（英语语言文学专业论文）从阶级批判到文化批评——评盖斯凯尔夫人作品中的主题演变历程.pdf

iv 从阶级批判到文化批评从阶级批判到文化批评 评盖斯凯尔夫人作品中的主题演变历程评盖斯凯尔夫人作品中的主题演变历程 研究生：张生茂 年级：2006 级 学科专业：英语语言文学 指导老师：张叔宁 研究方向：英美文学 中文摘要中文摘要 盖斯凯尔夫人因其对 19 世纪 40 年代英国工人阶级生活和斗争的真实描述而成为令人 瞩目的作家。马克思把她与狄更斯和萨克雷同列为最伟大的现实主义作家。然而，她死后 名声一度跌落，到 20 世纪 20 年代为止，人们对她的认识仅限于克兰富德 （1853） ，一 部反映乡野生活的中篇小说。20 世纪 30 年代后，她的工业题材小说开始重被广泛阅读， 50 年代以来，马克思主义批评家对她的社会问题小说给予高度评价，从此，盖斯凯尔夫人 进入英国经典作家之列。她的后期作品表亲菲莉斯和妻子与女儿与玛丽巴顿 和南与北早期的工业题材的作品不同，以田园诗般的手法，描写 19 世纪中期英国的 乡村小镇生活，被认为是英国文学史上最美丽动人的散文小说。两部小说虽写乡野农村生 活， 却以其高超的叙述手法， 深刻地反映了当时的社会冲突及其强烈的社会历史变革意识。 从玛丽巴顿到妻子与女儿 ，作者的创作主题发生了深刻的变化：从反映大众生 活到个人生活，从父性到母性，从浪漫主义或者说是圣经典故的自觉使用到反映家庭生活 的普通语言。主题的变化与其对现代性的呈现密不可分。农业的变革，城市对农村的影响， 科技对新的知识结构的影响，以及由此带来的社会关系和两性关系变化，皆反映了她后期 作品的现代性。到目前为止，国内学界多关注盖氏前期作品的工业题材，及其强烈的现实 主义批判精神，对她后期小说的文化批评鲜有评论，本文旨在从文化研究的角度，探讨维 多利亚时代伟大的社会变革和盖斯凯尔夫人本人心理变化过程对其作品创作主题变化的 深刻影响。 本文分为五章： 第一章为论文的引言部分。本章简单介绍盖斯凯尔夫人的生平及其主要作品，以及国 外学界对其作品的评价和盖氏作品的历史地位。 第二章主要分析盖斯凯尔夫人前期的作品，以玛丽巴顿和露丝为例，凸显 盖斯凯尔夫人作品的伟大的批判现实主义精神。 第三章是论文的主体部分。这一章从文化批评的角度，以表亲菲莉斯和妻子与 女儿为例，分析了盖斯凯尔夫人作品所反映的社会关系和两性关系的变化，探讨了盖斯 v 凯尔夫人创作主题的变化的原因：一是维多利亚时代深刻的社会变革；二是盖斯凯尔夫人 本人在伟大时代背景下的心理变化。 第四章主要从盖氏的后期作品所反映的现代性入手，阐明盖氏作品的与时俱进品质。 第五章是论文的结论部分。文章的结论认为，盖斯凯尔夫人步入经典作家的行列决非 偶然，是其作品的伟大现实主义精神和富有洞见的文化内涵赢得读者和批评家的青睐。 关键词：关键词：盖斯凯尔夫人；现实主义；文化批评；变革 vi fromclass critique to cultural criticism： a study of thematic progress in elizabeth gaskells works postgraduate: zhang shengmao grade: 2006 major field of study: englishlanguage realism; cultural criticism; change 论文独创性声明论文独创性声明 本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工 作及取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含其他个人或其 他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和 集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人承担本声明的法律责任。 研究生签名： 日期： 论文使用授权声明论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定。广西师范 大学、中国科学技术信息研究所、清华大学论文合作部，有权保留本人所送 交学位论文的复印件和电子文档，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存 论文。本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的内容相一致。除在保密期内的保密 论文外，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可以公布（包括刊登）论文的全部或部分 内容。论文的公布（包括刊登）授权广西师范大学学位办办理。 研究生签名： 日期： 导 师签名： 日期： iii acknowledgements i would like to first express my appreciation and thanks to my supervisor professor zhang shuning for he has been providing me with generous help, continuous encouragement, creative guidance and constructive criticism which make me avoid taking a detour in my study and research. i will never forget that professor zhang revised the first draft of the thesis for me word by word and sentence by sentence. i am very grateful to all of my teachers in the college of foreign studies, guangxi normal university. they have helped me to develop an interest in english language teaching and to acquire an understanding of many aspects of literature in my graduate studies. i would like to thank my dearest wife and my daughter. in the three years of my graduate studies, they have offered constant support to me. without them, i would not have been able to accomplish so much over the past few years. finally, i am indebted to many friends in the field whose names do not appear here, but who will recognize the influence of their contributions in the pages of this paper. 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 elizabeth gaskell and her major works mrs gaskell was born elizabeth cleghorn stevenson in 1810. the daughter of unitarian, who was a civil servant and journalist, she was brought up after her mothers death by her aunt in knutsford, cheshire, which became the model not only for cranford but also for hollington(in wives and daughters). in 1832 she married william gaskell, a unitarian minister in manchester, with whom she lived very happily: she had a son, who died in infancy, and four daughters. her first novel, mary barton, published in 1848, was much discussed and brought her to the attention of charles dickens, who was looking for contributors to his new periodical, household words, for which she wrote the famous series of papers subsequently reprinted as cranford. her later works include ruth(1853), north and south(1855), sylvias lovers(1863), cousin phillis(1863-4),and wives and daughters(1864-6). she wrote many stories and occasional pieces, and a major biography, the life of charlotte bronte(1857). she died in 1865, leaving wives and daughters unfinished. she was also an accomplished hostess to her circle of friends, which included dickens, charlotte bronte, darwin, florence nightingale, and carlyle. 