All nineteenth-century melodramas suggest a need for radical change in the lives of the powerless and the oppressed, and in this they are inherently radical.
Certain forms of melodrama might be improbable, but were acceptable so long as they had such a moral.
The reign of healthy melodrama is over: the reign of analysis has commenced.
Nor do they feature the social unrest and anarchism common to other factory melodramas.
Also, traditionally, the melodrama portrayed social problems in terms of individual happiness.
Popular melodramas, by definition, play off of viewers' expectations and innate hunches about plot and character development, problem, and denouement.
That, of course, is the stuff of which melodrama is made.
Besides melodrama and dime-store romance, the novel is studded with nuggets of politically instructive detail.
