Fancy, Gender and Race in Aphra Behn's ＂The Dumb Virgin＂ and ＂The Unfortunate Bride＂

幻想、性別與種族

10.6271/fd.2015.24.2.02

石耀西(Yao-Hsi Shih)

幻想 ； 性別 ； 種族 ； 貝恩 ； 沙夫茨伯里 ； fancy ； gender ； race ； Aphra Behn ； Shaftesbury

小說與戲劇

24卷2期（2015 / 06 / 01）

21 - 45

英文

本文研究幻想、性別與種族三個議題。作者以十七世紀後期，英國女作家貝恩，兩部中篇小說〈啞少女〉與〈不幸的新娘〉，比較當代英國男作家沙夫茨伯里的道德論《人、風俗、觀念與時代》，討論這三議題於作品間的辯證關係。沙氏為建構盎格魯男性主體，倒果為因，捏造幻想為女性與異族它者的本質，直指它者為當代世風日下、道德失能的元凶巨惡。而貝氏小說表面上與沙氏沆瀣一氣，以性別與種族等母題，塑造母系想像的主體，指其為二代女主角們身體失能的罪魁禍首。在此時空背景交錯糾葛之下，本文認為，幻想這個概念已成為異化女性與醜化異族的工具。這種性別化與種族化的想像，固然把性別與異族塑成二元意識形態的它者，但卻也無心插柳，結盟這兩個原本涇渭分明的子集。於此，貝氏以子之矛攻子之盾，辯證沙式道德論述的父系二元結構。貝氏巧妙安排小說文中敘述主體身兼任作品人物二角，如此靈活策略，除了得以平反女性、異族及母性幻想，在父系、父權筆下的妖魔化形象之外，女敘事者更可藉力使力，平反女作家自身的文壇地位與價值。

This paper studies the representations of physically defective characters, Belvideera, Maria, and Celesia, in Aphra Behn's novellas: ＂The Dumb Virgin: Or, the Force of Imagination,＂ and ＂The Unfortunate Bride: Or, the Blind Lady a Beauty.＂ It aims to interpret the significance of the young heroines' physical disabilities in the context of ＂Characteristics of Men, Manners＂, ＂Opinions＂, ＂Times＂, written by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. The essay first relates maternal fancy in Behn's feminocentric stories to that in Shaftesbury's moral treatise, which biases and misconstrues fancy as defective and monstrous. It then argues that Behn, expanding this misogynist motif, constructs her young female protagonists as doubly deformed, as flawed motherhood gives birth to a second generation of flawed daughterhood, while the deformed femininity in both stories is further complicated with the exotic, racial implications of degeneration and miscegenation. Sexualized and racialized, Behn's tales of love are tragic, in which Shaftesbury's antithetical Others of gender and race are modeled uponthe vice of monstrousness and aligned to committing monstrous acts. By making female and racial others seem monstrous, as this paper proposes, Behn makes her case by deploying a narrator as a dialectical resolution to Shaftesbury's binary construct of oppositions in his moral instruction. Although Behn's female narrator gives up her authorial power and abases herself as a mere teller of tales, her female pen exercises her authority by doing justice to her characters and her literary fancy, and thus registers the female teller as an artist, and fiction-maker. As dialectical transcendence, the female narrator in these romantic fictions not only circumvents socio-sexual hierarchy and gender-racial dichotomy, but also tacitly points to a breakthrough amid the pervasive patriarchal discursive dominance.

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