1.2 literature review and the significance of the study elizabeth gaskell has become a figure of importance in the victorian literature in the past few decades. she is widely recognized for her production of work of great variety and a highly successful writing career. she is a talented storyteller. she is also innovative and experienced in her use of genre, with a zest for anecdote, legend and social observation. brought up in unitarian middle-class family, gaskell is typically open-minded in response to social transformation and change. that is manifest in her early work in the treatment of problems of working-class life and prostitution as well as in her later works representation of provincial life in the context of changing social structure and gender and class relations. readers and critics value her for her geniality, sympathy, and imaginative expressiveness. david masson praised her with warmth in the month after her death: “other novelists have written books as clever, and many have written books as innocent; but there are few, indeed, who have written works which grown-up men read with delight, and children might read without injury” (ch, 517)1. shirley foster values gaskells shorter pieces: “they implement vivid description of place, autobiographical reminiscence, historical investigation and speculation, and exciting and melodramatic events; they experiment with form, using multilayered and multivocal narration, mingling past and present, and exploiting a central voice which is both observer and participator.”2 she is receiving growing recognition for her intellectuality, her familiarity with matters of scientific, economic, and 2 theological inquiry, and her narrative sophistication. gaskell criticism entered a new age in the 1950s when raymond williams and other marxists read with interest her novels of industrial life, mary barton and north and south. although gaskell received praise for focusing on the conditions of the working people, she drew criticism for offering personal other than systemic solution to class conflict. but recently critics such as pasty stoneman have reread gaskells work from the perspective of feminist theory and revised the assessment of gaskell as socially conservative, drawing attention to her critique of power relations and traditional family structures: her novels offer a thorough critique of the kind of masculine autonomy that deprives powerful middle-class men of the capacity to relate to other people-either their employees or their families. in her industrial novels gaskell admires the warmth and sympathy of working-class life in which men as well as women adopt nurturing roles.gaskells later novels appear to abandon “social” themes, in fact we can see a steady sharpening of focus on the upbringing of the young, especially girls, and the importance of the family in shaping future citizens who will be both “a law unto themselves” and sympathetic to others.the novels still have much to teach us about the dangers of gender polarization.the feminist perception that “the personal is political” has largely understood in terms of womens oppression; domestic power structures have been redefined as “political” in the cause of womens emancipation. gaskells apparently more conservative approach shows us, however, that the personal is political in a more expanded sense, since it is in our infancy that we acquire the values which determine actions in the public world.3 nowadays, mrs gaskell enjoys a wide readership. she is not only a perennial on course lists in the academies, but also has a dedicated popular following of the kind that the bronte sisters and jane auten attract. her canonical status today is a restoration rather than a continuity of her reputation in her own time. 3 chapter 2 class conflicts: criticism of the golden age 2.1 the condition of the golden age gaskells works received much critical attention for their concern with the relations between labor and capital in traditional view. and her works also show her interest in the effect of very powerful feelings on psychic functioning and in the haunting aftermath of intense emotional experience. in their attention to dream and the power of unconscious processes, her novels seem as interested in the nature of the psyche as it is in social problem. her concern about social problem is closely related to her concern with psyche of human beings. gaskell