冲破墙纸之后呢——吉尔曼《黄色墙纸》中的双重叙事进程

After Breaking through the Wallpaper —Dual Narrative Progression in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

美国著名女性主义作家夏洛特•珀金斯•吉尔曼写于1892年的短篇小说《黄色墙纸》是其最负盛名的作品,被认为是美国女性主义文学的重要早期作品。这部半自传体短篇小说创作于吉尔曼深陷产后抑郁时期,讲述了一个患有精神疾病的女子被内科医生丈夫约翰幽禁在一处殖民地住宅长达三个月的故事。无名女主人公遭受视觉冲击和嗅觉侵扰,却用文字化的声音和非理性行为进行抗争,最终实现从审美性向审丑性的转变以及灵魂和身体的融合,为自己赢得生存空间和话语权。本文在双重叙事进程理论的框架下,借助审美移情、气味书写、后殖民女性主义和解域化等理论拟探寻吉尔曼在短篇小说《黄色墙纸》中进行的视觉、嗅觉、听觉以及触觉的多重感官书写,并尝试解答冲破墙纸之后无名女主人公的何去何从。

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a famous American feminist writer, composed a short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, which is her most well-known work and is considered to be an important early work of American feminist literature. This semi-autobiographical short story, written during Gilman’s deep postpartum depression, tells a story about a mentally ill woman who is confined to a colonial mansion by her physician husband John for three months. The unnamed heroine suffers visual shock and olfactory intrusion, but fights with literary voice and irrational behavior, and finally realizes the transformation from aesthetics to ugliness and the fusion of soul and body, winning a living space and the right of speaking. Under the framework of Dual Narrative Progression theory, this paper attempts to explore Gilman’s visual, olfactory, auditory, tactile writing in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the help of aesthetic empathy, scent writing, postcolonial feminism and deterritorialization, and try to answer the whereabouts of the unknown narrator after breaking through the wallpaper.