著者
藤森 かよこ Kayoko Fujimori
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.21, pp.55-82, 2007-03-15

What is called "American feminism" in this article means liberal feminismor radical feminism. Many critics, especially French ones such as ElizabethBadinter and Emmanuel Todd, underestimate American feminism in the pointthat its pro-violence tendency hinders feminism from its mature developmentand further prevalence. This article does not share their view. As explainedlater, the pro-violence attitude of American feminism might be able to present aprototype of "a citizen of the world" in the coming (?) borderless, post-nationstatesworld promoted by globalization. Here "globalization" does not mean thelatest stage of American imperialism. Here globalization is "the process of increasinginterconnectedness between societies such that events in one part ofthe world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away."It is true that not a few of American feminists regard violence as one of theiroptions to protect themselves. American radical feminists such as Naomi Wolfand D. A. Clarke assert that women should not hesitate to counterattack againstdomestic violence and other sexual violence. Paxton Quigley recommendswomen's owing guns against crimes. Martha McCaughey, a physical feminist, advocateswomen's going into training in martial arts for self-defense. The NationalOrganization for Women (NOW), which is a representative of liberal feminists inUSA, is positive about woman soldiers' service in war battles for national defense.Yet they are not especially pro-violent, because their attitude is necessarilyresulted from American core values.Some American feminists regard their position as "militia" or contemporarycitizen soldiers. Militia is a military force that engages in a rebel or terrorist activitiesin opposition to a regular army. Militiamen, ordinary people with theirown guns used for their hunting for food (never for pleasure) won the victory inthe American War of Independence, though some researches say that it is nothingbut a myth, not a historical fact. Myth or fact, in this point, militia symbolizesAmerican core values : freedom, independence, individualism, equality and democracy.Once American people feel that their "unalienable Rights, that amongthese are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" are threatened by others,governments or any organizations or individuals, they might be ready to use theirown weapons. Weapon ownership is a key aspect of citizenship under democraticgovernment for some American people. They believe that the Constitution ofthe United States of America supports their view.Certainly Amendment 2 of Bill of Rights enacted in 1791 says "A well regulatedMilitia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the peopleto keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The survey of ABC News in2002 shows that seventy three percent of the American citizens think thatAmendment 2 guarantees their right to keep and bear weapons for self defense.American people against gun control are not only what antigun critics call "gunenthusiasts." According to one research, gun owners believe that society is aviolent place; so they prepare for the possibility of doing violence themselves ;they view this position to be the most responsible one they have to take in relationto their own safety ; they are also aware that many oppressive governmentsdo not permit firearms to be owned by the general people, because gun ownershipcan potentially threaten the government through a citizens' revolt. SomeAmerican feminists share this view with gun owners.This article does not mean that American feminists' pro violence attitudeshould be positively considered because their views are resulted from Americancore values. Even if American feminists regard themselves as militiawomen,contemporary citizen soldiers, such kind of attitude can be called caricatural.There is a hypothesis that the peripheral members in a given society try to moreradically embody the society's most sweeping ideologies than the central members.American feminists who try to be regular citizens, never "second citizens",may be more stimulated to achieve American core values as completely as possible.We should notice that this kind of caricatural American feminists providesus with a prototype of a citizen of the coming world developed by globalization,where order in world politics emerges not from a balance of power among nationstatesbut from the interactions between many layers of governing arrangements.Nation-states demand its constituency to be subject to their policies andlaws, and in exchange for its subordination, they are supposed to offer their peoplebenefits and protection. But history has been showing the examples thatnation-states could be the worst oppressor and violator for people. However,globlization might permit people to traffic the many layers of governing institutions,depending on their own needs and profits. Then, nation-states will be ableto be optional, not fatal.The political philosophy of the coming, globalized world is the most radicalform of republicanism, also called civic humanism. The coming world might beable to be the most expanded republic, a new world order governed by and forthe people. Then, people will not be able to rely on nation-states as their protectors,if people don't want state interference. In other words, future citizens ofthe world must be ready to be citizen soldiers, caricatured form of militia,"American feminists." As citizens of a republic, American feminists who premisethat they can't trust the government and its agents, do not invite the state to beresponsible for their safety, even though dependency is so seductive.Some people wonder if such a world can be the greatest prison, the mostelaborate "Matrix" controlled by invisible power. Whether the biggest republic,the new world order may be utopian dystopian, a pro-violent, pro-counterattackAmerican feminist is a prototype of a citizen of the post-nation-states world.
