When I taught the very first version of this course one year ago (it was a Modern British Literature course), I started a conversation with a student that extended beyond the end of the course. This student loved the romance genre and would proudly defend the value of her favorite books in arguments with fellow English majors. When I created the assignments we’re going to be using this semester, I showed her the revised assignment and asked her what she’d do with it. She said she’s still write about the same romance novel she chose the first time, but she’d share much more about her experience of it. What she shared about her experiences was very helpful for my thinking. She described taking great pleasure in a happy ending for a character she identifies strongly with—and occasionally being terrified that a story she’s deeply invested in won’t have a happy ending, which would leave her emotionally distraught. Our conversation made me want to think more about a story that I had that experience with.
I’ll admit that I haven’t read the romance novels that are all the rage on BookTok, but I have certainly enjoyed some romances that I loved for all the same reasons I hear from my students who love the genre. And so I want to think about one of those stories as we start this class, because I haven’t yet taken the time to think about why I connected so strongly with it. There are lots to choose from—all that came out right when I was finishing up high school and heading off to college (I could actually start with Anne of Green Gables, which I loved in middle school, or My So Called Life, which I was obsessed with in high school, or I could talk about Felicity, Gilmore Girls, or even Grey’s Anatomy, which I loved in college and graduate school. All of these stories are female coming of age stories and they all include very dreamy romantic interests. But I can’t do them all, so I think I want to start with Felicity, because I just heard Keri Russel interviewed on Smartless the other day and it’s top of mind.
Describing My Experience
Okay, so to start. What was my experience of watching Felicity? I imagined myself as Felicity, which I realize now means I was experiencing identification. I felt like every problem Felicity dealt with was similar to problems I was dealing with. The experiences glossary on our course website defines identification as “recognizing, in a character’s experience, a conflict that you have experienced.”
I also was in love with Ben (and a little bit sometimes in love with Noel—Felicity’s other love interest). So another emotion I felt was love. The experiences glossary defines this as “affection, attraction, and emotional attachment.”
I also felt really confused when it wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be to map my own experiences onto Felicity’s experiences. Of course, my first boyfriend in college was a lot like Noel…but there was no guy at the start like Ben (the one she followed to college…because I didn’t do that). I guess my point is, I felt like I wanted to see what would happen to Felicity because my life was SO SIMILAR, the same thing would maybe happen to me. I was thinking of this story as a sort of guide to my own life, which I realize now in retrospect was treating it a bit like a parable when it wasn’t that (why did I do that?). It’s interesting to me that I gave it so much power. I think this is something our brains do naturally with story and I want to understand better how that works. I don’t think I’ll figure it all out for this draft, but I’ll be thinking more about this before the revised version.
Features of the Story
Okay, so what were the features about the story that made me identify with Felicity? I’m going to start by sharing things from memory and then I’ll go back to the story and check what’s really there.
What I remember
Felicity came into college and was awkward and pre-med and then she changed her major to art. She had a HUGE crush on Ben (they went to high school together) and basically follows him to New York because of a brief conversation they had at their graduation. All we know about Ben at first is that he’s handsome. And he doesn’t really know who Felicity is when he realizes she’s come to his school and yet somehow as the show unfolds, they wind up together (this part is what kept me watching…It seemed just too good to be true that he actually liked her back when he was seemingly oblivious to her existence at the start).
What’s actually there
Okay, so I went back and watched the opening scene and there are so many things I’d forgotten!
First, Felicity doesn’t know Ben at all…she’s quiet and studious and an only child of two parents who have very big dreams for her to become a doctor. At her graduation, she feels dread because she can tell she’s been doing what other people want her to do and she’s afraid that will continue into college. And I am certain that even though that wasn’t exactly my situation, I identified with that feeling of wanting to be something other than what my parents wanted me to be. I was a junior in high school when the show premiered, so the show prompted me to imagine what it would be like to go away to college and make my own decisions.
Finding the Narration Technologies
So…why did I identify so strongly with Felicity? Did the show do something to make that happen or was it all me? I realize now that I didn’t just watch her have a look on her face during her graduation and map my own experiences onto her. The show presents her graduation as a kind of montage with her narration over the top (the show opens with her talking to someone named Sally, telling the story of her graduation, which happened in the past). And this I think is how I was instantly hooked. Because this was a soliloquy, which our “technologies by element” page defines as “a narrative technology that “allows spectators or readers to hear or read the inner conflict of an individual character.” And Felicity’s soliloquies were a regular feature of the show. She uses a tape recorder to make recordings that she sends to a friend (Sally is an older mentor figure) and those recordings are regularly incorporated into episodes.
