新職的機運：曼德爾太太與階級文化商機

A Hazard of New Professions: Mrs. Mandel and the Business of Class

In A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells provides a new profession for the impoverished upper-middle class lady Mrs. Mandel, the duties of which are essentially acting as surrogate mistress of the bourgeois household. Her expertise meets the needs of the arriviste Dryfooses, who seek acceptance in urban social circles which their money puts within their reach but from which their manners disqualify them. Whereas recent criticism focuses mainly on the unsuccessful attempt of the bourgeois consciousness to contain the struggling poor and the new immigrants, the subplot of Mrs. Mandel continues the novelist's concern for the accommodation of the nouveau riche in mainstream culture. The lady's placement is a progressivist and commercialist solution to the contemporary restructuring of the upper classes. Meanwhile, her interaction with her employers highlights the complicated power relations between economic capital and cultural capital that underlie the main plot of the magazine venture. Her virtual inclusion into the family also softens the violent conflict between capital and labor at the center of the novel. Her career, which combines the ideals of True Womanhood and the enterprising spirit, furthermore supplements the novel's explorations of the Woman Question. In proof of his mastery, Howells manages to concentrate and broaden all the major themes in a minor character such as Mrs. Mandel in this sweeping panorama of the contemporary metropolis. 郝渥斯在《新富的機運》中安插了一個新的行業，讓新富家庭雇用家道中落的中上流社會仕女充當代理女主人，巧妙的同時解決了當時備受討論的婦女問題──這個階級的女性應否踏出深閨、進入職場──與上流社會面臨的巨大衝擊──如何處理言行粗俗卻亟欲躋身社交圈的暴發戶。不同於近期研究將社會階級討論專注於中產階級對勞動階級、新移民的視角，本篇論文將焦點放在仕紳與新富之間的矛盾，探討小說家對於當代菁英社會文化發展的長期關切。書中曼德爾太太的新職乃是以進步主義與商業主義的手段協助新舊成員調適因應上流社會的結構變動。這個務實的方案同時對應到小說中勞資衝突的核心議題：雙方各自擁有的經濟資本與文化資本讓權力關係更加複雜；但是曼德爾太太與雇主最後情同家人，相較於主要情節中激烈的勞資紛爭，代理女主人的職業更是個理想化的對比。郝渥斯利用曼德爾太太這個次要角色凝聚、加廣小說中所有的重要議題，使得這本綜覽十九世紀美國社會的鉅著中主題的發展更全面周延。