Empathy

"But just now, she could think of only Captain Wentworth. She could not understand his present feelings, whether he were really suffering much from disappointment or not; and till that point were settled, she could not be quite herself."

Jane Austen's Persuasion

"Empathy, a vicarious, spontaneous sharing of affect, can be provoked by witnessing another's emotional state, by hearing about another's condition or context, empathy is thought to be a precursor to its semantic close relative, sympathy."

Suzanne Keen's A Theory of Narrative Empathy

This may be kind of a cluster of thoughts on my part, but here we go. So Anne just finished having quite an awkward conversation with Captain Wentworth in the quote above, in which she couldn't quite understand what he was feeling, but drew that he was quite distressed and experiencing suffering over his situation with Louisa and seeing Anne again. She was feeling an accurate amount of empathy toward Captain Wentworth according to his actions during their conversation. However, she could not show any empathy toward Mr. Elliot during their conversation if any was needed because she was too concerned with Captain Wentworth. Therefore, the following question came across my mind: how much attention does someone have to pay to another person to be able to show empathy? Obviously, Anne was not going to show empathy toward Mr. Elliot because she wasn't even listening to what he said. But in other situations, how much attention must be paid to get that gut wrenching feeling when someone else is crying? This is especially a good question in reference to literature. How much attention must be paid to the story and sentence structure to invoke empathy? For instance, because I have paid a great amount of attention to Persuasion, when reading the quote above, I got extremely nervous. If Anne is not paying the correct amount of attention to Mr. Elliot, what will his reaction be?  I fully support Anne's infatuation with Captain Wentworth. However, the author does not give us insight to his thoughts, so we do not know if he feels the same about Anne. I was concerned that Anne was on track to lose Mr. Elliot's love for someone that did not love her back. This feeling of nervousness was due to the fact that I became involved with each of the characters throughout the story. If I had not, would I have picked up on this feeling? I am not exactly mirroring Anne's feelings, in the sense that I can still be myself, but I am also concerned about how Captain Wentworth is feeling, even if those feelings are for different reason than Anne's. Anne is more concerned that Wentworth is suffering over the loss of his courtship with Louisa. I am concerned about the same, but I also worry that Wentworth's suffering is due to being in the presence of Anne as well. So bringing it back to the original question, how much must a reader pay attention to the story line, the sentence structure, or both to experience empathy for the characters? If I had not read enough to develop a connection with the readers, would I still have felt empathy? Also, does a reader's personal experience play a part in feeling empathy with a character? Most of these questions are discussed in Keen's work, but there are obviously no concise answers as of yet.