英文摘要 |
This paper discusses Louisa May Alcott’s character Dan, the unruly hero in Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886), in terms of nineteenth-century U.S. imperial westward expansion and the white woman's discipline of love. Dan's importance lies in his multiple identities and positions molded by a variety of contemporary discourses: he is a white pioneer in support of westward expansion as well as a racialized "other" disciplined by the white woman's love; a tired, injured Civil War veteran as well as an energetic, aspiring Western hero; an obedient son in the domestic novel as well as a wild man in the dime Western. These seemingly disparate, unrelated roles are in fact all connected with the white woman's political vision of upholding westward expansion in the name of sentimental love. In this sense, Dan's story reflects the uses and limitations of the white woman's disciplinary project, not only highlighting the ambivalent negotiations between the discipliner and the disciplined, but also illustrating the tricky connections of the domestic white woman in the private sphere with nineteenth-century U.S. westward expansion in the public sphere. |