《荒涼山莊》遊歷「文明世界中心」的「野蠻」領域

Bleak House Traveling into the“Savage”Territory in“the Heart of a Civilized World”

本論文探討《荒涼山莊》的敘述如何運用旅行和探索「未開化」領域的形象，喚起人們對生活在其中的貧困和受壓迫的人們的恐懼和同情，並特別關注流動性和階級之間的關係。首先，我將比較亨利•梅休(Henry Mayhew)和查爾斯•狄更斯(Charles Dickens)關於倫敦黑社會之旅的新聞寫作，並檢視他們在使用語言描繪窮人時的相似之處。接下來，我將說明《荒涼山莊》中窮人的移民羣體如何構成對社會的威脅，以及中產階級的專業人士，如警長貝克特(Inspector Bucket)和愛倫•巫德寇特(Allan Woodcourt)，如何前往倫敦黑社會以遏制家中的「野人」。本節也會檢視女性版的專業管家，她在家庭領域中恢復並維持秩序。最後一節將探討小說中中產階級中另一個羣體--企業家的崛起，以及歷史的宏大敘事，即「進步」與「停滯」的對比。在整個討論過程中，本論文的重點在於中產階級霸權的建立過程如何與不同階級流動性的表現相關。

This essay examines how the narrative of Bleak House employs the image of travel and exploration into“uncivilized”territories to evoke both fear of, and sympathy toward, impoverished and downtrodden people living therein, with special focus on the relationship between mobility and class. First, I will compare the journalistic writings of Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens about the journey to the London underworld and examine the similarities in the use of language depicting the poor. Next, I will demonstrate how the migrant bodies of the poor constitute a threat to society in Bleak House and how the middle-class professionals, such as Inspector Bucket and Allan Woodcourt, travel into the London underworld to contain the“savages”at home. It also examines the female version of the professional housekeeper who restores and maintains order in the domestic sphere. The final section will look at the rise of another group within the middle class in the novel—the entrepreneurs—and the grand narrative of history, that is,“progress”as contrasted with“stoppage.”Throughout the discussion, this essay focuses on how the process of establishing middle class hegemony relates to the representation of the mobility of different classes.