著者
藤森 かよこ Kayoko Fujimori
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.24, pp.115-136, 2010-03-19

This paper aims to demonstrate the logical affinity between gender feminists and Libertarians by clarifying and reconsidering the exact connotation of "gender." Now it is a common knowledge to distinguish sex as the biological state of being male and female from "gender" as the socially and culturally constructed state of being male or female. However, by the end of 1990s, as Joan Wallach Scott says in the preface to the revised edition of Gender and the Politics of History, "gender" in generally accepted usage had become something quite different from what it really means. Some regard "gender" as a synonym for the differences between the sexes. Some think that "gender" denotes the social rules imposed on men and women. Some misunderstand that gender feminists aim to eliminate the difference between men and women. Some warn that gender feminists attack manhood, womanhood, masculinity, femininity, fatherhood, motherhood, heterosexuality, marriages and family values. These misinterpretations are caused by their failure to grasp the exact meaning of gender concept. The earliest meanings of "gender" were "kind," "sort" and "type or class of noun." Since the 14th century the word gender has been used as a grammatical term, referring to the classes of nouns and pronouns in Latin, French, Greek, German, Russian and other languages designated as masculine, feminine, neuter and common. In other words, "gender" is a way to recognize things by classifying them. We cannot see innumerable things as they are. To categorize them to classes according to shape, size, color and other distinctions is the first step for human beings to perceive the world. However, this perception is a judgment based on an illusion. In fact, properties, numbers and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. Only particular, individual objects exist. To classify things never leads us to know them, since we cannot have a true appreciation of all attributes that an individual thing has. Thus we can safely say as follows : Once you know that gender is "the knowledge that establishes meanings for bodily difference," we are necessarily induced to accept nominalism that universals or general ideas are mere names or inventions without any corresponding reality. That's why gender feminists have been resisting the consolidation of women into homogeneous categories. Such gender feminists are destined to become Libertarians. Libertarianism has a greater affinity for a nominalistic view about human existence than any other political thoughts, since it advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action. Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary. All schools of Libertarianism take a skeptical view of "the common good," though they embrace viewpoints across a political spectrum, ranging from pro-property to anti-property (sometimes phrased as "right" versus "left"), from minarchist to openly anarchist. Libertarians share the notion that "the common good of a collective-a race, a class, a state-was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men," as Ayn Rand, one of representative Libertarian thinkers, says in The Fountainhead, her novel. This is why Libertarians hold that activities such as drug use and prostitution that arguably harm no one but the participants should not be illegal ; people are free to choose to live any kind of life on their own risks on condition that their activities never violate other people's rights. Thus gender /Libertarian feminists refuse the general, collective image of women as victims and the oppressed. They seek to celebrate or protect the individual woman. They encourage women to take full responsibility for their own lives. They also oppose any government interference into the choices adults make with their own bodies, because they contend that such interference creates a coercive hierarchy and suppresses the individual woman.
著者
小野 良子
出版者
桃山学院大学
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.28, pp.5-35, 2014-03-18

Introduction 1. Feminine Mystique: American women in 1950s 2. The Second Wave of Feminist Movement: American women in 1960s 3. Hollywood Shakespeare and its Artistic Limitation: Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew Conclusion Notes Bibliography This paper is an attempt to examine whether the feminist movements of the 1960s had a particular impact on Franco Zeffirelli's filmed production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1967. The play was first performed on Elizabethan stage and reflected gender politics of the Elizabethan age. The story portrayed the process how the shrew was instructed and molded to the ideal wife by her newly wedded husband. Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew created the taming plot as comedy with a happy ending of the married couple. Zeffirelli's Shakespearean comedy expected an utterly different audience living in the age of women's liberation. The feminist's movement prompted re-evaluation of the existing social framework authorized by the patriarchal ideology. Zeffirelli's adaptation was a farcical comedy with an ambiguous ending, presenting both the latest feminist's reading and antifeminist backlash on screen. Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew was never an academic reproduction of Shakespearean work, but a Hollywood commodity that sells Shakespeare for huge commercial profits.
