because there was always trouble brewing. However, in the case of thea-
tre, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious candidate for what was thereall
along.To be sure, my pity for Vanya and Sonya is expressed during the
course ofUncle Vanya. But, before I saw the play, I had absolutely no idea
who they were and I certainly didn’t have feelings about them that
I needed to get out of my system.
To maintain the‘purging’metaphor in relation to tragedy, we would
need to claim that either (1) the emotion that gets purged by theatre is
just the emotion that theatre itself produces or (2) before we even step
into the theatre, there are emotions that we need to get out of our system,
which theatre helps us to purge. If we opt for (1), then the significance of
catharsis is questionable: instead of getting something out of our system,
theatre puts somethinginand then gets it out of our system. In medical
terms, this would be like taking a healthy person, making them feel terribly
nauseous and then helping them to vomit. Doubtless, the latter would
produce a certain kind of relief, so there’s nothing contradictory about
tragedy performing this kind of role for certain negative emotions. It’s
just that it doesn’t seem a terribly noble or significant role; and, in fact, it
makes the spectators sound more like emotional junkies or Roman ban-
queters than anything else. Perhaps this accounts for why thisfirst option
doesn’t seem to have been taken seriously by Aristotle critics, who generally
seek something profound and significant for the effects of catharsis.^63
Suppose then that we opt for (2)–that there is something, all along,
that we want to purge. But, if so, then we seem to be saying that, for audi-
ence members who experience catharsis, there’s some kind of unwanted or
troublesome emotional element that they bring with them into the theatre,
and that theatre helps them to expunge. In other words, if we choose this
option, we need a much broader account of human psychology. (We have
already discussed a version of this, in relation to why we might have
feelings forfictional characters.) I don’t doubt that this is sometimes what
happens when we go to the theatre: we are feeling sad about something
else, and the play helps us to express that feeling: one reason I was so
moved byUncle Vanyais that Chekhov puts hisfinger so exactly on some
of the things that worry me. But it’s unlikely that everyone has that
experience or goes to theatre with that in mind and, as we have seen, it’s
not exactly clear why watching a play in which what I worry about
happens tofictional others should bringmeany particular relief or plea-
sure. What’s more, the proposed model seems more intelligible for some
emotions than for others. Thus, I might be feeling sad andfind relief in
expressing this at the theatre; but does it really make sense to say that
I might be carrying around too much pity?^64
These were objections to the intuitive appeal of (2) as an explanation of
what happens to our emotions at the theatre. But as an interpretation of
Emotions 153