Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction 1
5. 1. Mid-Victorian Conceptions of Character, Agency, and Reform: Social Science and the “Great Social Evil” 22
6. 2. “The Taint the Very Tale Conveyed” : Self-Reading, Suspicion, and Fallenness in Dickens 66
7. 3· Melodrama, Morbidity, and Unthinking Sympathy: Gaskell' s Mary Barton and Ruth 108
8. 4 . Dramatic Monologue in Crisis: Agency and Exchange in D. G. Rossetti's “Jenny” 141
9. 5 . Reproduced in Finer Motions: Encountering the Fallen in Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh 167
10. Afterword: Intersubjectivity and the Politics of Poststructuralism 198
11. Works Cited 235
12. Index 245