著者
永野 芳郎 Yoshio NAGANO 桃山学院大学文学部
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.9, pp.5-33, 1994-12-20

The modern history began with the revolt of individual selfconsciousness against social pressure, which in turn led to the development of new types of unfettered thinking and behaviour. Thus, one way or other, language art was to go parallel with it: namely, increasing efforts came to be made toward the possible way individual consciousness should be communicated verbally. It is the so-called psychological novel that was then timed to meet the deeply-felt desire. Itself a product of new ages, however, the attempt to introduce the unmasking of innermost reality like 'mental movement' into the province of literature may well largely depend upon the progress in the world of science, particularly of the human mind. Yet it should be noted that most of the psychological novels in the earlier stage dealt with the human mind not so much in the light of its mobile proceeding as in the classical way of thought according to which 'mind' is left to its natural inclination and, not infrequently, an extreme manner to take the human mind as something predetermined in its course was no doubt enforced by the naturalistic view at its best. The course of time, meanwhile, came across an American psychologist at the end of the last century whose penetration was, far from being fin-de-siecle, quite fresh in that he compared the dynamic continuity of consciousness to a flowing state, thus putting forward the 'stream of consciousness' theory: William James was his name. The turn of the century found out a French philosopher who tried to raise the concept of consciousness up to the metaphysical level by calling it the 'pure duration' (duree pure) in his own fashion. Here we see that this theory of Bergson's is literally epoch-making on account of his attempt to get insight into, and cognition of, reality in its phase of duration, not in the static phase, which is in diametrical opposition to a majority of philosophical views since Plato's. It is equally worthy of note that the cognition of psychic reality, especially of consciousness, was more substantialised by two of his contemporaries, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, both of whom, being psychiatrists, carried out fruitful investigations into the human subliminal world by means of psychoanalysis. Consequently, the impact of their thoughts upon the world of letters was of such particular significance that without calling their achievements to mind, many modern psychological fictions would remain mere puzzles to decipher. Then what matters most for men of letters, in so far as they are more or less aware of it, will be the question if they could be bold enough to disclose all the undercurrent of private consciousness by casting off the yoke of linguistic convention. Nevertheless, such an undertaking admittedly forces them to defy it at the cost of intelligibility. At this point they are brought between the horns of dilemma, but they must needs break the deadlock. It will stand to reason that endless difficulty is involved in the linguistic presentation of such polydimensional reality with temporal continuity and spatial expanse as the stream of consciousness. In reference to this type of fiction, all the possible devices have been ever since invented by many writers to find their way through that language barrier, of which the most popular is a technique called the 'interior monologue'. Setting aside everything about such formal contrivances, of great importance, in terms of what matters linguistically, is the proper use of the verbal tenses which may be considered ultimately contingent upon a speaker's mental attitudes. The present tense invariably stands for the psychological present, and the past, including the pluperfect and others serves for a medium by which to picture consciousness in the form of recollection. The differentiation between the 'progressive form' (to be better termed 'imperfect' or else 'expanded') and the simple form in the English verbal system may be considered to be of great utility for a writer in that language. In this monograph more than three score of apt instances are given to illustrate the possible extent to which the progressive form was employed by the British writer, Virginia Woolf in two of her fictions, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. It will be seen clearly how this unique verbal form is, so to speak, sensitive to the writer's strong desire to bring the dynamics of mind into bold relief.
著者
小野 良子
出版者
桃山学院大学
雑誌
英米評論 = English review (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.28, pp.5-35, 2014-03

Introduction 1. Feminine Mystique: American women in 1950s 2. The Second Wave of Feminist Movement: American women in 1960s 3. Hollywood Shakespeare and its Artistic Limitation: Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew Conclusion Notes Bibliography This paper is an attempt to examine whether the feminist movements of the 1960s had a particular impact on Franco Zeffirelli's filmed production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1967. The play was first performed on Elizabethan stage and reflected gender politics of the Elizabethan age. The story portrayed the process how the shrew was instructed and molded to the ideal wife by her newly wedded husband. Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew created the taming plot as comedy with a happy ending of the married couple. Zeffirelli's Shakespearean comedy expected an utterly different audience living in the age of women's liberation. The feminist's movement prompted re-evaluation of the existing social framework authorized by the patriarchal ideology. Zeffirelli's adaptation was a farcical comedy with an ambiguous ending, presenting both the latest feminist's reading and antifeminist backlash on screen. Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew was never an academic reproduction of Shakespearean work, but a Hollywood commodity that sells Shakespeare for huge commercial profits.
