Abstract

This article analyses Margaret Oliphant’s novel Hester (1883), arguing that it dramatizes a complex interplay of surplus labour, surplus capital, the figure of the surplus woman, and surplus jouissance. The central character, Hester, is read as a figure who embodies the surplus jouissance which is both necessary to and disruptive of modern capitalism, and which in the novel stands in opposition to the steady state of the respectable country bank, taken here to align with the Freudian pleasure principle. In support of this reading, the article traces a line from Hester back to the ‘surplus women debate’ of the 1850s and 60s, including Oliphant’s contribution to this debate in her 1858 article ‘The Condition of Women’. The novel itself is analysed through its epigraph, taken from a Charles Lamb poem of 1803, and through the multiple meanings of the concept of ‘chance’ which the text presents. My analysis proceeds by way of Freud, J. S. Mill, Marx and Lacan, finding that Lacan’s rereading of surplus labour as surplus jouissance ultimately provides the most productive way to read the text’s rearticulation of the surplus women problem.

中文翻译：

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“无与伦比的骄傲与喜悦”：从玛格丽特·奥利芬特的《海丝特》中的剩余女性问题到剩余婚姻

摘要

本文分析了玛格丽特·奥利芬特（Margaret Oliphant）的小说《海斯特》（Hester）（1883），认为它体现了剩余劳动力，剩余资本，剩余女性形象和剩余欢乐的复杂相互作用。中心人物海丝特（Hester）被认为是体现过时喜乐的人物，这既是现代资本主义必不可少的，又是对现代资本主义的破坏，在小说中，它与受人尊敬的国家银行的稳定状态背道而驰。弗洛伊德享乐原则。为了支持这种阅读，本文从Hester引出了一行回到1850和60年代的“剩余妇女辩论”，包括奥利潘特在1858年的文章《妇女的状况》中对这场辩论的贡献。小说本身是通过其摘自1803年查尔斯·兰姆（Charles Lamb）诗的题词，以及文本所呈现的“机会”概念的多种含义进行分析的。我的分析是通过弗洛伊德（Freud），JS米尔（JS Mill），马克思和拉康（Lacan）进行的，他们发现拉康将剩余劳动力重新解读为剩余的快乐，最终提供了阅读文本对剩余女性问题的重新诠释的最有生产力的方式。