英文摘要 |
In exploring multiple and shifting definitions of “home” as private domestic space, as nation of origin or adoption, and as a powerful literary metaphor for identity and security, this paper focuses on the efforts at homemaking away from home by two expatriate American women writers, Pearl Buck and Gertrude Stein. At the turn of the 20th century, Buck, the child of missionaries in remote China, and Stein, at the vanguard of a cultural revolution in Paris, created homes away from their native America in real life and in creative work. While Buck and Stein diverge greatly in style, cultural perspective and literary reputation, they appear together in this paper because in their work both focus on issues of home and “intimate” uses of geography and location. Each in her own way pondered issues of national and cultural origins as well, in particular her relationship with her native America and with the other places she called home. In making homes abroad, each went through a process of disengagement from cultural and familial expectations and restrictions, as well as from conventional gender roles. Furthermore, these writers anticipated theoretical concerns of a later era: For Buck, these included resistance to imperial ambitions, negotiations in cross-cultural contact zones, and provocative perspectives on cultural and biological hybridity. Stein meanwhile was preoccupied with intimate “domestic” relationships, in particular the long-term partnership with Alice Toklas that she guarded carefully in the physical space of their home in Paris as well as in her writing. Stein also cultivated her “home” in friendships with an international community of avant-garde artists; these associations constitute an essential feature of the salon-home that is revealed in some of her most celebrated works. In their various efforts to establish a home outside the usual neighborhood, Pearl Buck and Gertrude Stein each in art and in life laid the foundation for a new way of thinking about dwelling in the world. |