著者
野原 康弘 Yasuhiro Nohara 桃山学院大学経営学部
出版者
桃山学院大学総合研究所
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.17, pp.49-78, 2002-12-20

Traditionally people usually recognize adverbs by the commonest suffix -ly : absolutely, abruptly, absently, accurately, etc. There are many adverbs, however, which are not recognizable in this way : indeed, now, often, soon, etc. And there are also a lot of adjectives which have the same suffix -ly (which is called 'adjectival -ly'): brotherly, friendly, ugly, weekly, etc. And some adverbs have two forms, each of which has a different meaning : dear
著者
野原 康弘 Yasuhiro Nohara
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.17, pp.49-78, 2002-12-20

Traditionally people usually recognize adverbs by the commonest suffix -ly : absolutely, abruptly, absently, accurately, etc. There are many adverbs, however, which are not recognizable in this way : indeed, now, often, soon, etc. And there are also a lot of adjectives which have the same suffix -ly (which is called ‘adjectival -ly’): brotherly, friendly, ugly, weekly, etc. And some adverbs have two forms, each of which has a different meaning : dear
著者
出原 博明 Hiroaki DEHARA
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.11, pp.93-120, 1996-12-20

The purpose of this paper is to make clear the relation and meaning of the countryhouse at Gardencourt to Isabel Archer. Into the story come a number of houses, but only four of them actually concern the heroine; they are the countryhouse at Gardencourt, Isabel's grandmother's house in Albany, and Osmond's lodging places in Florence and Rome respectively. Osmond's houses are much more refined and decorated than the other two. However, they are closed to the world. For instance, his villa in Florence is described as 'having heavy lids but no eyes', and his Palazzo Roccanera in Rome, as 'the house of suffocation.' The American house in Albany is not open to the world, either. The way Isabel lives there is to enclose herself to the corner of a room and devote herself to reading books and reverie, without opening its door which would give access to the outside. Mr. Touchett's estate at Gardencourt is not very closed to the world though it makes much of privacy. It shows no decadence but religious aspiration after Heaven, one of the characteristics of Gothic architecture. It was built under Edward the 6th, of early Tudor style, honoured by the great Elizabeth's overnight stay, bruised in Cromwell's wars, and remodelled in the 18th century. The house may tell a lot about its master. Mr. Touchett is mentally healthy though he is fatally ill. He preserves his identity as an American well, both in his appearances and frame of mind. His estate, with its aestheticism, its honourable history, its religious symbolism of early Tudor style, and without any decoration of vanity, suggests the master's way of life, and that of Ralph, his son, who, cynical, is also mentally healthy in spite of his crucial illness. Mr. Osmond has completely lost his identity as an American and he belongs nowhere. Neither his looks nor his spirit holds any nationality. He is rootless. Osmond's villa in Florence and his Palazzo Roccanera in Rome represent what their master is; he, who is an egotistic aesthete, sensitive and clever, turns his back on the real world and collects curios; he is a snob to a T, full of pretension and vanity. Osmond, who is nearly 20 years older than Isabel, entraps her into marrying him and encloses her in his Palazzo Roccanera as if she were one of his collected curios. When Ralph's illness becomes critical, Isabel returns to Gardencourt to see him, in the teeth of her husband's threats. One of her motives for this is to be reconciled with him, that is, to confess to him that her married life is miserable and that she was wrong in marrying Osmond against Ralph's objection. Another motive to drive her into returning there is her nostalgia for Gardencourt. Psychologically speaking, Gardencourt could be a real home for her. Only this place makes her feel herself most relaxed, and enlivened. This is the place from which she jumps into the abysses of life, and comes back again, exhausted with its hardships. Now she is a grown-up woman, mentally well developed, quite different from that romantic girl who had very little knowledge of real life when she showed herself to us for the first time at Gardencourt several years ago. She likes Gardencourt best of all the houses in the story, feeling a greatest affinity for it. However, Gardencourt is not hers legally, and so it is very difficult for such a self-reliant woman as she to indulge herself with Ralph's kindness and live there for ever. As it is, she has to return to Rome, partly to defend herself against Casper Goodwood, her persevering wooer. Yet, Gardencourt remains in her mind an affinity most comfortable and most soothing. Even Mme Merle, who is Osmond's mistress-conspirator, confesses to Isabel that dear old Gardencourt is the house in which she would have liked best to live.
著者
吉田 一穂 Kazuho Yoshida
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.17, pp.127-142, 2002-12-20

Many literatures, pictures, photographs of the Victorian age show that the contemporaries were interested in childhood, and the novels of Charles Dickens also show that he was interested in it. Dickens’s interest in childhood, was related to his experience in his own childhood ; John Dickens, Charles's father, was a cheerful person but he had no sense of economy. He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison, and Charles had to work at Warren’s Blacking warehouse, which gave him an agony and despair. Dickens's childhood experience in the Warren's Blacking warehouse made him feel that his own childhood had come to an abrupt end, and that he had been prematurely exposed to adult responsibilities and independence. Dickens had suffered from the trauma and expressed his view of childhood in his novels. Dickens represented the ill treatment of workhouse to children in Oliver Twist. The children suffered from the hunger. The poor relief and the New Poor Law of 1834 were the highly topical subjects when Dickens took them up in Oliver Twist, and his related sense of outrage at the misery of pauper children brought up in baby farms and adults living in workhouses remained strong right through to the end of his life. Oliver who says, “Please, sir, I want some more”, is treated like a criminal. Oliver barely escapes being apprenticed to a chimney sweeper. Dickens showed that the children of chimney sweeper were ill treated and connects such children to “the image of child coming home to heaven”, as William Blake (1757-1827) did in “The Chimney Sweeper”. Dickens expressed his feeling toward the children as victims of his age by ‘the image of children coming home to heaven’, relating Oliver's destiny to a workhouse, a chimney sweeper, an undertaker, and a criminal.
