论“情之正”——民初小说中女学生“自由结婚”的真义与限度

On the “appropriateness of emotions”: True significance and limit of “free marriage”of the female students in early-Republican fictions

具有新式教育背景的女性是清末民初婚姻变革的先锋。当通俗小说家对"自由结婚"的现象进行批判和思考时,她们也成了文本中的女主角。在民初的哀情小说中,践行"自由结婚"的女学生的价值取向被设定为"情之正":其举动须"发乎情,止乎礼义",同时尊重、遵从"父母之命"。她们对"情之正"的选择,正是对爱情的真挚、炽热性质的回避。小说家由此显示出其立场的局限性。因为通俗小说对市民庸俗道德观念的迎合,这类文本的使用在"小说证史"的研究中存在一定限度:小说中女学生的价值观念不宜等同于现实中女性的取舍,通俗文本只在心态史的层面才具有史料价值。

Newly- educated women were pioneers of marriage reforms in the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China. When popular novelists criticized and reconsidered the phenomenon of'free marriage',these women also became the main characters of such novels. In the early- Republic sentimental novels,the value orientation of the female students who practiced'free marriage'was considered as the'appropriateness of emotions',whose actions should come out of emotions and stop at the boundary of Confucian rituals. Meanwhile,they had to respect and follow the arrangement of their parents. Their choice of the'appropriateness of emotions'was the escape from the sincere and passionate nature of love.This is the limit of such novelists. Due to the accommodation of these popular novels to the popularized moral values,this kind of text has its limit when it is used to'prove history'. Meanwhile,the values of the female students in such fictions are not equivalent to the choices of the women in the actual reality. Thus,these popular fictions show their significance only on the level of the historical mentality studies.