「搖晃骰盅」：十八世紀晚期英國反賭戲劇裡的女性賭客

Shaking a Dice Box: Female Gamesters in Late Eighteenth-Century English Anti-Gaming Plays

賭博是一個貫穿十八世紀英國文學的重要主題，散見於各種文類，不論是主流或小眾作家皆有探究。賭博主題引發各類學科的研究，也反映出各時代的批評重點。在對西方賭博文化的眾多的研究裡，性別研究發展出獨樹一格的傳統，而評論者多認為男性賭客是陰柔、不夠具有男子氣概的，也相信女性賭客僭越性別倫理。本論文研究十八世紀晚期英國反賭戲劇中的女性賭客角色，探討她們在父權社會價值觀監管下的掙扎。論文首先爬梳賭博在十八世紀英國社會引起的不安，再著重於當時社會在批評賭博時常使用的性別偏見語言。研究最終聚焦於五部十八世紀晚期英國反賭戲劇中的女性賭客，並發現這些女性因不符合當時社會的性別期待，必須接受社會制裁，例如被放逐、死亡、或被剝奪成為母親的權力而僅能成為象徵性的母親。這些劇本亦指出女性賭客需要男性的拯救才能回歸社會。不論女性賭客下場為何，反賭戲劇以此指出十八世紀英國社會對於女性違反性別常規的焦慮，也凸顯了英國社會對於女性賭博問題的道德憂慮。因此，女性賭客是劇作家對社會大眾提出的道德警告。

Gaming is an important motif that runs through eighteenth-century English literature. The motif occurs in diverse genres, and it is a concern of both major and minor writers. Gaming, the motif, generates studies from various disciplines, reflecting the critical focuses in each generation. Among many researches into western gaming culture, gender study has developed its unique tradition, for most critics find male gamers feminine and unmanly, and at the same time, they believe that female gamesters cross ethical and gender boundaries. This essay studies female gamers in the late eighteenth-century anti-gaming English plays, examining how they struggle under the censorship coming from hierarchical values. This essay first probes into the eighteenth-century English social anxiety caused by gaming, and then it concentrates on the gender-biased language that contemporary society often applies to the criticism of gaming. The study finally focuses on the female gamers in five late eighteenth-century English anti-gaming plays, finding that these women have to accept social punishments, such as exile, death, or deprivation of the right to be mothers and can only be symbolic mothers, because they fail contemporary social gender expectation. These plays also suggest that female gamesters need male salvation to return to society. No matter what female gamesters’consequence is, it is through them that anti-gaming plays point out eighteenth-century English social anxiety when it sees women violate gender norms, highlighting English society’s moral concerns for women’s gaming problems. Therefore, these female gamesters are the playwrights’moral caution to the public.