著者
青木 啓治 Keiji Aoki
雑誌
英米評論 = English Review (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.7, pp.25-63, 1993-01-29

The problem of how to interpret the final scene of Shakespeare's The Two Gentleman of Verona has long been discussed but has yet to be convincingly solved. In that scene, Valentine catches his friend Proteus trying to seduce his love Silvia and blames him for his betrayal; but because his friend deeply regrets his crime, Valentine not only forgives him but also, to show his friendship to be true, is willing to surrender his love to him. This attitude of his has been made a focus of criticism; critics think it psychologically unnatural, cruel for Silvia, and absurd because Proteus is a worthless friend. Against such criticism, however, some critics have defended Valentine's behaviour on the ground that it reflects the traditional medieval idea that friendship is above love, which is the central theme of Shakespeare's source. In the tenth story of the Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio, Gisippus renounces all his interests in his betrothed Sophronia and gives her to his great friend Titus, who has passionately loved her; in medieval morality, a true friend should not scruple to do anything to show his friendship. Shakespeare seems to have known Boccacio's story through The Governor by Thomas Elyot; and the book is clearly one of his main sources, for Valentine, Proteus, and Silvia in his play correspond respectively to Gisippus, Titus, and Sophronia; and moreover even Valentine's speech to express his renunciation of Silvia is similar to that of Gisippus to renounce Sophronia. The main plot of the play consists of the story of Proteus and his betrothed Julia, who in the disguise of a page, goes to Milan where he is staying, and serves him, watching over his behavior. Shakespeare derived that story from Diana Enamorada by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese poet, and by creating Valentine, Proteus' great friend, introduced into the play the friendship theme based on that of Gisippus and Titus. The problem, however, is that Proteus' character is portrayed much less favourably than Titus'. In the case of the two friends of The Governor, they are united by so deep a friendship that Titus becomes ill by trying to suppress his passion of love for his friend's fiancee; in contrast to this, Proteus, to win his friend's betrothed Silvia, reveals to the Duke, her father, Valentine's plan to elope with her, and consequently his friend is banished. Many critics, therefore, think it foolish of Valentine to surrender his love to such a worthless friend, and in this behaviour of his, they perceive Shakespeare's satire against the medieval conception of masculine friendship. For example, Hereward T. Price thinks Valentine's 'foolish' character to be consistent in the play, and Clifford Leech, the Arden editor of this play, agreeing to such a critical trend, thinks that Julia's swoon when she hears Valentine's famous speech is a conscious action by her to protest against his absurd attitude. However, is her swoon really a conscious performance? On the contrary, did not Shakespeare intend in it a comical effect like that of Rosalind's swoon in IV. iii of As You Like It? When I consider the problems of this play, what seems strange to me is that there should have been no critics who have noticed the ironical effect of Julia's swoon. When she hears that speech of Valentine's it is psychologically natural that she should feel hopeless and fall down in shock. To the present writer, her swoon is felt to be ironical, because she has often in an aside commented satirically using her advantageous position of disguise. What I think to be the conclusive evidence of her swoon's not being a performance is that, before she falls down, she does not make any satirical comment in an aside as she usually does when she feels something to be absurd. It shows that she swoons from true shock and that Valentine's speech is meant not as a satire against the speaker or against the friendship convention, but as an irony against Julia and Silvia. It may be difficult for some critics to feel the irony against Silvia, for she is the symbol of constancy and also partly represents the author's attitude. But soon after her 'O heaven be judge how I love Valentine,……' in the final scene, when she sees her lover willing to offer her to his friend whom she detests, I cannot imagine that the ironist Shakespeare was not conscious of the irony. 'False, perjured' Proteus is justly punished by a satire, but both Julia and Silvia have so long and severely mocked him that the author, knowing the magic power of love, may have felt it proper as a balance of irony to give the women some shock by Valentine's speech. According to E. K. Chambers's chronology, this play was written in the same season of the same year as Love's Labour's Lost, where female mocks male in love. Therefore, the story of Gisippus giving his love Sophronia to Titus may have been attractive to shakespeare as an irony against women; and in adapting the story of Felismena in Diana Enamorada, he may from the start have had the plan to use Gisippus' speech of heroic friendship as a device to make Julia in the disguise swoon and reveal her identity. Anyhow, we must note, it is Valentine's speech which effectively works in ending the complication of the play; and this seems to disprove the theory that, in the speech of friendship, the author intends a satire against the speaker and the convention of masculine friendship. Shakespeare appears to be much interested in the ironical effects produced by Julia's disguise. In using such a technique, one of the most comical effects is produced when the character who is in disguise is placed in an embarrassing situation because of that disguise. Is not such an effect aimed at in Julia's swoon? It will have a great influence on the interpretation of Valentine's famous speech and therefore of the whole play, whether Julia's swoon is meant to be a conscious one or not. To examine this, however, it is necessary to study the play more carefully from the viewpoint of comic technique. What I want to stress in this essay is that, unless critics notice the irony of Julia's swoon, it will be difficult to solve the problems of this play.