But it wasn’t just that I identified with her journey of self-discovery. I also had a crush on the same person she had a crush on—because I experienced him as a mystery through her perspective and I fell in love with him a little too. And I see that there was something in that first scene that created that connection. First of all, we see Ben having an argument with someone (maybe his mother?) and then, when Felicity asks him to sign her yearbook, he writes this long entry about how he was always curious about her but never got to know her. This, I see now, is a classic secret discloser, which our “technologies by element” page defines as “a technology in which a narrator shares an intimate secret about a character. Sometimes the narrator is revealing their own secret and sometimes another character’s secret.” In this case, the camera shows us the first secret (the fight with someone) and he shares something directly with Felicity by writing in her yearbook. And she falls in love with him a little bit in that moment and—because I was so strongly identifying with her b/c of her soliloquy—I fall a little bit in love too. And I have to keep watching to see how all of these things play out. And what I want most in the beginning is for her to wind up with Ben (and find out who she wants to be separate from what her parents want…that too!).
It turns out, this is a pretty potent combination of narrative technologies that has been used for centuries to draw readers in to literary romances. Angus Fletcher talks about this in chapter eleven of his book Wonderworks (the book that inspired this course), and our library has made it possible for you to read this book for free. The basic combination of the secret discloser and identification is powerful and I’ll just say for myself that it prompted me to care deeply about what happened with this Felicity and Ben romance. But what isn’t immediately part of my experience is wish fulfillment, which Fletcher describes as a typical part of romance (“This chronicle of wish fulfillment does more than show Odysseus getting what he hungers for; it seduces our own brain into believing that our desires will be similarly fulfilled”). What I like about the show is that Felicity and Ben each had many other relationships and at times I didn’t even want them to wind up together. There are some romances where the character you most care about does get everything they want (the happy ending). And this, again according to our list of technologies, would be a plot technology called wish fulfillment. But that didn’t happen, and that felt very healthy.
Wait—I wrote that and then realized that Ben and Felicity DO wind up together in the end. I rewatched the final scene of the show and I’m going to have to do a little more rewatching before I revise this post, but Ben had done something that most people think was unforgivable (I have no idea what it was at this point so I’m going to have to a few episodes). Felicity forgives him, though, and it seems like they do wind up together in the end (interesting that I didn’t even remember that? I think that means wish fulfillment wasn’t as much a part of my experience of the show). I also think this means I should add into the mix the fact that there is a lot of cheating and apologizing in this show. And that this final scene made me realize that these apologies are another narration technology. The apology, according to our technologies by element page is “an expression of regret for wrong actions; a recognition of the harm done,” and one of the things I like about Felicity is that all of the characters do pretty terrible things and the people who love them forgive them (it’s not that they’re revealed to be “the bad guy” and then cast aside—that would be a bit more like poetic justice, which is common in Disney movies—think Hans in Frozen, here adapted by Olaf). The flawed people and genuine apologies in Felicity feel real and healthy (but I’ll see if I still feel that way after rewatching).
Looking More Closely
To think more about this, I rewatched the first few episodes (and the final episode) of the first season of Felicity and it was very revealing. I think I have a much better understanding now of both what I loved about the show when I was sixteen and what might have made it prompt the experiences I had with it.
One of the biggest things I noticed is that Felicity very clearly has incredibly unrealistic expectations about love and many other things. And while these expectations lead to lots of confusion and disappointment, it doesn’t do any lasting harm. When I was watching as a 16-year-old, I don’t think I noticed AT ALL that her realizations were unrealistic. The only way I would have is if she were portrayed a bit ironically. And that would mean that we—the viewer—would see that she’s making a mistake but she doesn’t realize it. This would put us in a position of recognizing how we make these mistakes in our own lives (self-irony). And I guess this sort of happens, but I don’t think that’s all that is happening. Because, for the most part, the show gives us access to Felicity’s big dreams and unrealistic romantic expectations and validates their importance. This increases identification. I really wanted to figure out what exactly were the challenges she was facing that were so easy for me (and many others my age) to identify with. I realized that we know this character because of her actions, and they are pretty bizarre in the very first episode.
Here, she’s worried that a professor doesn’t like her (he was gruff with her in class when she shared that she couldn’t yet get a copy of the book). So when she sees him in a bodega, she just walks up to him:
F: Dr. Garibay? I need to know what I did to make you hate me.
G: Excuse me?
F: Was it what I said about ordering the books or- or did you look in my record and see something that you didn’t like?
G: I’ve been a professor for a long time – Twice as long as you’ve been alive, plus a few years. You want to be a teacher’s pet? Sign up for Mr. Jergensen. He’s not tenured.
F: No, I-I don’t – Sir, I don’t need to be teacher’s pet.
G: Then you’ll do just fine. The beauty is, you don’t need to be okay with me to learn something in my class. My advice is this – Don’t worry about me. Worry about you.
