Amae
I've been reading Barbara Rosenwein's Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, which is fun, even though I can't keep track of the various Merovingians.
The book is built around the idea of social constructionism: the idea that emotions are shaped by the social norms of society. Rosenwein comments that "In Japan there is a feeling, amae, of contented dependence on another; but in English there is nothing comparable and presumably no feeling that corresponds to it." (15)
I disagree. Or rather, I think Rosenwein is correct that most English-speaking adults would be embarrassed to say "I feel contentedly dependent on you!" given the cultural importance of independence. But the feeling of (or at least yearning for) amae exists, subterranean and furtive, and it comes out over and over again in stories.
There's a whole subset of hurt/comfort fic which wallows in amae: Character A is injured or sick, and thus is forced into dependence on Character B - and because that loss of independence is the result of fate, not something they asked for or wanted, it's all right that they rest content in their dependence.
It crops up in professional fiction, too; there's also a whole sequence in The Virginian, the first Western, wherein the Virginian - who has hitherto been a prototype of laconic manliness - gets shot and is utterly dependent on the ministrations of his lady love.
I suspect stories bear the stigmata of all the things we aren't supposed to feel, or can't admit to feeling.
The book is built around the idea of social constructionism: the idea that emotions are shaped by the social norms of society. Rosenwein comments that "In Japan there is a feeling, amae, of contented dependence on another; but in English there is nothing comparable and presumably no feeling that corresponds to it." (15)
I disagree. Or rather, I think Rosenwein is correct that most English-speaking adults would be embarrassed to say "I feel contentedly dependent on you!" given the cultural importance of independence. But the feeling of (or at least yearning for) amae exists, subterranean and furtive, and it comes out over and over again in stories.
There's a whole subset of hurt/comfort fic which wallows in amae: Character A is injured or sick, and thus is forced into dependence on Character B - and because that loss of independence is the result of fate, not something they asked for or wanted, it's all right that they rest content in their dependence.
It crops up in professional fiction, too; there's also a whole sequence in The Virginian, the first Western, wherein the Virginian - who has hitherto been a prototype of laconic manliness - gets shot and is utterly dependent on the ministrations of his lady love.
I suspect stories bear the stigmata of all the things we aren't supposed to feel, or can't admit to feeling.