Literary notes about unfeeling (AI summary)
Writers employ "unfeeling" to evoke a sense of emotional coldness or mechanical indifference in people or institutions. Often it underscores a character’s cruelty or a governing body’s remorseless nature, as when a ruler is lamented for his unfeeling oversight over the people [1] or judges are depicted as crushingly indifferent [2]. In other instances, the term marks a personal inability to connect or empathize—even when inner conflict is present—thereby highlighting a character’s isolation or moral rigidity [3][4]. Whether used to critique the harshness of societal systems or to portray individuals as cold and detached, "unfeeling" serves as a powerful literary marker for emotional desolation and a lack of compassion [5][6].
- If he would not, could I bear the thought of seeing a hard, unfeeling, Viceroy set over my poor faithful people?
— from The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole - Many other acts of flagrant injustice were passed by a subservient parliament, and cruelly carried into execution by unfeeling judges.
— from A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of NapoleonFor the Use of Schools and Colleges by John Lord - He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen - I never thought Edward so stubborn, so unfeeling before.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - “It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge.
— from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens - All day long these unfeeling wretches went round, like a troop of demons, terrifying and tormenting the helpless.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs
