萨拉·沃特斯《灵契》中的金钱话语和经济伦理

“Spiritualism”,Women’s Prison,and Scam:Money Discourse and Economic Ethics in Sarah Waters’Affinity

萨拉·沃特斯的小说《灵契》中,维多利亚时期出身名门的玛格丽特·普赖尔因精神科医师的疗愈建议而定期探访米尔班克女子监狱。在米尔班克,普赖尔与“通灵”者塞利娜·道斯等女囚们相识。由此,新的人生际遇改变了其原有的轨迹。沃特斯超越了新维多利亚小说中的性别叙事与历史再现,去关注性少数女性群体内部的纷争、隔阂,并巧用阶层与金钱话语象征,呈现出英国社会的面貌与经济伦理。普赖尔家庭塑造中的亲缘、社交与性别期待、精美府邸与冷峻监狱的环境与建筑对照,以及“通灵”事务暗含的阶层间互动逻辑,共同织构出上述象征;普赖尔围绕监狱之行承受的家庭社交训诫与斯蒂芬的财产管理警示,以及女囚塞利娜与女佣瓦伊格斯长期骗局的预谋筹划,则进一步凸显了《灵契》中复杂的经济伦理内核——维多利亚时期英国难以逾越的阶层差异及根深蒂固的社会阶级心理。

Sarah Waters’novel Affinity tells the story of Margaret Prior,a Victorian woman from a wealthy upper-class family,who accepts her psychiatrist’s advice to visit Millbank prison regularly and befriends enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes.Prior has new encounters in the prison,and even changes the course of her life forever.In Affinity,Waters goes beyond the usual gender narratives,or historical representations,of neo-Victorian novels,and turns her attention to the strife and contradictions within the community of sexual and gender minority women.She utilizes important symbols in the discursive construction of class and money to present a holistic picture of British society and its underlying economic ethos.The shape of Prior’s family structure and its social and gendered expectations,the environmental and architectural contrasts of the fine cottage and the ghastly prison,and the logic of interactions between classes hidden in the psychic powers,come together to construct the symbols.The family’s social admonitions and warnings about property management that Prior receives after her prison visit,and the fact that she has been chosen as the subject of a deception,further underscore the complex economic ethics:the unbridgeable class divide in Victorian England and people’s entrenched social psyche.