英文摘要 |
The combination of gender studies and literary criticism is nothing new, but the role of prostitutes in literature provides a productive perspective for investigating the intertwined network of gender, sexuality, class, race, and the role of the family and nation. Through reading Liao Huiying's short story 'The Lost Moonlight,' this paper first employs a Marxist method of analysis of ideology, contextualizing the work within the development of national capitalism and its contradictions. In the 1980s, middle-class women in Taiwan started to gain economic independence and freed hemselves from the regulation of family, especially in terms of sexuality. On the other hand, family units were still taken as the foundation of the nation's growth, and traditional familial ethics was reinforced. Following this ideology, working girls were walking on a wire: while remaining independent, they were compelled to move towards marriage. If these innocent Eves missed a step, they would become fallen women- among those most condemned, prostitutes. Liao's prostitute story thus serves as a warning, policing the behavior of newly independent and innocent Eves. The second part of this paper, based on discourse analysis, suggests that the novel has the power of constructing reality, by reifying the social category of prostitutes and by reinforcing popular discourses on prostitution. Although the voices of prostitutes have been marginalized and censored, the novel, as a genre of heteroglossia, preserves their dissonant voices through which a new political space is opened for alternative subjectivities |