Marriage, melodrama, and modern dramatic form: English drama, 1855-1900.

This dissertation studies how playwrights tried to adapt dramatic form to changing social mores in the period between the domestic melodrama of the 1860's and the emerging modern drama of the 1890's. Dramatists in the 1890's used the dramatic situation of the domestic melodrama, of the family under pressure in a hostile world, in order to portray social change. Consequently, the different types of female characters found in the drama of the 1890's all derive directly from melodrama. The first chapter examines the domestic melodrama of the 1860's, focusing on such key plays as East Lynne and Lady Audley's Secret. While these plays ostensibly affirm traditional notions of female virtue, they fail to portray successful marriages and are quite sympathetic towards erring women. The second chapter turns to the drama of the 1890's, where the melodramatic fallen woman became especially useful for investigating issues of sexual morality. I also discuss the social factors which made the fallen woman so central to the cultural imagination of the period. Plays include The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Mrs. Dane's Defence, and Mrs. Warren's Profession. The third chapter examines another challenger to conventional gender roles, the New Woman. In plays like The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith and A Woman of No Importance, the dramatic structure proves inadequate to containing the impact of this figure, resulting in formally incohesive, yet suggestive plays. The final chapter concerns the central question in the debate about gender roles, the role of married women. Plays like A Doll's House, The Case of Rebellious Susan, or An Ideal Husband exploit melodramatic form to dramatize the clash between melodramatically shaped expectations and the social realities of marriage. Here, dramatists find their most effective way of using melodramatic form to new dramatic purposes. Thus, the study explores the relationship between dramatic convention and innovation, between social change and its dramatic representation. The works of early modern dramatists like Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, and Henrik Ibsen are best understood in the context of the domestic melodrama. Their best plays succeed by putting melodramatic conventions to new self-conscious uses.PhDCommunication and the ArtsEnglish literatureGerman literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsTheaterUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128990/2/9308331.pd