Sentimentality in life and literature

Abstract

In his paper “In Defense of Sentimentality” in the book of the same name, Robert Solomon aims to rehabilitate the concept of sentimentality both in life and in literature, and to defend it against its many critics. He argues that the root sense of “sentimentality” is simply “an expression of and appeal to the tender emotions” and that the most common criticisms of sentimentality as a kind of emotional affectation, falsity, or self-indulgence fail. In this paper I argue that the critics are right to say that sentimentality in real life can be ethically problematic, but that Solomon is right to say that sentimental responses to sentimental literature are (usually) ethically harmless. It’s true that sentimental literature is not usually “great literature.'' Its goal is usually pleasure rather than increasing our moral understanding, and partly for this reason it may not be as aesthetically valuable as the great realist novels of George Eliot, Henry James and company. On the other hand, Solomon is quite right to argue that sentimental novels serve an important ethical function in promoting what literary scholar Robyn Warhol calls the “effeminate” virtues of tenderness and compassion.