"The Type-Writer Girl": Body, Labor, and the Workplace in Fin-de-siècle London

《打字機女孩》：世紀末倫敦中的身體、勞力與工作場所

10.30095/SYJH.201007.0004

葉雅茹(Ya-Ju Yeh)

身體 ； 勞力 ； 工作場所 ； 打字機 ； 葛藍特‧艾倫 ； Body ； labor ； workplace ； typewriter ； Grant Allen

中山人文學報

29期（2010 / 07 / 01）

71 - 104

英文

本論文旨在探究葛藍特‧艾倫《打字機女孩》中女職員的勞動身體與工作場所之間的互動關係。十九世紀晚期，各類商業公司與政府機構紛紛於倫敦增設工作場所，工作場所的增加導致愈來愈多的女性進入都市工作謀生，使得從事職員工作的人遂大幅增加。在職員分類部門中，打字可說是最容易學習並上手的基本技能，於是打字員的工作成為女性進入職場的絕佳機會。然而當代論述卻總是將女打字員視為維多利亞時期傳統女性特質的職場延伸，或是強化打字員與打字機的高度關連性：亦即將打字員等同於一部完美的打字機器。因此打字員的個人特質或主體性通常不受重視，隱而未現。本文對此論述提出質疑並認為：縱使女職員的身體往往受到社會意識型態所銘刻或支配，其勞動身體仍舊有適應、轉化、與挪用工作場所此一公共空間的能力，得以展現個人獨特的主體性與能動性。

This paper aims to explore the positive relation between the typewriter girl's laboring body and the workplace in Grant Allen's ”The Type-Writer Girl”. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, different enterprises of commercial business and governmental institution had prospered in London. It brought a vast increase in the proportion of clerical workers. Among all the clerical subdivisions, typewriting was the most preliminary skill for the unemployed to take up. The work of typewriting seemed to give women a new chance of entry into the public working world. Yet the contemporary discourses then suggested the role of the working girl accords with the conventional Victorian domestic femininity and established a connection of the typewriter device and the machine-like body. Expected to operate the machine excellently, the typewriter girl needed to accomplish her task with a fast and steady pace. The persistent emphasis on such high speed tended to render the typewriter girl's body into an automaton, with her individuality invisible. This paper will explore how the typewriter girl is judged by dominant discourses, how the spatiality of the office has remarkable impacts on her laboring body, and how the typewriter girl makes use of clerical resources to cultivate her own work productivity.

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