著者
谷山 智彦 Tomohiko Taniyama 桃山学院大学文学研究科
出版者
桃山学院大学総合研究所
雑誌
英米評論 = English Review (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.24, pp.261-307, 2010-03-19

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is undoubtedly the most famous novel of Thomas Hardy's numerous works. The novel's shocking representations of woman's sexuality made it controversial in Victorian society, which, in turn, made the author more well-known. Through its fierce representations of sexuality, however, the novel revealed problems in Victorian culture surrounding morality, sexuality and marriage. In Victorian culture, women were confined by strict codes of etiquette regarding proper manners, clothing and behavior. Those concerned with sexuality, especially, were most serious. Women were thought of as faithful and asexual beings like pure angels. In the novel, Hardy challenged this view of woman by attempting to depict the truth. In the strictness of Victorian society, however, strict censorship in publishing world made it quite difficult to honestly represent women's sexuality. Hardy, therefore, chose to use metaphorical representations to depict it indirectly. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is filled with metaphorical representations. Representations of light and darkness, particularly, which surround the body of the main character, hold the most important function in the novel. Employing chiaroscuro Hardy visually emphasizes the bodily presence of characters. Meanwhile, he also uses the technique to depicts their emotions about corporeal problems. Through such characteristic expressions, the complex consciousness on the body and sexuality is revealed to readers. The novel's narrative lies in revealing the life of Tess, the history of her love affairs, and growing awareness of her sexuality. She was a woman loved by two very different men, Alec D'Urberville and Angel Clare. Her relationships with the two men awaken her to both the sexuality within her body, something she had never known before, and awareness of the guilt surrounding that awakening. The light and darkness is often used to express her suffering and conflict connected with sexuality. Alec is portrayed as Tess's seducer. He holds strong sexual desire for her physically, and through his strong lust, tries to dominate her. As ways of showing his desire, Alec stimulates her physically using means such as continually touching her body as well as teaching her to whistle. With such curious practices and experiences, her sexual sense of pleasure is awakened, visually emphasized with shining light. Tess is perplexed regarding such unknown bodily enjoyment. Feeling such pleasure, she suffers, bound by a moral consciousness of having violated the something inviolable. Conflicted, she also anxiously desires to be dominated by such pleasure Alec offers. Inevitably this anxiety brings her consciousness to a crisis. To defend her soul from the crisis Alec has brought, she sinks her soul into an abyss of darkness, secluding her consciousness from her body. In this way, she attempts to resist Alec's lust. Whenever he expresses his desire for her, by forcing her awareness away from her from body, she strives to protect the peace within herself. Such movement of consciousness is represented quite visually, especially in the scene where Alec forces himself upon her. Dramatic scenes such as this, which surround her, are darkened, when her soul is separated from her body. The darkness acts to express the absence of her soul in her body, and her will to resist against Alec's domination. Through her experience of life with Alec, she comes to know the forbidden pleasure of her sexual self and an awareness of guilt surrounding such feelings. She suffers through this conflict on sexuality. After the parting from Alec, she meets Angel Clare, a man of very different qualities compared to Alec. Angel is intellectual and philosophical, and Tess gradually becomes more fascinated with him. Her soul feels sympathy for his soul. But Angel also attempts to dominate her, not by bodily lust but by his ideas of womanhood. Though he is welleducated man, his mind is confined by a quite conservative view of women. In this the Victorian view, he idealizes Tess as a pure angelic woman. His desire for her reflects to the scenery of the place where they rendezvous. She is surrounded by misty twilight, the somber space making her appear like a goddess. For Tess, who now has experienced the corporeal pleasure and its sins, this was quite unacceptable. She, therefore, refuses to be the divine female. Her refusal is also represented visually. When she denies Angel's idealized image of herself, her bodily presence is emphasized by light representing her refusal. But she cannot help being attracted to Angel. Aware of her guilt, she feels lust for him. The sexual urge, which Alec awakened in her, pushes her on. She secretly longs for bodily contacts with Angel. Like Tess, Angel is also gradually fascinated by her corporeal beauty. Through such bodily desires they become attracted to each other. As with Alec, the lust between Tess and Angel is also represented by shining light. Light emphasizes the presence of their bodies and their beauty, implying the secret pleasure between them. For both Tess, however, who experienced both love and violation with Alec, and Angel, with his conservative view of women, the pleasure they share inevitably makes them conscious of guilty and suffering. After