神話之外的真實女人：《斷水的人》中的母親形象反思與辯證

母親及其神話，在過去五十年來為臺灣小說家反覆書寫，談及散文，受論者高度重視的是簡媜的《紅嬰仔：一個女人與她的育嬰史》，然而在此之前，張讓已於九○年代初期，於報刊發表「親子沉思」系列文章，從是否當母親，到懷孕、生產的觀察，進一步從文史脈絡中，探究社會對母親犧牲奉獻形象的歌詠，從謳歌與簡化的母親樣板形象中，提出質疑，認為母親實乃黑暗和光明並存，如同八○年代以降，西方對女神雙面性之探究，也誠如九○年代臺灣女性編舞者，藉由演繹女神生殖和破壞力，展現豐富的女神符碼。更進一步，張讓從個人經驗，佐以縮放自如的敘事距離，從描摹自己孩子，提升至歷史孩子之共性，並認為孩子召喚了母親從神、人到魔與獸的光譜。本文也將「親子沉思」系列後，張讓幾度書寫母親亡故之篇章納入討論，探索嬰兒誕生和母親死亡，由此可見張讓對社會界定的「母親」框架予以辯證，其中也展現了她在這個議題中的自我掙扎與矛盾。

關鍵字

張讓；親子沉思；母親；女神；母親神話

並列摘要

Motherhood and its myths have been repeatedly written by Taiwanese novelists over the past fifty years, and when it comes to essays, the one that is highly valued by commentators is Jane Chen's "The Baby: A Woman and Her History of Infant Raising" Before that, however, Jean Chang had already published a series of articles in the early 1990s entitled " Reflections on Motherhood and Childhood," in which she reflects on whether or not she wanted to be a mother, observes pregnancy and childbirth, and further explores society's sacrificial image of motherhood in the context of literature and history, questioning it in the context of both the chanting and the simplified image of mother. She sees the mother figure as both dark and light, just as the West has explored the duality of the goddess since the 1980s, and as the Taiwanese female choreographers of the 1990s have done by interpreting the goddess's life value and destructive power, presenting a rich symbol of the goddess. Further, from her own personal experience and with the narrative distance that she can zoom in and out, Jean Chang elevates the portrayal of her own child to the commonality of historical children, and argues that children evoke the spectrum of mothers from goddess and woman to demons and beasts. Finally, after the "Reflections on Parenthood" series, Jean Chang has written several essays on the death of her mother, exploring how the birth of a baby and the death of its mother have reconstructed Jean Chang's imagination of the great image of motherhood.