that every novel should tackle some kind of evolution of the characters. All books that relate an inner quest teach us something.