The Empathy Exams

Jamison begins this essay by describing different “pained” women from literature and their reactions to that pain. She quotes Susan Sontag, who describes the 19th century’s predilections for making women suffer. Jamison then quotes an ex-boyfriend who called her a “wound dweller” and wonders at whether it is possible for women to experience pain and not be called performative for doing so (186). This is contrasted with a study that shows men are given pain killers while women are typically administered sedatives when reporting pain to their doctors. A friend of Jamison’s tells her that, after a dream, she came to the realization that her wounds were fertile; Jamison speculates on wounds that create stories, but at their center is still hurt. Jamison recounts the scars on her body and how she got them, then transitions into discussing different wounds.

For the first wound, Jamison’s friend Molly discusses how she had wanted scars as a child and then received them when she was bitten on two separate occasions by her brother’s dog. For the second wound, Jamison talks about “cutters,” people who perform self-mutilation. She first discusses the anti-cutter sentiment found online by people who speak disparagingly about cutters, seeing them as “emo” and cutting for attention rather than in an experience of real pain. Jamison then explains that she used to cut herself and fights off the embarrassment about that fact, noting there was nothing false or performative about the emotions or desires she experienced when doing so. She highlights the central need within the act of cutting, though what that need manifests as differs.

In the third wound, Jamison describes Caroline Knapp’s struggle with anorexia and her secret desire that her parents would notice her illness before she confessed it. Jamison discusses the pain of starvation and the obsession with watching the body reveal itself. In an interlude, Jamison provides different definitions of various types of pain, then moves into wound four and provides excerpts from a poem by Anne Carlson. In the poem, Carlson provides 12 images of women in pain as a reflection of her heartbreak and her hate for her own acknowledgement of it. In the fifth wound, Jamison outlines the basic plot of the novel Carrie, which centers on a girl’s menstruation and victimization. Jamison ties parallels to anorexia and female empowerment, highlighting the ways in which Carrie grows powerful as she steps into womanhood.

Jamison’s sixth wound centers on Rosa Dartle, a female character in David Copperfield who is physically scarred after an assault by a man. In the novel, she is described as bitter, enjoying the grief other people experience because she has received no compassion. In the seventh wound, Jamison describes a fight on the television show Girls, describing the women as “post-wounded” and that women in this category are defensive and cold (198). They are guarded in an attempt to cut off their own pain. In the eighth wound, Jamison discusses poetry. First, she discusses her frustration with the critic Michael Robbins, who condemned Louise Glück’s poetry collection for being too passionate. She recounts a story of when she annoyed one of her female college professors for memorizing and reciting Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” because the professor was “just so tired of Sylvia Plath” (199). Jamison discusses the feeling of distance and isolation, not having understood such “emotional” poetry was now too lowbrow for such settings.

Jamison opens the ninth wound by sharing an excerpt from a nightmare written by Sheila Heti in which women are skinned alive, but even in the depths of pain the women still make jokes about their own suffering. Jamison touches on the intentional distortion of pain before describing a self-defense class in which the girls talked about their deepest fears. Each girl felt obligated to come up with a worse fear than the girl before her, but even as they talked about horrific things, they still maintained laughter and jokes. In the 10th wound, Jamison discusses the female music artists she listened to as a teenager, offering some of their lyrics. Because she had not experienced any of the things described in them as a young girl, Jamison imagines tragedies, claiming she “wanted to be sung to sleep by them; I wanted to be killed and resurrected” (202). Later, Jamison works at a bakery where she and her employer listen to more music by wounded women, leading Jamison to seek more out. She reflects on the dismissive nature of the world towards women’s pain and her own struggle to synopsize women and their emotions. She is eventually drawn to the conclusion that women should not be expected to be witty or dismissive of their own pain.

Jamison then talks about one of her personal wounds—a poet she dated for several months who abruptly broke up with her shortly after she had fallen in love with him. She wonders if confessing her past eating disorder caused him to break up with her. She wants to write a story about their breakup but does not have a clear reason for the split, so she feels as if she is unable to write about it for fear of telling a story that has already been told. She battles with that fear and with her own desire to overcome it and write the story for the sake of writing it. She writes the story despite her concerns and, in doing so, discovers that causeless pain is really the focus of her work, recognizing it as both female and shameful. She acknowledges there was not a connection between their conversation and their breakup. In an interlude to the wounds, Jamison confesses this became her first ever published short story, and people wrote her afterwards to tell her about the connections she helped them develop. She admits that while the story did not help her heal, it did help her gain perspective.

In the 12th wound, Jamison begins by talking about a surgery she had during which her jaw had to be screwed closed, then transitions into talking about the Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. Grealy recounts her childhood cancer and her efforts to live without being defined by her own scarring. Grealy confesses she was initially pleased by having something wrong with her, comforted by surgeries because they made a clear story of pain and attention. She cannot come to love the scars she is left with. Jamison challenges the negative reviews calling the autobiography self-pitying, which she uses to support the idea that women are disparaged for feeling pain and are labeled if they do so. Grealy, however, manages to turn her pain into art and completes a transformation.

Jamison offers another interlude in which she asks women in her life about pain. She provides quotes from their emails, discussing everything from childbirth to Eve’s fall to an obsession with illness and women who fear pain is a failure or will mark them as too feminine. Jamison calls into question the fetishization of female suffering and speculates on ways to portray women with wounds, not women as wounds. She provides examples of women who do not discuss their illnesses, comparing them to Grealy, who revels in being a good patient.

For the 13th and final wound, Jamison tells about her friend Molly, who was assaulted in her own apartment by a man who tried to rape her. Molly developed a fascination with women in peril, and Jamison speculates several reasons why this may have been the case. She then returns to Carson’s poem referenced in the fourth wound, discussing the cleansing of pain presented in the poem but only following loss. Jamison highlights the need to observe pain without letting the pain become the person, understanding it is not part of an identity but part of a broader story. Jamison requests a change in the way the reader views female pain—understanding that painful events are unique to the individual, not part of a broader narrative about a group of people. Wounded women are not tropes—they are genuine and experiencing their world.