爱默生“自助”视角下的《觉醒》

The Study of Kate Chopin's The Awakening from the Perspective of Emerson's Self-Reliance

《觉醒》是凯特·肖邦最著名的作品之一,在1989年该书出版发行的时代,女性逐渐有了更多接受高等教育的机会,并走出了内战后传统价值观所维持的家庭领域,促使女性对自己的生活方式产生了新的认知。然而,女性的觉醒与主导社会主流话语权的完美女性模式之间的不平衡,引起了冲突和分歧。主人公埃德娜-庞特利埃原本是贤妻良母女性模式的典范,她的觉醒过程与美国超验主义的代表人物爱默生的作品密不可分。阅读爱默生的作品是《觉醒》中个人主义复活与成熟的标志,埃德娜的“觉醒”过程中不同层次,可以看作是对爱默生自助精神的实践:身体自由,行为自主,并最终获得精神上的完美重生。因此,这部小说与爱默生作品之间的动态关系不可忽视。透析爱默生的哲学如何影响、贯穿了《觉醒》的写作,将话语移植到女性主义作品,并与当时的历史、政治产生丰富的化学反应具有一定的文学史意义。

The Awakening,one of Kate Chopin's best-known works,was published and released in 1989 at a time when women were gradually gaining access to higher education and moving out of the domestic sphere maintained by traditional post-civil-war values,prompting a new perception of how women should live their lives.However,the imbalance between women's awakening and the model of the perfect woman that dominated the social discourse caused conflict and disagreement.The protagonist,Edna Pontellier,is originally a model of virtuous woman,and the process of her awakening is inextricably linked to the works of Emerson,a representative of American Transcendentalism.Reading Emerson's works is a sign of the resurrection and maturation of individualism in The Awakening,and the different levels of Edna's"awakening"process can be seen as a practice of Emerson's self-help spirit:freedom of body,autonomy of behavior,and ultimately,a perfect spiritual rebirth.Thus,the dynamic relationship between this novel and Emerson's work cannot be ignored.It is of some literary-historical significance to analyze how Emerson's philosophy influenced and penetrated the writing of The Awakening,transposed the discourse to feminist works and created a rich chemical reaction with the historical politics of the time.