Introduction: effeminacy, feelings, forms. Effeminacy: a third term for gender studies
Feelings: how do you really feel?
Forms: feminist narratology and close reading
The cry: effeminate sentimentalism. Having a good cry
Sentimentalism and sexism
A narratology of good-cry techniques
Crying over The color purple
The cringe: marriage plots, effeminacy, and feminist ambivalence. Reading too closely for comfort
Discomforts of reading Pretty woman
The thrill and the yawn: antieffeminate structures of feeling in serial forms. Self-conscious serial forms
Reading the (boring) Victorian serial
E-mail as an antieffeminate form
Bending gender and the habits of affect
The climax and the undertow: effeminate intensities in soap opera. Who is the "I" who watches soaps?
Intensities and long-term viewing
Effeminate feeling and soap form
Afterword: the reader's body from the inside out.
