重建母亲的田园--从吉尔曼的《她乡》到伍尔夫的《奥兰多》

Reconstructing Mother’s Garden:From Gilman’s Herland to Woolf’s Orlando

夏洛特•帕金斯•吉尔曼和沃吉尼亚•伍尔夫,将女性及两性问题置于其思想和创作的中心,以女性的眼光、基于女性的经验,解构父权制及其思想文化体系,赋予母性价值以重要意义,并努力重建一种全新的生命观、价值观和人观。吉尔曼的《她乡》幻想重建“母亲的田园”,建立一种基于母爱之上的文明秩序,从根本上拒绝西方父权制传统及其价值尺度。伍尔夫的《到灯塔去》和《奥兰多》则试图在男女两性、父性与母性相互联系的现实与历史传统中,将女性与男性置于同等的主体地位,在男女两性特征的比较中彰显母性价值。女性形象的重塑和母性价值体系的重建,蕴含着重构另一种伦理观乃至生活秩序的生机。

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf place women and gender issues at the center of their thoughts and writings.Both deconstruct the patriarchy and its ideological as well as cultural systems through women’s eyes and experience.Both also foreground maternal values and strive to reconstruct a new outlook on life,values and human beings.Gilman’s Herland imagines the reconstruction of a“mother’s field”which establishes a civilization based on the maternal love.It fundamentally rejects the Western patriarchal tradition and its values scale.By comparison,Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Orlando attempt to give women the same agency as men with attention to the realistic and historical tradition,where men and women,and the fatherhood and motherhood are interconnected.With a comparison between men’s characteristics and women’s,Woolf highlights the values of motherhood.This reconstruction of the female image and the maternal value system has the potential to reconstruct another ethical perspective and even an order of life.