Tess confesses her secret past, the conflict and suffering over sexuality become decisive. For Angel, Tess's body, which experienced such raw sexuality with Alec, becomes an object of fear. Her sexuality, overwhelming his mind, is expressed by visually by light. Ironically, Tess's experience with Alec becomes the cause of Angel's mental anguish. After this incident, Tess is filled with a growing desire to take responsibility by destroying her sexual self to make Angel suffer. She unconsciously longs for death, but cannot kill herself because she also knows how much she enjoys sexual pleasure. The pleasure prevent her from leaving the body easily, filling her with ambivalent emotions about her sexual body. As a way of resolving this crisis within, Tess idealizes the darkness as a place of rest. The darkness diminishes her bodily senses to a minimum, bringing her an experience of pseudodeath, a temporal rest of mind. The darkness becomes a symbolic expression of her rest and liberation from the body. The last scene expresses this well, where Stonehenge is shrouded in darkness as Angel and Tess meet for their last rendezvous. The darkness symbolizes her rest and liberation, but is quite transient. As time passes, light inevitably intrudes into the darkened space, making her body visible and aware of its presence. Even in the last scene, the light flows into the darkness. Her rest is inevitably broken, indicating the cruel fact that as long as she lives, she cannot escape from the presence of her sexual body. Throughout the history of her love affairs with the two men, the use of chiaroscuro indicates Tess's conflict of mind and emotion over her sexuality. Her sexual sense or desire is metaphorically represented with light. The light strengthens the presence of her sexual body and reveals her hidden sexual desire for men. But feeling such pleasure, Tess suffers a guilty conscience. She feels ambivalent emotions concerning her body. To liberate herself from such suffering, she seeks to destroy her body believing it to be the cause of her distress. As a way to destroy her physical self, she longs for darkness. The darkness temporarily makes her body invisible and diminishes her bodily senses, allowing her to briefly experience bodily liberation and oblivion. Consequently, this becomes a metaphor for her mental rest. Through his expression of visible light and darkness, Hardy expresses visually for reader the suffering that women endured under the strict moral code of the Victorian era. His novel also spotlights the absurdity and double standard of Victorian oppression of sexuality on women.
著者
佐々木 英哲 Eitetsu Sasaki 桃山学院大学国際教養学部
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.26, pp.47-71, 2012-03-29

Sacvan Bercovitch has clarified in The Rites of Assent that American individualismhas had a share in consensus building and contributed to theAmericanization of society. This process is called the American Way. IfChillingworth the cuckold and Dimmesdale the paramour contribute together tothe American Way, why did the author hold an emotional and even a somewhatmorbid attachment to Chillingworth?The author lets the revengeful Chillingworth misuse the nineteenthcenturydomestic ideology that warned of the threat of that nameless horror representedby the bachelor, i.e., homosexual sex. Psychologically, the oldphysician confronts the minister as if he were blaming the latter for committinga deed likely to rouse the homophobic, i.e., forming an immature umbilical relationwith Hester, mother-goddess-like self-willed woman. To prevent the patriarchyhe stands on from backsliding into the pre-Oedipal Eros, and to preventthe basis of patriarchy, i.e., the compulsory heterosexuality, from breaking down,Chillingworth acts as the Law enforcing father. By actually living with the ministerDimmesdale on the pretext of treating his psychosomatic condition,Chillingworth creates the sacrosanct family, insinuates domestic ideology, behaveswithin Dimmesdale's psyche as a sacred father, or punishing super-ego,and thus preys on Dimmesdale with the Oedipal sense of guilt.In his observing eyes, however, Dimmesdale appears to reside in an enviablepatriarchic family-the family composed of the minister, Hester, and Pearl,the family exclusive of outsiders. According to Freud's theory of narcissism,Dimmesdale is, first, the model the physician wants to imitate, second, his opponent/ persecutor, and third, his homosexual lover. Chillingworth's homosexualstance is not, however, in conflict with the American Way, i.e., with the cause ofpreserving the androcentric society, because the heterosexual and the homosexualalike are prone to strive to maintain patriarchy.The author detected the common anxiety shared by the intelligent men ofthe seventeenth century like Chillingworth and the men of power of the nineteenthcentury like Hawthorne: the former were fearful of the antinomians who,like Hester, claimed thorough individualism and direct communication with God,and the latter were cautious against those who were influenced by the effect ofrevolutions in European countries around 1848, and those who imbibed radicalconcepts of freedom, including proto-feminism and the dismantling of the family.Therefore, the author lets Chillingworth protect the patriarchy and its foundationof the heterosexual norm and sexism-in a paradoxical way-by robbing him ofheterosexuality, letting him remain a bachelor, and uniting him homosexuallywith Dimmesdale.