displays the turbulence, upheaval and disruption in changing social conditions, all of which have an impact upon the mind in destabilizing ways. concerning the social as well as the physiological bases of mind, the amateur psychologist george henry lewes held that to understand the human mind its very important to study it under normal conditions, especially social conditions. to understand the works of gaskell, its necessary to study social conditions in which she lived and wrote. the term “victorian age” is often used to cover the whole of the nineteenth century, which records a period of economic expansion and rapid change. great britain was one of the first countries of the world to industrialize, to establish markets and to reinvest the profits in further manufacturing developments. the age was characterized by optimism and a sense that everything would continue to expand and improve. beneath the public optimism, however, the nineteenth century was also an age of paradoxes and uncertainties. the contrast between social unrest, with related move towards change, and the affirmation of values and standards which are still referred to as “victorian values”, is an essential part of the paradox of the age. “the victorian compromise” is one way of seeing this dilemma. it implies a kind of double standard between national success and the exploitations of lower-class workers at home and of colonies overseas; a compromise between philanthropy and tolerance and repression. 2.2 distortion and alienation of human beings 2.2.1 barton reduced to murderer mary barton opens in a period just before the “hungry forties”, when the factory workers were relatively well-off, just as john barton comments about the factory girls that “they can earn so much when work is plenty, that they can maintain themselves anyhow”4, but unlike her other manchester short stories, moves into the next ten years, when, after the failure of the chartist petition in july 1839 and the deepening effects of the corn laws, unrest and rioting escalated, and living and employment conditions deteriorated: 4 working people lived where factories, roads, canals, and, later, railways allowed them to. the result was squalid-nineteenth-century towns smoked and stank-and, for the workers, expensive both in terms of rent and of human life. a tolerable house might take a quarter of a skilled mans weekly income, and few families were ever in a position to afford this. as a result, not only did slums multiply in old inner-city area-the rookeries of london, the cellar-dwellings of liverpool and manchester. if housing was bad, sanitation was worse. better-off citizens could combine to create commissions to provide water and sewerage, light the streets, and provide some sort of policing, but if anything, this worsened the plight of their poorer neighbors. a middle-class areas new water-closets all too often drained into the working classs water supply.5 mary barton has earned its critical reputation as a social-problem at least in past because of gaskells detailed representation of the deplorable conditions of working-class lives. the description of the davenports filthy, malodorous cellar impresses readers profoundly: it was very dark inside. the window-panes were many of them broken and staffed with rays, which was reason enough for the dusky light pervaded the place even at mid-day. after the account i have given of the state of the street, no one can be surprised that on going into the cellar inhabited by davenport, the smell was so fetid as almost to knock the two men down. quickly recovering themselves, as those inured to such things do, they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay, wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fireplace was empty and black; the wife sat on her husbands liar, and cried in the dark loneliness.6 the depiction of the conditions of working-class lives and revealing the terrible poverty of its inhabitants, is remarkably similar to the descriptions of manchester slums in engels condition of the working class in england, which suggests the accuracy of gaskells portrayal. the description of davenports cellar was accused by some reviewers of its morbid elements, but it is definitely true. “instead in manchester in the 1830s up to 50,000 people lived underground in dark and airless cellars, in rooms occupied by several families, in beds occupied often 5 