The Productivity of Empathy Inhibition

This essay analyses the politics of narrative framing in Caryl Phillips’ penultimate novel The Lost Child (2015). It argues that The Lost Child frames the main story through allusions to Emily Bronte’s canonical text Wuthering Heights and the life of its author to shed light on the universal restriction of socio-cultural, ideological frames which influence readerly empathy, instead of furnishing an alternative version of the past as is the aim of the ‘writing back’ paradigm. Ideological frames manipulate our perception and guide how we distribute value and empathy. In The Lost Child, the framing technique emphasises the working of frames by juxtaposing two stories; whereas one story triggers empathy in the reader through a clear construction of causality and sequentiality, the other story lacks cohesion and consequently which inhibits the reader’s empathy for the main protagonist. However, the narrative framing by being visible and destabilising also challenges the reader’s evaluation of the main protagonist Monica and more broadly asks the reader to reconsider how ideological frames distribute value and control empathy. Therefore, the framing makes readers consider framing mechanisms on a meta-level and reconsider how they distribute empathy in the first place. Contrasting instances of ‘easy empathy’ in the novel with more complex forms of empathy invited by the framing of the novel, this essay argues that mechanisms of empathy inhibition can constitute a specific form of readerly engagement.