-Season One, Episode 3
I’m noticing that Felicity is doing something most people wouldn’t do. She’s made an assumption about this professor (a mistake) but she’s also asking a question to check on it. This is her superpower.
Here’s a more involved example from the first episode. Felicity has a work study job in the admissions office. She uses this access to look at Ben’s admission essay and then she feels really guilty about it, especially because she reads in the essay that Ben’s brother died and that was what motivated him to go to college. Ben and Felicity have started hanging out, but then he asks her if she’s okay with him asking her friend out. She’s flustered, but says yes (we know she doesn’t think that). And then the very next scene involves Felicity showing up at Ben’s apartment:
F: How could you write that in my yearbook?
B: What?
F: “I’ve watched you for four years, always wondered what you were like” – You wrote those words to me!
B: I thought I asked if you were okay with things.
F: I was okay, but that doesn’t mean your actions don’t have consequences.
B: Oh, my actions.What actions are those?
F: Oh, come on. Even the slightest behavior means something. That’s so obvious! It’s like physics – nothing happens without an effect.
B: Well, I never took physics.
F: No, don’t say you never took physics, because that’s what you do – you – you – you play innocent, and you’re charismatic, and you smile, and you get away with it, and you made me fall for you. And this is what’s not fair – you knew it, and you liked it.
B: What, do I like the fact that you like me? Yes, of course I do.
F: When I told you why I came here, you said you were flattered.
B: Flattered? No. I was awkward. I revealed a little bit about myself in your yearbook, and you change your college plans. What the hell are we talking about here?
F: I know you better than you think I do.
B: Oh, you do?
F: Yes. I know all about your brother.
B: What?
F: I read your application essay.
B: You read my essay?
F: Yes! I’ve done one questionably – immoral thing in 17 years–
B: No, no, no, no, no. Wait a sec.How did you read my essay?
F: How could you lead me on? You made me fall in love with you!
B: You know what? You’re acting crazy! All I did was be nice to you. I never asked you to come here. That was your choice, not mine. How could you think that you’re in love with me? You don’t even know me.
-Season 1, Episode 1
I think the technology here is that we see Felicity having courage to say things people might not typically say to a crush. And here in this moment, I like how this resolves. I like that she says out loud what she’s been thinking so that Ben can say “whoa, what??”
But then…
Felicity’s actions (stealing the essay and showing up at his apartment and accusing him of making her fall in love with him) make them closer. They don’t embarrass her irrecoverably or lead him to avoid her because she seems unhinged. She basically confesses what she’s done and it bonds them. This scene felt very unrealistic to me as I rewatched it.
B: What I wanted to say to you, what I’ve been thinking about since you came to see me the other night, is the truth. And the fact is, Felicity, the thing that I wanted to share with you is that I never had a brother, ever. I mean, I had to write something, right? So I wrote all this– Well, you read what I wrote. And I wanted to tell you because Well, I-I don’t know why I wanted to tell you. Because you provoke me, you know? You make me think about things that I-I never think about. Without even saying anything. Just by the way you look at me. You want the absolute truth? One of the main reasons I wanted to come to New York was that there was a pretty good chance of getting as far away from everything as possible, my parents, my family, all that crap. And, yeah, on top of it, I – I lied to get in, so basically, I’m a shallow loser. But I’m also very sorry that I’m not who you thought I was – a guy you came so far to get to know because you thought he was so great, and I’m not. What are you thinking?
F: I’d never made a substantial choice in my life and that’s why I came here. I thought it was you, but you were Just really the excuse. When I came up to you at graduation, it was like a high, like a drug, because I had never done something like that before. What I mean is that I wasn’t fully sober. And so the irony of it is that the first real big decision I made turned out to be Just stupid and embarrassing. And I guess something that I’ll look back on as a regret. And that’s that.
B: I Just wanted to make sure that everything was okay with us, you know, especially if you’re leaving.
F: You didn’t have to do that.
B: Yeah, I did. I can’t wait to see this place when it snows.
F: Okay.
B: Okay.
F: Okay
-Season 1, Episode 1
I think that we are supposed to recognize that Felicity crossed a line by reading his essay, BUT THEN IT MAKES FELICITY AND BEN CLOSER. She is effectively rewarded for silly behavior. But maybe that’s the technology here. We feel like she’s courageous for saying what she’s feeling when most would keep it inside. She doesn’t need to stop being neurotic and impulsive…she keeps on being that way and people just start to adore her for it. If I had to name this plot technology, I’d call it letting a character learn a lesson without facing consequences. Maybe I’d shorten that to “mild consequences for mistakes.”
