维多利亚女性艰难的身份认同——女性成长小说《简·爱》探析

Establishment of Identity of the Female in Victorian Age——Jane Eyre as a Grown-up Novel

《简.爱》不仅仅是女主人公简的浪漫史,更是她作为维多利亚时代的女性的艰难的成长史。全篇首尾呼应连贯一致的主线是女性作为父权社会的他者的混合身份自我认同的过程。通过这种认同,夏洛蒂为她的女主人公找到了既符合维多利亚道德规范又能保留女性相对独立的自我的实现灵与肉的协调的路,虽然这条道路在今天看来仍然具有某种乌托邦的成分。

Jane Eyre is more than a romance of the heroine Jane; it is more of a distorted and long-enduring psychological development of the feminine protagonist in Victorian Age. The main coherent clue of the novel is the establishment of mixed cultural identity of the female as the other in the patriarchal society. Through this kind of identity the authoress Charlotte Bronte enables her heroine to reconcile with the Victorian moral standards and social value, while at the same time retain the relatively independent self that keeps the harmony between body and soul, though this kind of reconciliation and harmony still has some tint of Utopianism even judged from the eyes of present readers.