從假紳士到投資者：狄更斯《遠大前程》中的資本擁有者

From Assuming Gentlemanship to Managerial Investment: Emergent Identity of a Capital Owner in ''Great Expectations''

本文透過聚焦艾伯．麥格維奇此一角色，企圖探討狄更斯小說《遠大前程》（1860－1861）中所呈現資本、物件與個人成長之間錯綜複雜的關係。在此作品中，狄更斯一方面再現十九世紀初期嚴酷金融管制所帶來的肅殺文化，描寫種種對金融犯的懲罰技術，諸如終生監禁、流放（transport）至殖民地等，皆反映出當時嚴厲的金融法規，另一方面也間接傳達十九世紀五○年代金融改革開放後衍生個人對參與資本投資獲利的樂觀期待。同時，小說暗指個人應避免過度擁抱物件，方能保有一定的能動性。《遠大前程》從面對擁有物件帶來的恐懼，過渡到個人透過與物件保持彈性距離（detachment）的技術。透過詮釋《遠大前程》，本文企圖增進瞭解十九世紀中期的英國小說如何作為理解經濟人（homoeconomicus）身處的變動時代的媒介。

This research studies Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, applying the perspective enabled by theoretical advances of things studies to map the position of mid-Victorian novels like this in the process of making one into a specimen of ”homo economicus”. This novel is read against the background of the transition from home economics to market society. In the harrowing guilt of his being a fake gentleman, the protagonist reveals to us a cultural logic of the early nineteenth century: the overwhelming presence of manufactured things and the instability of social class boundaries are pressed into the myth of the fake gentleman. The characterization of a convict Abel Magwitch, a victim of a fake gentleman, but then owner of enormous capital profits based on his own hard work, allows the novel to challenge the repressive control of finance and resultant criminalization of lower-class citizens during the early nineteenth century. While promoting the possibility that even a lower-class person is entitled to benefits of capital, this novel also implicitly seeks to regulate the use of capital so as to manage potential risks that it might bring about. The techniques of regulation found in this novel, including policing proprietorship and altruistic capital investment, would in turn help envision a person who enjoys economic freedom without negative impacts of capital. This reading of this novel could contribute to the larger project of understanding the complex relationship between finance and subjecthood in the modern history.