Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century

Katie Kapurch is Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. She is currently working on a coedited volume (with Kenneth Womack) entitled New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles: Things We Said Today.

• Preface.- Introduction: Melodrama, Power, and Girl Culture.- Powerless Protagonists: Melodramatic Heroines of Victorian and Postfeminist Girlhood.- Spatial Invasions and Melodrama’s Narrative Structure: Innocence, Villainy, and Vigilance in Girlhood.- Musical Gestures: Melodramatic Lullabies of Anxious Desire.- Secrets Revealed, Feelings Moralized: Girls’ Confessional Intimacy and Emotional Agency.- Melodrama’s Gothic Remnants: Nightmares and Vampire-Girl Doubles.- Suffering, Separation, and Crying: Melodrama, Tears, and Girls’ Emotional Empowerment.- Melodrama’s Happily-Ever-After? Girls, Re-Reading, and Resistance.- Epilogue: In the Post-Twilight Afterglow.- Appendix: Methodology: Girls’ Online Fandom.- Bibliography