ABSTRACT

From its publication in 1856 to the present-day Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman has intrigued readers in its representation of masculinity and potential to be read “aslant”, offering a divergent model of manliness, or even the “split consciousness” of the woman writer’s self-image refracted through her depiction of a cast of male characters (Showalter, 1975). Most recently Karen Bourrier has discussed the novel’s exploration of industry and invalidism as told through the narrative framework of an “intense homoerotic friendship between a strong man and his disabled friend” (Bourrier, 2015), and, in a 2007 article, Silvana Colella uses gift theory to demonstrate the intrinsic codes of gentlemanliness inherent in capitalist economics faithfully embodied in the text. This article considers Craik’s representation of men in the novel as a lens through which Craik could engage with, and question, some of the largest theoretical areas of nineteenth-century, male-dominated intellectual life: economics, science, and politics. The article begins with an examination of the novel in relation to Malthus’ economic theories of population and the tensions between Lamarckian and Malthusian ideology in the field of evolutionary theory in the works of Robert Chambers, George Drysdale, and others. The article will then explore the effect of Malthusian theory on discourses that emphasised masculine self-control as articulated in the symbiotic relationship of the two male protagonists, before concluding with Craik’s intervention in the history of the woman writer as woman writer. I will demonstrate how this enormously popular novel interrogated and intervened in the assumptions of sentimental fiction by contextualising Craik’s construction of a male narrative voice and an interdependent male relationship in terms of nineteenth-century economic, scientific, and political theoretical debates.

摘要

从1856年的出版物到今天的Dinah Mulock Craik的绅士约翰·哈利法克斯（John Halifax）借着男性气质和可能被“倾斜”表达的方式吸引了读者，提供了男子气概的多样化模型，甚至通过对男性角色的描写折射出女性作家自我形象的“分裂意识”（Showalter （1975年）。最近，Karen Bourrier通过“强壮的男人和他的残疾朋友之间的强烈同性友谊”的叙事框架讨论了小说对工业和无效主义的探索（Bourrier，2015年），而在2007年的一篇文章中，西尔瓦娜·科雷利亚（Silvana Colella）使用了礼物理论，忠实地体现了资本主义经济学中固有的绅士风度的内在规律。本文认为，克雷克在小说中对男人的描绘是克雷克可以与之互动并质疑的镜头。十九世纪男性主导的知识生活的一些最大理论领域：经济学，科学和政治。本文首先对与马尔萨斯的人口经济理论有关的小说以及罗伯特·钱伯斯，乔治·德赖斯代尔等人的进化论领域中拉马克和马尔萨斯意识形态之间的紧张关系进行了考察。然后，本文将探讨马尔萨斯主义理论对强调男性自我控制的话语的影响，该话语在两位男性主角的共生关系中得到阐明，然后得出克拉克对女性作家作为女性作家的历史进行干预的结论。