《咆嘯山莊》中的自然之聲

Wuthering Heights and the Sound of Nature

伯朗特的小說《咆嘯山莊》以書寫自然景觀聞名。歷代讀者常從視覺的角度出發，探討本書中自然景觀的涵義。本文作者認為，檢視小說中的自然聲景，我們能更加了解伯朗特的環境意識。在《咆嘯山莊》創作與出版的英國社會裡，動物福利的議題興起，鼓勵英國人民同情與憐憫受虐的動物。《咆嘯山莊》中狗的低鳴，顯示伯朗特雖然關愛動物，卻深知人類追求私有領域的慾望，是人們無法完全了解動物的原因之一。此外，伯朗特也明白鳥類對領土的需求。在本小說中，伯朗特透過鳥鳴，來描述此需求與人類的衝突。本小說中的風聲，則說明了自然環境，是如何讓人類反思領土界線的重要性。雖然洛克伍德先生認為，咆嘯山莊中堅固的窗戶，可以遮風擋雨，創造出專屬於人類的空間，但伯朗特對風聲的描寫，卻顛覆了此種人定勝天的想法。《咆嘯山莊》的自然之聲，巧妙地連結了人類活動與自然力量，彰顯出兩者間的競爭關係。

Emily Brontё’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is saturated with multiple descriptions of the natural environment. Readers of this novel tend to rely on sight to tease out the meanings of Brontё’s engagement with the natural world. This essay argues that if we examine the sounds of dogs, birds and the wind in this novel, we can gain more insight into Brontё’s environmental awareness. While Wuthering Heights was published in a time when the issue of animal welfare in England invited increasingly sentimental responses of the general public to an abused animal, a yelping dog in this novel shows how the territorial instinct of mankind undermines such sentimentality. Brontё’s refusal to idealize inter-species relationships finds its way into her representation of the sound of birds in this novel. Instead of treating this sound as delightful music, Brontё emphasizes how this sound relates to the need of birds to mark their own territories and how such a need clashes with that of mankind. Through the sound of the wind, Brontё challenges an anthropocentric assumption that demarcating a human territory impervious to the elements is both possible and desirable. Brontё names the two major buildings of her novel after the sound of nature because she wants to delineate a close relationship between the human world and the natural environment, one that is characterized by territorial conflicts.