Narrating Female Consciousness: Narrative Empathy as a Feminist Practice

This article analyses Ivy Pochoda's These Women (2020) as an example of the successful use of narrative empathy as a feminist strategy in serial killer fiction. This subgenre of crime fiction is known for its formulaic nature, which grants most of the narrative space to the serial killer, as an abject individual, and the investigator tasked with re-establishing the status quo. These Women instead focuses on the representation of female consciousness through variable focalisation, which ensures the visibility and humanisation of victim characters that is key to a feminist engagement with crime. Instead of satisfying a morbid interest in the serial killer's pathology, These Women highlights the complexities of gendered identity and the intersections creating oppression and privilege. Consequently, both its narrative structure and the representation of empathy between characters are read as a feminist practice. Using Suzanne Keen's theory of narrative empathy, this article aims to highlight the possibility of a serial killer novel narrating a suspenseful and impactful story of multiple murders without relying on sensational and titillating representations of women's victimisation.