promiscuously and incestuously by several bodies; over 13,000 children died in seven years”7. the topographical specificity “was enough to shock many of her readers into hitherto unawakened awareness of the suffering caused by industrialization; and the displeasure of several factory owners, who felt that she had unfairly represented them, indicates the novels factual impact”8. john barton can be conceived as gaskells tragic hero. “as a working-class father, male proponent of a female ethic, he suffers in his person that disjunction of private and public values which was the nineteenth centurys most traumatic schism”9. mary barton develops a contrast between two ethical systems, that of working class, based on caring and cooperation, and that of the middle class, based on ownership, authority and the law, which is similar to the conventional gender-role division. gaskell presents the aggressive actions, such as, strikes, assaults and murders, which were performed by working-class men, as an enforced and psychologically damaging expression of essentially nurturing motives. the single-minded masculinity of middle-class men, on the other hand, finds appropriate articulation in their aggressive use of the forces of law and order. since aggression is the language of authority, the concept of class struggle as necessarily aggressive appears not as the will of the working-class people, but as a masculine, middle-class imposition. barton, as father to his family, he is his mothers son-feeding the children comes first, just as the novel begins with a chapter which stresses the nurturing role of working-class fathers. as a child in the public world, however, he encounters the patriarch carson, who doesnt “pretend to know the names”of his workers. being a victim of parental abandonment, he received neither help nor instruction; “no one learned me, and no one telled me”. “in the context of an aggressive individualism whose motto is stand up for thy rights, the official altruism of the new testament seems a sham put uponwomen, yet it still comes natural to love folk” 1 0. bartons attempts to self-education founder in this ideological rift between a concept in which “father” means “love” and one in which “father” means “law”, a rift tearing him in two. sanity and social contract alike depend on shared meanings, as barton remarks, “youd never believe black was black when you saw all about you acting as if black was white”. the incomprehensibly double meaning of fatherhood reduces him progressively to silence, “incipient madness”and in the end murderer. bartons silence, madness and reduction to murder were formed by circumstances of its conditions, as r.h.herne put it in a new spirit of the age: the want of complaint under such circumstances appears to me to constitute a very melancholy part of this condition. it shows that physical wretchedness has done its worst on the human sufferer, for it has destroyed his mind. the 6 wretchedness being greater than humanity can bear, annihilates the mental facultiesthe faculties distinctive of human being.1 1 2.2.2 ruth subjects herself to “fallen women” ruth tells the story of an orphaned dressmakers apprentice who is seduced and abandoned by a wealthy young man. distraught and seeking suicide, ruth hilton is distracted by the apparently similarly self-destructive intentions of an elderly deformed man, who turns out to be the minister thurston benson. after she comes to his aid, benson persuades his sister faith of ruths essential good nature and the two take ruth into their home, which includes along with them their servant sally. in order to render ruth acceptable to the community, especially to their strict and upright neighbor mr. bradshaw and his family, faith provides her with a new identity as a visiting widow, mrs. denbigh. mrs. denbighs exemplary character and friendship with the bradshaws daughter jemima enable her to live a comfortable life among them, to bear her child, at the same time to become a model of rectitude for others, especially jemima. after a long period of repentance during which she becomes a nurse, ruth encounters her seducer once again, and while tending to his illness catches an infection which leads to her death. ruth, like mary barton, was explicitly conceived as a social problem novel, and it drew upon gaskells direct experience of the issues it sought to bring to public attentions. the sufferings