The paper analyzes the relationship between emotions and literature, with the special emphasis on cultural coding of emotions. The paper first offers the understanding of emotions thoughout history, with several contemporary definitions, while mainly relying upon the studies of Keith Oatley and Jennifer Jenkins, and Paul Ekman. The central part of the paper focuses on the emotionological analysis of the two literary works of one of the most influential writers of Croatian literature of the nineteeth century, August Šenoa: short story Kanarinčeva ljubovca (1880.) and novel Branka (1881.). The paper discloses which narrative techniques are used by the author to create the emotional narrative, which represents the crucial element of the reader’s identification, and indirectly the narrative empathy as part of the construct of the female characters in the afore-mentioned literary works. The paper connects the female characters from the literary works with Šenoa’s model of realism in Croatian literature, which did not abandon the romantic coding of love as its important determinant. Apart from this, the female characters from the works are analyzed according to the Nemac’s typology of constructs of the female characters in Croatian literature of the nineteenth century that in the centre of the character anaylsis places human emotions