女人的船屋與男人的牛車─探析沈從文〈丈夫〉和呂赫若〈牛車〉二文中「典妻賣淫」訊息及訊息言說的方式

Abstract

沈從文〈丈夫〉一文撰作於1930 年，呂赫若〈牛車〉一文則寫作於1935年。這兩篇名家名作遙隔海峽兩岸，撰作容或有其不同的託寓面向，諸如沈從文或從「鄉下人意識」和「原始情欲」兩橛，省思現代化侵蝕下的不安定人性構圖；呂赫若則是身處日殖情境，而觸及現代性、殖民性與本土性的多重糾葛，然而審諸兩作卻不約而同地將書寫情節指向「典妻賣淫」的現象，藉以揭現彼時中國鄉村與台灣農村社會背景概況。二文無論是在處理社會階級、女性位置、性別政治，或是面對彼時現代化與鄉土矛盾，所表呈個體生命存在樣態，以及因應現代社會變革而產生新的社會網絡等等書寫訊息時，皆隱然浮現饒有意味的互文性對話。本文所欲處理者並不在於從「關懷女性」的視點，探究作者關乎父／夫權的文化意識型態，本論文所著意者乃在於〈丈夫〉、〈牛車〉二作中，「船屋」和「牛車」綰結「典妻賣淫」的表意結構，除了昭示出鄉下人在社會朝向現代流變過程中的人生哀樂，似乎也可視為作者所投射的某一種社會意識型態和社會符號秩序。兩篇小說中的船屋和牛車，皆非只具有普通交通工具或實用農具機物的本質性功能與意義，而是顯豁地佔據一個主導性的訊息言說位置，並且作為所傳達訊息的一種延伸義─「女人的船屋」和「男人的牛車」。援此，兩篇小說將被視為一個廣義再現系統的一部分：「女人的船屋」是再現地方與性別的空間場；而「男人的牛車」則表徵歷史與階級的象徵物。

Shen Cong-Wen’s “Husband” was written in 1930 and Lyu He-Ruo’s “Oxcart” was written in 1935. Despite the fact that these two well-known works containing their respective metaphors were respectively written in China and Taiwan, they both address the authors’ concerns about ‘pawning wives to brothels’, which reveal social contexts of rural China and agricultural Taiwan, and create a meaningful inter-textual conversation. Rather than writing from “concerns about women” or investigating patriarchal ideology in these writings, this paper emphasizes on the plots of “pawning wives to brothels” where “boathouse” and “oxcart” seem to reflect certain types of social ideology and social symbolic orders. The boathouse and the oxcart are not merely methods of transport or practical agricultural tools; they obviously take leading roles in the discourse of the fictions, and elaborate on messages of “women’s boathouse” and “men’s oxcart”. Therefore, the fictions are a part of a broader reproduction system: “women’s boathouse” reconstructs space of local and gender and “men’s oxcart” symbolizes history and class.