狄金生、羅塞蒂、與勃朗特筆下的屍體與死亡紀念物

“I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away / What portions of me be / Assignable”: Body and Memorial Keepsakes in Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Brontë.

面對迅速都市化與工業化的社會變遷、人口劇烈移動、人類與土地的連結弱化，十九世紀的大西洋兩岸從家族血脈與土地緊密連結的一級產業社會轉型到工商業社會，因此家庭秩序的維持便必須被其他機制強化，而弔祭與服喪的種種儀式便是其中之一，當時對於殯葬儀式及紀念物(keepsake/memento)的重視因而日漸增加。隨著消費主義興起，喪葬文化亦與時尚及製造業結合，各式紀念物也充斥市場，其中又以頭髮、經防腐處理的器官等直接取自死去親人屍體的紀念物最為引人注目。英美文學作品對於死亡的想像亦反映在其對於紀念物的描寫及比喻上。這類紀念物既是人又是物，既以一種表徵或符碼的方式保存親人的存在，亦將他們轉化成一個可以觸摸、穿戴、收藏的物品。既是隱喻也是換喻。
本文先從十九世紀開始在英美流行的雪花球(snowglobe)為著眼點，首先探討Emily Dickinson、Christina Rossetti、Emily Brontë等擅長描寫死亡的女詩人文本中雪與死亡的意象。雪花球中的世界被Theodor Adorno稱為”「Nature morte」，可翻為「still life」或「dead life」，包含了一個既靜止又不靜止、活著與死亡的世界，且十九世紀的雪花球通常以陶瓷或骨頭碎屑製成，更加深其與屍體之連結。而Brontë早期作品中描寫之「Glass Town」更與其家人之死亡息息相關。接著將探討文本中遺體防腐處理(embalming)的意象。Dickinson的時代是美國史上防腐處理屍體的極盛期，起源於南北戰爭時期死亡人數眾多、屍體運送不便。同時Dickinson過世之後遺體亦經防腐處理保存。而大西洋對岸的Rossetti與Brontë文本中亦多次提及類似之意象。頭髮製成之紀念物及頭髮與死亡的意象亦將是本文的重點。
本文以雪及死亡紀念物為暗喻，探討十九世紀英美女詩人筆下對於死亡的描繪與想像，藉由實際的身體與物品的互相轉化與連結，人與符碼、視覺與觸覺、生與死、主動與被動的代換，期望能更加以爬梳十九世紀物質文化下的女性觀點。

 

In the nineteenth century, while urbanization and industrialization brought forth drastic changes in social structure and weakened the link between mankind and land, both sides of the Atlantic saw the society evolving from one with clear social hierarchy based on a land-oriented economy and bloodline to one characterized by class mobility and consumerism. The familial order must therefore be strengthened by other social systems, among which were the rituals of funeral and mourning. Keepsakes or mementos of death and mourning thus became an essential part of daily life. With the uprising of consumerism, the culture of death was also subsumed by the fashion and manufacture industries, and mourning vestments and mementos of death also became commodities. Among these, keepsakes made from hair and embalmed bodily parts seem most fascinating (and macabre) for the modern society. The nineteenth-century imagination of death was also reflected in the literary delineation of mementos. These mementos are neither humans nor things, preserving the existence of the dearly departed with a symbol or icon, but also transforming them into an actual object that can be touched, worn, and collected. The memento of death is both a metaphor and a metonymy.
The imagery of snow is quite prominent in the works of Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, and Christina Rossetti, who were renowned for their delineation of death and mourning. Wrapped in snow, the dead bodies in these texts become frozen in time, as if trapped in a snow globe. Theodor Adorno calls the world within a snow globe "Nature morte"—namely "still life" or "dead life". It is a world both static and dynamic, a world of both the living and the dead. This world of immutability—albeit forever imbued with a possibility of change—answers to the nineteenth-century mourner’s imagination of an eternal "life" beyond. This sense of eternity was also manifested in the popularity of embalming and hair ornaments, which were ubiquitous, both symbolically throughout the texts of the three poetesses and historically in their lives.
This paper thus explores the delineation of death and mourning in the texts of nineteenth-century poetesses by discussing first snow and the tactile memories of the dead and then the death memorabilia that invites a sense of touch, with the intention of further exploring the nineteenth-century material culture through discussions of the fine and breachable line between human bodies and objects, visuality and tactility, life and death, and the active and the passive.