Okay, I think I’m finally figuring out what it is about this character that is so compelling. She says how she feels, even when admitting those feelings is very embarrassing. And while we might cringe as she does this, we’re surprised to see that this emotional honesty plays out well for her. I think maybe one of the things I experienced watching the show that I didn’t realize before is courage. I saw Felicity doing things even when they were terrifying and I saw the conflicts this created, but ultimately she’s still okay. And maybe, I thought then, I also could be. This is different from the kind of courage encouraged by epic stories (like the courage to go into battle)…but actually, maybe that’s just what this is doing. It’s taking the emotional experiences of a college kid and making them seem epic.
I think the show might have made these emotional experiences epic with the way it was narrated. As I rewatched the first season, I noticed that it is filled with beautifully framed shots of people looking longingly at each other. The light is soft, the people are very nice looking, the music plays and the scene is slowed down a little (Felicity and Ben are both at work at Dean & Deluca and they’re doing different jobs and the cafe is very busy, but the sounds go away—the soundtrack comes up—everything slows down (literally—they are moving in slow motion) and their eyes meet. We see other people notice their eyes meeting. What should this be called? Now that I’ve noticed it, I went back and watched scenes from My So Called Life and it’s the same freakin’ thing. Hallway scene: Jordan is standing at his locker with his friends. Angela is standing at her locker with her friends. She pushes her hair behind her ear and glances his way. He does the same. Ricky notices. Brian Krakow notices. Sharon Chersky (the no-longer friend) notices. It’s all of these things together that make us all know…what? All of the feelings.
It’s a little laughable once you notice the technology (glances + soundtrack + slow motion at the end)—and it really is a cliche that I’m sure has been mocked in many films (I’ll be thinking about this). I also bet it’s at work unironically in Twilight and tons of other romance films. So, here’s how this narration technology worked for me. In that moment, because I identify with Angela, I feel like I’m looking at Jordan because of course I love him (well, more accurately I am obsessed with him-I have a CRUSH on him) and then I’m sort of startled because he’s also looking at me and he wants to go somewhere with me. And people are noticing this?! Is this actually happening?! If it’s done well, there’s no way that I leave this scene without some pretty powerful expectations about what love will be and feel like in my own life (that is, unless I notice it’s happening).
What I think would have been amazing for me would be if the show did let this happen, but then also revealed sort of startlingly what both characters were actually thinking. And text is best for this. A version of this interaction in a novel could have the narrator sharing both character’s thoughts about the interaction that is happening (this is what I love about George Eliot’s fiction—you see what characters say and also what they’re thinking and how they’re failing to say exactly what they mean to say, but you the reader understand because you have all the information. You might even know more than they know about themselves. But there’s none of that complexity in Felicity. Or, more accurately, there’s TONS of that complexity but we interpret it from looks on their faces (which can mean all sorts of different things).
Okay, all of this close analysis is feeling a little unwieldy, so I’m going to try to sum it up with a simple table listing the experiences, technologies, and examples I’ve uncovered. I don’t have to make any arguments about these things so I think I’ve done what I need to do!
| Experience | Technology/ies | Features illustrating the technology |
| Courage | Mild consequences for mistakes (not sure of this term yet) | Felicity accuses Ben of leading her on and his initial response is that she’s “acting crazy” (but this brings them closer)—full exchange in post. |
| Love | Secret Discloser | Felicity observes Ben fighting with his mother at graduation. |
| Identification | Soliloquy | The voiceover narration starting each episode is a recording Felicity makes to share her fears/hopes/dreams with a friend who lives far away |
| Feelings are Important (not sure of this term) | Slow Motion + Soundtrack + Soliloquy | Slow-motion scenes where the complex feelings between Felicity and Ben are expressed through glances across well-lit rooms (with the soundtrack playing). |
Works Cited
Experiences Glossary – Story & The Brain. https://unewhavendh.org/story-and-the-brain/experiences-glossary/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Felicity – Opening Scene. Directed by ABC, 2016. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxrHlPOn6RM.
“Felicity S01e01 Episode Script | SS.” Springfield! Springfield!, https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=felicity&episode=s01e01. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025.
“Felicity S01e03 Episode Script | SS.” Springfield! Springfield!, https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=felicity&episode=s01e03. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025.
Felicity: Series Finale, Final Scene. Directed by Daniel Spruill, 2011. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scxq4OQaDfs.
Fletcher, Angus. Wonderworks : The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature. Simon & Schuster, 2021. EBSCOhost, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=11cdd9c8-997f-35b5-aa73-a59746cef42e.
Olaf Becomes the Bad Guy | Kids Cartoon | Frozen. Directed by Disney Princess, 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZWNYSeia60.
Technologies by Element of Narrative – Story & The Brain. https://unewhavendh.org/story-and-the-brain/technologies-by-element-of-narrative/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2025.
Featured Image
Poster for Felicity. Warner Brothers. All Rights Reserved.
