I’ve been reading “On the pleasure derived from objects of terror.” It was written by the English essayist Anna Laetitia Aikin (later Barbauld) in 1773. You’ll find free copies of this essay all over the internet. I found a scan of the original pages in the Internet Archive.
At that time, horror stories were popular. Aikin speculates about the reasons why people enjoy scenes of terror and concludes that it is about imagination. She writes:
This is the pleasure constantly attached to the excitement of surprise from new and wonderful objects. A strange and unexpected event awakens the mind, and keeps it on the stretch; and where the agency of invisible beings is introduced, of “forms unseen, and mightier far than we,” our imagination, darting forth, explores with rapture the new world which is laid open to its view, and rejoices in the expansion of its powers. Passion and fancy cooperating elevate the soul to its highest pitch; and the pain of terror is lost in amazement.
We live in an age of information bloat. We hardly need to imagine anything anymore. Streaming services are available on tap.
I’m old enough to remember the time before streaming services, smart phones, and tablets. In those days, being glued to your screen meant watching slightly too much terrestrial television. Before 1997 in Britain, we only had four terrestrial channels.
Novels were still one of the primary forms of entertainment. I used to spend hours on my bed, reading 19th-century classics.
I wonder. Were people of the late 20th century far closer to Anna Laetitia Aikin’s experience of stories than we are now? Life was pre-digital, much quieter, and stories were harder to access.
Of course, we could rent videos, go to the cinema, buy paper magazines and books, and switch on the television.
But in 2024, if a story is on the internet and we have the money to pay for it, it can be in our hands in seconds.
Do stories have a greater impact on the imagination when they’re harder to come by?
