ABSTRACT This article re-investigates the conventional relationship between the Victorian hearth and women in Dickens’s Great Expectations and Hard Times. The Victorian hearth is ideologically tied with meanings of social and familial stability; a place that also signifies patriarchal hegemony and togetherness. However, the hearth and its bodiless, anti-spatial fire go beyond this definition by escaping traditional gendered representations of patriarchy and instigating meanings of sexual transgression for suppressed women. To female subjects of the Victorian household, the hearth remains a mobile site of constant re-birthing of passion and confrontation with masculinised spaces and their implied moral superiority. This confrontation subverts unyielding patriarchal systems such as Thomas Gradgrind’s factual indoctrination in Hard Times. The article also discusses scenes of contemplation and self-immolation via the consuming hearth fire, and finally suggests that smoke functions as a sign of corporeal transformation of the female subject. If smoke expresses the language of factories and denotes a Victorian culture of industrialisation and facticity, it also implies women’s violent rebellion and re-signifies their powerful return as immaterialised spirits to socially-monitored spaces of passion, freedom and subjectivity. Smoke functions as a denial of Victorian patriarchal views on education, women’s roles, morality and the gendering of spaces.

中文翻译：

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“否则他们会打破他们的壁炉——道德上的女人”：阅读壁炉之火和狄更斯女性

摘要 本文重新研究了狄更斯的《远大前程》和《艰难时期》中维多利亚时代的壁炉与女性之间的传统关系。维多利亚时代的壁炉在意识形态上与社会和家庭稳定的含义联系在一起；一个也象征着父权霸权和团结的地方。然而，壁炉及其无形的、反空间的火超越了这个定义，它逃避了父权制的传统性别表征，并为受压抑的女性煽动了性侵犯的意义。对于维多利亚时代家庭的女性主体而言，壁炉仍然是一个不断重生激情和对抗男性化空间及其隐含的道德优越感的活动场所。这种对抗颠覆了不屈不挠的父权制度，例如 Thomas Gradgrind 在困难时期的事实灌输。文章还讨论了通过燃烧的炉火进行沉思和自焚的场景，并最终提出烟雾是女性主体肉体转变的标志。如果烟雾表达了工厂的语言并代表了维多利亚时代的工业化和现实主义文化，那么它也暗示着女性的暴力反抗，并重新象征着她们作为非物质精神的强大回归，回归受社会监督的激情、自由和主观空间。烟雾的作用是否认维多利亚时代对教育、女性角色、道德和空间性别化的父权观念。如果烟雾表达了工厂的语言并代表了维多利亚时代的工业化和现实主义文化，那么它也暗示着女性的暴力反抗，并重新象征着她们作为非物质精神的强大回归，回归受社会监督的激情、自由和主观空间。烟雾的作用是否认维多利亚时代对教育、女性角色、道德和空间性别化的父权观念。如果烟雾表达了工厂的语言并代表了维多利亚时代的工业化和现实主义文化，那么它也暗示着女性的暴力反抗，并重新象征着她们作为非物质精神的强大回归，回归受社会监督的激情、自由和主观空间。烟雾的作用是否认维多利亚时代对教育、女性角色、道德和空间性别化的父权观念。