困境突围与女性情谊——解读《伊莱莎小姐的厨房手札》

Getting out of Predicament through Female Friendship:A Feminist Reading of MissEliza'sEnglishKitchen

本文从女性主义视角解读当代英国女性作家安娜贝尔·阿布兹的新作《伊莱莎小姐的厨房手札》,指出阿布兹在这部新维多利亚小说中传承“她们自己的文学”传统,融合历史真实与虚构想象,通过来自不同阶层的两位女主人公伊莱莎和安交替叙事,描摹了维多利亚时代不同阶层贫富悬殊巨大、性别不平等的社会历史现实,揭露了维多利亚时代的道德伪善,以安一家为代表的下层穷人的艰难生存境遇,肯定了伊莱莎和安直面生存困境并携手从困境中突围的努力。两位女主人公在十年协作烹饪中缔结了跨阶层友情,并各自与同阶层女性发展姐妹情谊。这些跨阶层或同阶层的女性情谊滋养并赋能伊莱莎和安坚韧地反抗父权暴力、打破维多利亚时代父权社会对女性角色的规定、勇敢追寻具有独立人格的女性自我、大胆探索天赋并建构多维的自我身份,启迪21世纪的当代女性积蓄女性力量、争取性别平权。

Reading Miss Eliza's English Kitchen from a feminist perspective,this article argues that in this neo-Victorian fiction,contemporary British female writer Annabel Abbs carries on the tradition of"a literature of their own."Blending historical reality and fictional imagination,and alternating between the narratives of two heroines from different social classes,Eliza and Ann,the fiction not only depicts the historical reality of huge disparity between the rich and the poor,and the inequality between men and women in the Victorian era,exposing the hypocrisy of Victorian morality,and the hard existence of the poor represented by Ann's family,but also praises the efforts of Eliza and Ann to escape their predicament.While working together on a cookery book for a decade,the two heroines develop female friendship across the class divide and establish sisterhood with other women from their own respective classes.Eliza and Ann are thus empowered to resist Victorian patriarchal violence,break Victorian constraints on women's social roles,explore their talents,and construct their multi-identities bravely.This inspires women in the twenty-first century to accumulate female power and strive for gender equality.