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"There is another, and a better world": Crafting Female Authorship in Mary Robinson's The Natural Daughter

形塑作者身份認同:論瑪麗.羅賓森之《親生女兒》

摘要


As a novelist, pamphleteer, and poet, Mary Robinson (1757-1800) provides an example of women who contributed in various ways to the world of letters and to the broadening of definitions of femininity. The Natural Daughter (1799), Robinson's last novel, centers on the outcast heroine Martha, who is forced to leave home and seems doomed to replicate the tragic fate of "the fallen woman," a figure commonly found in works authored by women in this period. In The Natural Daughter, Robinson also turns away from the conventional domestic setting, which corresponds to the domestic spheres in real life that women were expected to inhabit. My claim is that Robinson actively participates in the negotiations for women's positions in the marketplace, and that she attempts to unsettle discursive assumptions about the public-private model through an emphasis on women's presence in professional spheres of activity. This paper addresses that claim first by considering the rise of female authorship and the accompanying debates about gendered roles and responsibilities through a discussion of how Thomas Mathias's satirical poem The Pursuit of Literature (1794-1797) and the Quaker philanthropist Priscilla Wakefield's Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex (1798) are a response to women's public engagements. This paper then places The Natural Daughter in relation to Robinson's autobiography, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Robinson (1801), and thus turns to the critical connections that one can make between Robinson's experience in real life and her fictional creation in The Natural Daughter. This paper thus argues that Robinson's response is more nuanced and also more historically significant than previously understood. A consideration of the ways in which The Natural Daughter extends codes of femininity will also point to in effect women writers' awareness of the importance of issues of self-assertiveness and the rite of passage to self-authorization in Robinson's time.

並列摘要


本文聚焦於瑪麗.羅賓森(Mary Robinson,1757-1800)於1799年出版的生前最後一本小說《親生女兒》(The Natural Daughter),透過分析十八世紀小說如何介入、改寫、並延續與婦德(female virtues)及陰性特質(femininity)的相關論述,進一步去思索女性在職場中所扮演的角色、及發揮的經濟文化效應。過往學界對羅賓森的探討多集中在她和當世顯著政治人物的緋聞情史,對羅賓森作品的討論也侷限於她的激進派政治理念和改革派脈絡,然而《親生女兒》的女主角瑪莎(Martha)與羅賓森人生經驗有相當多重疊相似處,惜尚未受到學界相當之關注。本文首先將分析兩位思想家湯瑪斯.馬西亞斯(Thomas Mathias)與普西拉.魏客霏(Priscilla Wakefield)所提出之性別相關論述,尤其後者提出之勞動力(labour)與市場的經濟學概念,後討論《親生女兒》之女主角瑪莎如何在傳統上由男性主導之公領域(the public sphere)中尋求生存空間、獲得一己之長職業的可能性,藉以釐清羅賓森對小說文類演變之貢獻,也幫助我們思考傳統女性價值觀與陰性特質於十八世紀之變形、挪用、及改寫的可能性。小說中呈現之女性與社會間多重且繁雜的關係性,一方面顯示出性別與社會階層關係有相當程度的影響連動關係,另一方面也表現女性特質為一流動、不斷變動的元素,在文化歷史進程中持續受到挑戰、修正。本文認為,相較該時期其他文本,《親生女兒》不僅展現了羅賓森改善女性就業處境、重塑跨越性別價值的企圖心,也實踐了小說蘊含之淑世社會功能,為早期浪漫時期小說開啟了圓滿結局的可能性,而我們觀看十八世紀小說之方式得以更多元。

參考文獻


Watts, Katherine. “Female Independence in Mary Robinson’s The Natural Daughter.”Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (RAVON). 29 July 2014. doi; org/10.7202/1026007ar
Airey, Jennifer L. “’Abused, Neglected, –Unhonoured, –Unrewarded’: The Economics of Authorial Labor in the Writings of Mary Robinson.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2016, article 1.
Ambross, E. The Life and Memoirs of the Late Miss Ann Catley. J. Bird, 1789.
“Art. 82.” Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 61, John Nichols, 1791.
“Art. XXV.” Review of Hubert de Sevrac, a Romance of the Eighteenth Century, by Mary Robinson, The Analytical Review, or History of Literature, Domestic and Foreign, on an Enlarged Plan, Vol. 25, J. Johnson, 1797, p. 523.

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