Distance overcome: Melodrama and British imperial fiction, 1857--1902

This dissertation argues that melodrama was a crucial mode for the representation of British imperialism within generically hybrid works of late Victorian fiction. Previous critics have noted the popularity of the melodramatic mode and mentioned its importance for imperial propaganda, but have done so in ways that flatten out melodrama and treat it as a form of false consciousness. Contending that Victorianists have overemphasized the importance of the imperial Gothic and imperial romance, I focus on the productive overlap and tension between melodrama and the providential plots of Christian and national redemption that were used to justify British imperialism. I argue that melodrama's activation of pathos and outrage within the public sphere not only enabled racist and jingoist imperial discourse, but also turned late Victorian fiction into a zone of contestation that could question such discourses.; Distance Overcome's different chapters concentrate on works of prose fiction by Wilkie Collins, Olive Schreiner, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson, while also focusing on a play by George Bernard Shaw. I discuss melodrama as what film scholar Ben Singer calls a cluster concept: a "term whose meaning varies from case to case in relation to a range of basic features or constitutive factors." In addition, I draw on Peter Brooks's arguments that connect melodrama with morality and the sacred. Complementing this interest in genre, I emphasize melodrama's ties to political discourse surrounding late Victorian imperialism and examine non-literary documents regarding the 1857 "Indian Mutiny," British military actions in the Sudan, and the Second Anglo-Boer War. Exploring the interplay among fiction, imperialism, and the public sphere, this dissertation considers the emotional distances spanned by melodrama in light of the gulfs of geographic distance traversed by late Victorian British imperialism.