Dickens and the excluded feminine

Until comparatively recently, the study of women in general in Dickens has been a largely neglected area. Critics have found little to say about Dickens' female stereotypes. This thesis does not attempt to survey all the women in Dickens. It deals with particular examples of women in selected novels to illustrate the case of the excluded feminine, who, it seems from the available evidence in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was beginning at last to be among the 'included' in Dickens' imagination.