WOMEN AND MEMORY IN ANNE BRONTË'S AGNES GREY

安．伯朗蒂小說《安格妮絲．格雷》中的女性與記憶

吳易道(WU Yih-Dau)

《中山人文學報》 42期 (2017/01) Pp. 71-89

摘要

Anne Brontë's novel Agnes Grey (1847) has been traditionally read as a governess story, one that exposes the difficulties besetting a particular type of working women in Victorian England. This critical consensus is inaccurate, because it underestimates the scope and depth of Brontë's feminist sensibilities. In this essay I argue that the issue of memory offers a more useful approach through which we can understand Brontë's interest in womanhood generally, her knowledge of female strength and weakness in particular. I first pay attention to maternal memories that frame the governess center of this novel. Examining what a character remembers about her own mother or about motherhood, I show that Agnes Grey goes beyond a specific female profession to explore broader female experiences with which most mid-nineteenth-century English women can identify. In fact, Brontë relies on the connection between women and memory to analyze what oppresses and what empowers them. Brontë scholars have argued that Agnes the protagonist endures physical hardships in her first governess post, moral struggles in her second, and survives both unscathed. By scrutinizing Agnes's monologues and her sexual rivalries with her pupil, I demonstrate that her difficulties actually have a mnemonic dimension. Female powerlessness, Brontë argues, is registered by an inability to control how one is remembered and by a failure to defend the integrity of one's own memory. This essay lastly discusses how women exhibit their independence through valuing their own memory and regulating that of others. Agnes Grey is not primarily about the Victorian governess. It is more deeply concerned with the specific ways in which the issue of memory reveals what a Victorian woman fears, loves and cherishes most.

關鍵字

women ； memory ； Anne Brontë ； Agnes Grey

並列摘要

英國小說家安．伯朗蒂的首部小說《安格妮絲．格雷》(1847) 描述一位女家庭教師的困境。由於女家庭教師為十九世紀中葉英國社會中頗具爭議性的職業，評論家經常認為此職業足以解釋伯朗蒂對女性議題的關懷與了解。本文認為此閱讀方式低估了此文本中對女性身份認同、人際互動以及獨立自主的複雜探索。作者以為細究小說中女性與記憶的關係才能真正了解伯朗蒂對這些議題的態度。本文首先探討「母性記憶」(maternal memories) 在小說中的重要性，並解釋為何《安格妮絲．格雷》不僅是一個關於女教庭教師的故事，而更是一個關於記憶如何融入女性生活的故事。第二部分檢視記憶在女主角的職業生涯中扮演的角色，並分析記憶與女性社會地位的關係。最後作者討論伯朗蒂如何藉由女性對記憶的掌握來對抗父權壓力以及彰顯獨立的人格特質。

並列關鍵字

女性 ； 記憶 ； 安．伯朗蒂 ； 《安格妮絲．格雷》

參考文獻

Peterson, M. Jeanne (1973) “The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society.” Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 3-19.

Poovey, Mary (1988) Uneven Developments: the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Regaignon, Dara Rossman (2001) “Instructive Sufficiency: Re-Reading the Governess through Agnes Grey.” Victorian Literature and Culture 29.1: 85-108.

Shaw, Marion (1994) “Anne Brontë: A Quiet Feminist.” Brontë Society Transactions 21: 125-35.

Thormählen, Marianne (2007) The Brontës and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.