著者
岡田 章子 Akiko Okada
雑誌
英米評論 = English Review (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.7, pp.123-138, 1993-01-29
著者
日下 隆平 Ryuhei Kusaka 桃山学院大学文学部
雑誌
英米評論 = ENGLISH REVIEW (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.17, pp.3-28, 2002-12-20

At the fin de siecle, the Celtic Revival was complex and multifaced movement, comprising a variety of approaches to the representation of Irish identity. In this paper, the influence of Matthew Arnold on the Celtic Revival will be mainly explored. He created a stereotyped image of the Celt as a “shy, sensitive and imaginative” race. The Irish people have greatly changed their image from what they used to be in the eighteenth century. The image of Irishman in England can be traced back to the age of Edmund Spenser and Jonathan Swift. Yahoo represents the savage people whom Jonathan Swift described in Gulliver's Travels (1726). The description of the Irishman as Yahoo was found in the cartoons and writings of the eighteenth century. Eiren, on the other hand, was a gloomy and beautiful woman, with long and dark hair. She was often drawn in the cartoons of the magazines at 1890s. The inclination for nostalgic representations of the Celt could be found in the figure of Eiren. In the first section, the discovery of the Celtic motif will be discussed in connection with the rise of Irish nationalism in the middle of the eighteenth century. The traditional Irish symbols such as the Celtic Cross, harp, and Irish wolfhound, will be referred in the poems and paintings. In the second section, I will deal with the image of the Irishman as Yahoo, in Gulliver's Travels and the cartoons of Punch. In the last section, the Celtic Revival and the transformation of the Irish image at the end of century will be discussed. The figure of Erin suggested Irish femininity itself. This figure of Erin cannot be separable from Arnold's opinion. As a critic points out, the Celt is a construct based on oppositions such as wild and tame, savage and civilized, or idealist and utilitarian. In this paper, an ambivalence in English attitude towards the Celt will be also explored.
著者
三宅 亨 Toru Miyake
雑誌
英米評論 = English Review (ISSN:09170200)
巻号頁・発行日
no.3, pp.1-31, 1991-01-25

Languages characteristically have regional varieties. The English language, being a world language, has several major national varieties. Thus the English spoken in Canada has its own distinct features as well as similarities to the varieties of English used in the United Kingdom and the United States. In this paper I try to clarify Canadian preference in pronunciation, based on a survey conducted with 74 Canadians. The results show that Canadian speech sometimes follows a dominant American pattern, sometimes the British usage, sometimes a mixed pattern, and sometimes its own. Canadians tend to pronounce such words as ate, tomato, leisure, and missile in the same way as most Americans do. Some of these words reflect features of 17th and 18th century English speech which have been retained in most of North America, including Canada, but changed over time in standard English. On the other hand, Canadians prefer British pronunciation in such words as ration, lever, soot and route. This can be partly ascribed to the fact that many Canadians have identified themselves more with Britons than with Americans since the American Revolution. However, the cultural and linguistic influence of the United States upon Canada has always been so strong that it is not surprising that Canadian speech shows a mixed pattern in such words as student, progress, schedule, etc. At the same time, Canadians have their unique pronunciation in such words as out, write, father, calm, vase, guarantee, almond, etc., most of which have been carried over from the days of the early 19th century immigrants from various parts of the British Isles, where phonological changes have long since taken place. It is interesting to observe how Canadian speech will change in the years to come under the constant strong influence of the giant to the south.