Chapter 1 Introduction: The Reader and Varieties of Intimacies.- Chapter 2 “Fitting In” and Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil: A Parable”.- Chapter 3 Host-Guest Relationships in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.- Chapter 4 “Working” Intimacies in Wharton’s Ethan Frome.- Chapter 5 The Gentleman in Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.- Chapter 6 Unconditional Love in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.- Chapter 7 Conclusion: Art Makes Life, Which Makes Art, Which Makes Life.
Maya Higashi Wakana is Professor Emeritus of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, and the author of Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels (2009).
Performing Intimacies with Hawthorne, Austen, Wharton, and George Eliot analyzes literary reproductions of everyday intimacies through a microsociological lens to demonstrate the value of reading microsocially. The text investigates the interplay between author, character, and reader and considers such concepts as face and moments of embarrassment to emphasize how art and life are inseparable. Drawing on narrative theory, the phenomenological approach, and macro approaches, Maya Higashi Wakana examines Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Wharton’s Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this book provides new ways of reading the everyday in literature.