ABSTRACT
With increasing gun violence, the rise of social media, and a larger cultural awareness of bullying, the buzz-worthy word "empathy" identifies a pivotal need in our increasingly desensitized society. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book rests on the importance of empathy and the ways that cultural narratives have often denied emotion in order to condition modern subjects to a patriarchal and imperialist society that relies on the marginalization of minorities. It points to gender and its performance as key to not only familial but also social conflict. Aesthetic theory proposes the sublime as a transcendent encounter provoked by a physical object. Feminist criticism often continues to conform to the idea that only women's literature gives access to women's history. These critics rarely consider how female writers may also co-opt male subjectivity in their attempts to represent patriarchy.
