This text argues that Dicken's villains embody the fusion between the "deviant" and "theatrical" aspects of his writing. It sets up a dialogue between the macabre and the dramatic, stemming from the dichotomy between the Post-Romantic privileging of mind and the melodramtic model.

This is the first major study of Dickens's villains. They embody, John argues, the crucial fusion between the 'deviant' and 'theatrical' aspects of his writing. Though there have been many studies of both the macabre and the dramatic Dickens, this book sets up a dialogue between these two main strands. John's wider reappraisal of Dickensian character stems from a belief that post-Romantic criticism and theory has been permeated by an anti-theatrical privileging of the mind. Dickens's characters, by contrast, are commonly modelled on passional prototypes from nineteenth-century melodrama. Her- interdisciplinary study locates the rationale for Dickens's melodramatic characters in his political commitment to the principle of cultural inclusivity and his related resistance to 'psychology'. Melodramatic villains function as the key site of Dickens's responses to theatricality, psychology, and cultural inclusiveness. Dickens's Villains suggests a new way of understanding the cultural and political implications of his melodramatic aesthetics.

Note on the text
Abbreviations
Introduction
I: MELODRAMA, VILLAINY, ACTING
1. Intellectual Incorrectness: Melodrama, Populism, Cultural Hierarchies
2. The Villains of Stage Melodrama: Romanticism and the Politics of Character
3. Acting and Ambivalence: Periodical Passions
II: DICKENS'S NOVELS
4. Melodramatic Poetics and the Gothic Villain: Interiority, Deviance, Emotion
5. Twisting the Newgate Tale: Popular Culture, Pleasure and the Politics of Genre
6. Dickens and Dandyism: Masking Interiority
7. Byronic Baddies, Melodramatic Anxieties
8. Sincerely Deviant Women
Afterword
Bibliography
Index