HEROES, HEROINES AND VILLAINS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MELODRAMA: 1850-1900.
Item
-
Title
-
HEROES, HEROINES AND VILLAINS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MELODRAMA: 1850-1900.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8205755
-
identifier
-
8205755
-
Creator
-
HILL, LYN STIEFEL.
-
Contributor
-
Daniel Gerould
-
Date
-
1982
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Theater
-
Abstract
-
Playwrights of the late nineteenth century exercised more freedom in the creation of the three major stereotyped characters than has usually been assumed. Though heroines were always beautiful and heros handsome, playwrights varied external traits such as age, occupation and socioeconomic status to endow their characters with individuality.;Furthermore, many heroes, heroines and villains deviated--in major or minor ways--from their conventional stereotypes. Heroes were not always paragons of virtue who executed daring rescues of the heroine; some were guilty of moral vacillation which actually contributed to the heroine's suffering. Nor were they, as some critics have suggested, invariably stupid and passive characters who avoided catastrophe only through sheer luck or the help of other characters. There were intelligent and even intellectual heroes who displayed resourcefulness as well as physical strength in extricating themselves and loved ones from disaster.;Heroines always aspired to virtue but rarely did they--or their creators--equate virtue with chastity. Although most heroines were virgins, their sexual purity was generally far less important than the majority of critics have implied. All heroines suffered, but during the fifty years under discussion, they rarely endured physical torture. Sometimes heroines took upon themselves the responsibility for ending the mental suffering that they did endure; late nineteenth-century heroines were often active and resourceful.;Villains were rarely models of motiveless malignity; they were driven by rational, if evil, impulses. Occasionally, villains were sympathetic, or even heroic. Late in the century, the villain sometimes disappeared entirely.;It is clear that while the range of behaviors exhibited by heroes, heroines and villains was hardly unlimited, it was certainly more varied than has usually been acknowledged. To some degree, the boundaries within which variations could occur were fixed by the value system assumed by playwrights and their audiences. Interestingly, a detailed survey of these variations has revealed that this value system was relatively rigid and unchanging. This study has shown that virtue was consistently defined as loyalty; evil, as its opposite, betrayal.;It is also true that reduction of the melodramatic triumvirate into the romantic triangle that most critics have taken for granted was often avoided through the introduction of subsidiary characters, here referred to as "adjuncts." With the addition of adjunct heroes, heroines and/or villains, a play might contain four, five, six or more characters who had active parts in the plot. This frequently resulted in a more intricate and interesting story with a more complex structure of character relationships.;Adjunct characters gave playwrights the chance to explore alternate behaviors and to depict variant personalities. While this exploration and depiction never crossed the boundaries set by the value system, it may well have influenced later innovations in the portrayals of major characters. In fact, the most significant finding of this study may be that the appearance and development of these subsidiary characters, which has previously gone almost unrecognized, played an important part in the maturation of dramatic characterizations in the late nineteenth century.;Late nineteenth-century playwrights demonstrated that melodrama was a more flexible form than twentieth-century critics have sometimes admitted. That flexibility is evident in the variations apparent in the characterization of the three major stereotypes. It might be an overstatement to suggest that these characters were the direct ancestors of those who peopled the drama of the new realism. But the more modest claim, that some of the same impulses that shaped the characters of the new realism were evident in English and American melodrama between 1850 and 1900, seems well founded.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Theatre
