Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century

This book examines melodramatic impulses in Charlotte Brontë’s  Jane Eyre  and Stephenie Meyer’s  Twilight Saga , as well as the series' film adaptations and fan-authored texts. Attention to conventions such as crying, victimization, and happy endings in the context of the Twilight - Jane Eyre relationship reveals melodrama as an empowering mode of communication for girls. Although melodrama has saturated popular culture since the nineteenth century, its expression in texts f