「家中外人」：薄雯的《最後的九月》

“Strangers in the house”: Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September

在愛爾蘭文藝復興運動期間，文人每每以「家中外人」凝聚國族意識、抵抗英國統治者，其出生於愛爾蘭的後裔更成為少數統治者，他們對被統治者的恐懼，常以志怪文學形式表達。薄雯（Elizabeth Bowen）的小說《最後的九月》（The Last September）見證愛爾蘭新教權貴因1920年間愛爾蘭獨立戰爭而滅絕的伊始，也有志怪元素，不過以其寫作技巧，素來被定位為現代主義作品或志怪大屋小說，兩者其實可並行不悖。有鑑於此，本文結合歷史脈絡、精神分析和解構主義，藉由薄雯在散文中所呈現的新教權貴困境，探討《最後的九月》如何融合寫實與鬼魅元素，以獨特的文體呈現族群淪為「家中外人」的創傷，並為新教志怪文學注入新血。

“Strangers in the house,” as a trope, had been employed by Irish cultural nationalists to congeal national consciousness against the English ruler and, by extension, his Irish-born progeny, or the Protestant Ascendancy. As the minority ruler, the Ascendancy developed a paranoiac fear toward the ruled, a fear finding expression in the Gothic. Witnessing the demise of the Ascendancy during the Irish independence war in 1920, Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The Last September also celebrates the Gothic, even though it has recourse to modernist techniques as well, thereby inviting its reception as a Big House gothic novel or a modernist text. In view of this critical divide, this paper adopts a historical approach in conjunction with psychoanalysis and deconstruction to explore the way The Last September represents the Protestant Ascendancy’s trauma as the dying class lapses into “strangers in the house.” As this theme is executed in a style which fuses realism and gothic elements, the novel regenerates the Protestant Gothic.