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 for about and by girls has been remarkably under theorized. By defining
melodrama however through its Victorian lineages Katie Kapurch recognizes melodrama's
aesthetic form and rhetorical function in contemporary girl culture while also demonstrating
its legacy since the nineteenth century. Informed by feminist theories of literature and film
Kapurch shows how melodrama is worthy of serious consideration since the mode critiques
limiting social constructions of postfeminist girlhood and at the same time enhances intimacy
between girls-both characters and readers.
