盯視下的奇觀與日常：《月光石》與《法律與淑女》中的失能

Spectacles and Daily Life in Staring: Disabledness in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and The Law and the Lady

如十九世紀風行一時的「怪人秀」(freak show)，威爾基．柯林斯時常在作品中描寫生理「畸形」(deformity)的角色，形態上較輕微的如《月光石》(The Moonstone)裡羅珊娜(Rosanna)大小不一的肩膀、露西(Lucy)的跛腳，較嚴重的則像是《法律與淑女》(The Law and the Lady)中，戴克斯特(Miserrimus Dexter)天生就沒有雙腿。然而，迥異於怪人秀將「畸形」打造為付費觀賞的奇觀(spectacle)，柯林斯在描寫這類角色時，鮮少強調獵奇的興奮感，也沒有依循維多利亞將生理畸形者去性化(desexualized)的想像，從而揭露生理畸形者所遭遇的困難並非身體層次上的「失能」(disabledness)，而是社會意義上的「失能」。本文受嘉蘭-湯姆森(Rosemarie Garland-Thomson)的盯視(staring)理論所啟發，聚焦於《月光石》與《法律與淑女》中失能角色與周遭人事物之間的互相盯視，失能角色各自發展出不同的盯視策略，由此呈現出以盯視為起點的人際關係之可能性與不可能性。

Like the freak shows that were popular in the nineteenth century, Wilkie Collins’s novels tend to display people with physical deformities. Some deformities are relatively slight, such as Rosanna’s asymmetrical shoulders and Lucy’s limp in The Moonstone; some are severe, like Miserrimus Dexter’s inborn deformity of having no lower limbs in The Law and the Lady. However, unlike the freak shows that intended to build charged spectacles, Collins’s novels do not merely apply the excitement of seeing physical strangeness to attract his readers. Neither do his novels follow the Victorian convention of desexualizing people with disabilities. Collins exposes the essential predicament of characters with bodily deformity is being disabled not by their physicality, but by society. Inspired by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theory of staring, this essay aims to reinterpret the mutual staring between disabled characters and the world around them. The disabled characters develop distinct staring strategies, which reveal the possibility and impossibility of interpersonal relationship stemming from staring.