一個「英國女性的私人劇場」：海倫．瑪麗亞．威廉絲與新女性公民

An ＂Englishwoman's Private Theatrical＂: Helen Maria Williams and the New Female Citizen

Helen Maria Williams's writing moves beyond boundaries of different kinds. Williams's eight-volume Letters from France: Containing Many New Anecdotes Relative to the French Revolution, and the Present State of French Manners, for example, is a combination of several genres, including travel narrative, letters, and her first-hand reports of the events in France between the years 1790 and 1796. This is a study of the first volume of Letters Written in France (1790), comprising twenty-six letters. In this paper, I will endeavour to show the ways in which Williams moves beyond a national frame and employs the epistolary form to provide a transnational outlook at the French Revolution. I will argue that Williams's Letters from France is an important form of cultural and literary participation that enables the reconfiguration of modern nationhood and cosmopolitanism, and allows a new definition of female citizenship to emerge. 海倫．瑪麗亞．威廉絲的書寫跨越了數個類別和領域，威廉絲於1790至1796年間陸續出版，終集結成全八冊的《來自法國的書信》即為一例。本文欲探討於1790年問世之第一冊《寫於法國的信》，試圖跳出過往學界閱讀此文本的視角，將其脈絡化並置放於書信體敘事和政治論述之傳統，以釐清十八世紀晚期有關女性書寫、國家認同、世界主義間的思想脈絡與爭議。筆者希望藉此重新審視十八世紀末期女性書寫中蘊含的啟蒙思想和意涵，除此之外，也透過探討女性文學中普世仁愛、多元世界觀的可能性，使新女性公民的身分得到開展。