What is a Woman? Nobody as "Some Body" in Frances Burney's The Wanderer

何謂女人？波妮《流浪者》小說中的身體與無名氏

10.30092/JHCLANCHU.200809.0011

林松燕(Song-Yen Lin)

無名氏 ； 主體 ； 身體 ； 具體化 ； 波妮 ； 流浪者 ； nobody ； subjectivity ； body ； embodiment ； Frances Burney ； The Wanderer

興大人文學報

41期（2008 / 09 / 01）

271 - 291

英文

在波妮的小說中，欲望一個女性主體就是欲求一個無名氏，無名小卒最終代表了特定的「波妮式主體」。「無名氏」的概念顯示出所謂的「適當」女性主體，也流露出波妮的「女性想像」：女主角只有在剝奪了名字、社會身份、角色與地位之後，才能真正以其所是、以流露自身特質地成爲「某人物」（按：成爲主體）。一個無名的小人物之後成爲重要人物，弔詭地成爲波妮式的女性主體。本文指出波妮透過身體的肢體展現與表演方式，將身體予以「具體化」及「物質化」。「無名氏」做爲文學的主題，它以特定的肉身開展與表現，生產著女性主體的再現空間。波妮透過片片斷斷的身體姿勢，創造了「具體化的自我」，一連串的身體實踐與身體風格產生了一個特殊的身體，波妮經由過度、重複與多餘的身體展演，以表達她的社會批評：遵從社會要求與規範，並且從過度的實踐中呈現這些要求的侷限與不合理。此一弔詭即是波妮式主體，非一完整之個體性，而是片片斷斷的身體展演。

In Burney's novelistic worlds, to will a female subjectivity amounts to desire ”a nobody”. This ”nobody” ultimately stands for the Burneyan subject itself; it reveals Burney's idea of the female subject proper and her female imaginary: the heroine becomes something (counted as a subject) only after being deprived of names and identities, i.e., empirical features that support her social roles. ”A nobody later counted as somebody” is the most succinct way to describe Burney's heroines. The article contends that in The Wanderer Burney presents a series of corporeal styles to ”embody” and ”materialize” that nobody through performativity. Namelessness as a device, therefore, provides a space for Burney to create a female representation by making a distinctive mode of corporeality. Burney creates an ”embodied self” via performances of fragment body gestures. She presents a series of corporeal styles that add up to a special body whose practices mark themselves as a new modality of embodiment. In the end, the paradox of conformity to social demands and criticisms of those demands results in an alternative approach of grounding subjectivity not in the whole person, but in bits and pieces, i.e., in a series of fragment body practices.

1. Austin, Andrea.(1996).Between Women: Frances Burney's The Wanderer.English Studies in Canada,22(3),253-264.
2. Burney, Frances.,Edward Bloom (Ed.)(1998).Evelina; or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World.New York:Oxford UP.
3. Burney, Frances.,Edward Bloom (Eds.),Lilian Bloom (Eds.)(1999).Camilla.Oxford:Oxford UP.
4. Burney, Frances.,Margaret Ann Doody (Ed.)(1991).The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties.Oxford:Oxford UP.
5. Butler, Judith.(1993).Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.New York:Routledge.
6. Crump, Justine.(1998).'Turning the World Upside Down': Madness, Moral Management, and Frances Burney's The Wanderer.Eighteenth Century Fiction,10(3),325-340.
7. Cutting, Rose Marie.(1997).Defiant Women: The Growth of Feminism in Fanny Burney's Novels.Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900,17(3),519-530.
8. Doody, Margaret Ann Doody.(1988).Frances Burney: The Life in the Works.New Brunswick:Rutgers UP.
9. Doody, Margaret Ann Doody.,James Tatum (Ed.)(1994).The Search for the Ancient Novel.Baltimore:The John Hopkins UP.
10. Epstein, Julia.(1989).The Iron Pen: Frances Burney and the Politics of Women's Writing.Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.
11. Fizer, Irene.,Patricia Yaeger (Ed.),Beth Kowalski Wallace.(1989).Refiguring the Father: New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy.Edwardsville:Southern Illinois UP.
12. Frank, Catherine.(2001).Wandering Narratives and Wavering Conclusions: Irreconciliation in Frances Burney's The Wanderer and Walter Scott's Waverley.European Romantic Review,12(4),429-456.
13. Gallagher, Catherine.(1994).Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670-1820.Berkeley:University of California Press.
14. Gatens, Moira.(1996).Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality.London:Routledge.
15. Hazlitt, William.(1815).Review of The Wanderer.Edinburgh Review,24,320-338.
16. Howard, Susan Kubica.,Frances Burney.(2000).Introduction, Evelina: or, a Young Lady's Entrance into the World.Peterborough, Ontario:Broadview.
17. Irigaray, Luce.,(Trans.),Catherine Porter (Trans.),Carolyn Burke(1985).This Sex Which is not One.Ithaca:Cornell UP.
18. Johnson, Claudia.(1996).Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen.Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
19. Kortes-Papp, Victoria.,Thierry Bulleguic (Ed.)(1999).Representation of Time in the XVIII Century.Edmonton:Book Pagination.
20. Park, Julie.(2006).Pains and Pleasures of the Automaton: Frances Burney's Mechanics of Coming Out.Eighteenth-Century Studies,40(1),23-49.
21. Russo, Mary.(1994).The Female Grotesque.New York:Routledge.
22. Shaffer, Julie.,Arthur Marotti(1989).Reading with a Difference: Gender, Race, and Cultural Identity.Detroit:Wayne State UP.
23. Thompson, Helen.(2001).How the Wanderer Works: Reading Burney and Bordieu.ELH,68(4),965-989.
24. Whitford, Margaret.(1991).Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine.London:Routledge.