What Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist tell us about talking to strangers

How can we be more open to those we don't know? Inconspicuous minor characters from the most famous 19th-century novels and the functional words they speak can help us understand why encounters with strangers can be enervating and pleasurable. Tara K. Menon, an assistant professor in the Department of English at Harvard University, argues that these written interactions "invite us to, first, consider the public sphere that lies beyond the narrow set of relationships that stand at the centre of most novels; and, second, to contemplate the nature of relations between strangers in a modern, capitalist society."