方寸之间 尽得风流——试析卡罗尔·希尔兹家庭小说的社会价值

Art of Enclosing Large World in Small One——Social Values in Carol Shields' Family Novels

卡罗尔·希尔兹的小说讲述20世纪后半叶北美中产阶级中年妇女的家庭生活。因她的小说关注普通人的日常琐事,且通常以大团圆结局,所以常被贴上"家庭小说"的标签,但一直以来对希尔兹小说的社会价值和她对社会问题的关注被低估了。笔者通过文本细读法,结合小说的时代背景,从家庭和社会两个层面探讨希尔兹如何以中产阶级家庭为主要背景,展示20世纪后半叶加拿大和美国普通民众的社会生活现实,披露社会的阴暗面,从而论证希尔兹小说的社会价值。

Carol Shields＇ novels depict the family life of middle-class women in the 20th-century North America. Representing the real life of everyday people, these novels usually end with a happy ending, so they are often labeled as family fiction. For a long time, the social values in her fiction and her preoccupations with social problems have been underestimated. By close reading and referring to the historical background, this paper seeks to explore how Shields reflects the reality and the darkness in the society with the North American middle-class family as the background from the family and social perspectives, thus justifying the social values in the novels.