En-Gendering a Popular Theatrical Genre ― The Roles of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Melodrama

Drawing on an examination of about 500 melodramas from the period, this volume analyzes the roles of women in 19th-century melodrama. It details the gender rules and genre conventions used by melodrama spectators in the period up to 1860; how the plays worked and how they affected audiences, as well as genre characteristics that explain the functioning of the female representations; four essential female roles in them (the victim, the active heroine, the sexualized heroine, and the villainess); the interaction between the basic roles and their relationship with the concept of femininity, the genre system, and audiences; how the ideological and theatrical context developed after 1860 and key changes that occurred in the four female roles; and the subversion produced by the genre. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)