The Social Construction of Feeling: The Connection between Class and Empathy in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

This research will examine whether, in both Pride and Prejudice and Madame Bovary, the characters’ capacity for empathy and participation in empathic relationships is constrained or inhibited by the class structures of their socio-political and economic structures, thereby demonstrating how their consecutive life realities shape their emotional worlds and social interactions. Drawing from disciplines such as sociology, psychology and political theory, the approach to this thesis question is strongly influenced by thinkers like Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Sarah Ahmed. The question of how class and society shape the emotional world of the individual, and in particular the capacity for empathy, is of increasing relevance in an age characterized by rising individualism. This question is addressed across three main chapters. The first chapter establishes the methodological and theoretical framework of the thesis, drawing on character studies, class theory, nineteenth-century economic structures, and social hierarchies, alongside philosophical and psychological approaches to empathy. The second chapter initiates a comparative analysis of class and societal dynamics in Madame Bovary and Pride and Prejudice, examining how these structures are represented and negotiated within each novel. The third chapter continues this comparative approach, focusing specifically on empathic relationships, exploring both the conditions under which empathy succeeds and the points at which it fails. The conclusion ultimately synthesizes these findings, assessing the extent to which class and societal structures shape emotional capacities and interpersonal relationships within the novels.