He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase.
His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and
was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided
him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below,
and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen,
the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed,
the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl
and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and
was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary;
but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable
condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely
absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded
meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed
by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased
to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical
importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady
could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs,
to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering
demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains
for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would
creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
"Empathy" doesn't really fully cover it, though. Yes, someone of any age can emphasize with someone in a tough situation, but actually having experienced something similar, or have seen others in similar situations, or just having lived longer and been exposed to the world at large... all of that changes how a passage like the GP quoted hits. Most children are not going to be able to really feel that passage. But I'd say most worldly adults would be able to, even if they hadn't lived with crushing debt.
Yet we still can enjoy the though process of such a person through the book. I don't see why "paying rent" is any more difficult to experience through reading than "murdering" - if anything the general era/geography/social differences are much more significant than these (I live in an ex-Soviet country and read it as a teenager, twice - it had such a profound effect on me. Even still seeing the Russian reality of the time was harder for me (but still easier than I believe it would be for a US teen), than all the intricate internal monologues).
not all of those things, but a good part, he did. He was extremely broke at several points in his adult life, and served in prison, and was almost executed, so he's seen quite a few lows he's writing about.
Novels like these need some life experience to really shine. A 13 year old isn't going to go "how does this writer see so clearly through so many of life's finer details", because they have never experienced 90% of what's being talked about.
A good part of the value of some of these works basically comes from recalling similar feelings you felt in situations similar to the characters, maybe comparing your actions at such times to theirs, or the reactions of other people you knew, etc. It's simply not possible to experience this part of the work as a teen. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this limitation is in Lolita - the nature of the relationship described, the power and life experience differential, the contrast with the reader's normal interactions with children - are impossible to be conveyed to or truly empathized with by teens.
Yes, absolutely. A kid can learn both of those things and understand them, assuming they have the proper foundational knowledge, taught to them in prior classes/years.
Most kids do not have the lived experience or emotional development to understand the complex adult themes written about in novels such as the ones being discussed. There's really no way to fix that aside from waiting until they're older.