In this ground-breaking comparative study of the major works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walker Percy, Elzbieta Oleksy explores the intrinsic affinities between the two writers that transcend regional and historical barriers. Fully researched, the book investigates the development of the writers' visions. Both Hawthorne and Percy gradually came to view the subjectivity of an individual as a form of self-realization inferior to the intersubjective communion between persons. Focusing on the personal encounters between Hawthorne's and Percy's female and male characters, the study re-examines gender roles in the two writers' fiction.
"A reader concerned with social issues of the present moment would perhaps not expect to see such strong similarities between nineteenth-century New England and twentieth-century South. It takes the kind of scholarship displayed by Professor Oleksy to reveal that ultimately fiction is not concerned with social issues, but with metaphysical or, more appropriate to her discourse, existential situations." (Lewis A. Lawson) "...the author has made a serious attempt to grapple with an important topic that needs discussion...Hawthorneans should find much material that deserves further exploration." (Nathaniel Hawthorne Review)