Abstract
ABSTRACT:A central crisis of representation in the Victorian period was this: how might one represent an ill that is not villainous but systemic? This article traces the ways in which several Victorians struggled to address that quandary during a brief period of paradigm shift: the middle years of the 1860s. The article’s first half explores ways in which the railway accident interrupted central conventions of melodrama. This section surveys editorial cartoonists, writers for Dickens’s journals Household Words and All the Year Round, volume one of Karl Marx’s Capital (1867), and Augustin Daly’s sensation drama Under the Gaslight (1867). The second half focuses on Dickens’s ghost story “No. 1 Branch Line. The Signal-Man.” Written a year after the Staplehurst disaster, the story gropes toward a new language for a traumatic condition, a language haunted by melodrama even as it moves beyond it.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.