Aesthetics and Gender in Modern Society: Eighteenth-century Britain

在十八世纪和十九世纪初的英国，在与崇高和风景如画的美学范畴的关系中，旅行写作和哥特式小说在读者中盛行，不少女性试图将美学语言（美学话语）挪用​​和内化，不仅作为读者/消费者，而且作为作家/生产者。但在这个时期，女性传统上被视为审美对象（凝视的对象），并被视为主流美学理论将“有品味的男人”定义为受过教育、拥有财产的绅士的陪衬。因此，不少女作家对于自己作为审美主体（凝视主体）的定位，在描写自然风光或异国风光以及在那里生活、工作的人们时感到不安，容易偏离风景美学的标准语言。通过我的研究，特别是对他们的旅行著作的研究，我发现这种偏差是他们的共同特征之一。 M. W. Montague女士（土耳其）、Janet Shaw（西印度群岛）、Helen Maria Williams（法国大革命时期）、Ann Radcliffe（荷兰和德国）、Mary Shelley（德国和瑞士）等。我想说的是，这些游记正在重新审视沉思概念等美学惯例，暴露其既得利益，并通过其偏差或（看似）不一致，从阶级、种族和性别的角度揭示现代美学理论的社会和政治逻辑。

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth Britain, where, in the relationship to aesthetic categories of the sublime and picturesque, Travel writings and Gothic novels were prevailing among the reading public, not a few women have tried to appropriate and internalize the language of aesthetics (aesthetic discourse), not only as readers/consumers but also as writers/producers. But in this period, woman was conventionally regarded as an aesthetic object (an object gazed) and as a kind of foil against which the main stream aesthetic theory defined the 'man of taste' as an educated, property-owning gentleman. So several woman writers felt uneasiness in their positioning as aesthetic subjects (gazing subjects), describing the natural scenery or exotic landscape and the people living and working there, and were apt to deviate from the standard language of the aesthetics of landscape. I found this deviation to be one of common characters among them, through my research especially into their travel writings, e.g. Lady M. W. Montague (Turkey), Janet Shaw (West Indies), Helen Maria Williams (France in its Revolutionary period), Ann Radcliffe (Holland and Germany), Mary Shelley (Germany and Switzerland) and so on. I would like to argue that these travel writings are reexamining aesthetic conventions such as the concept of contemplation, exposing its vested interests, and reveal the social and political logic of the modern aesthetic theory from the points of class, race and gender, through their very deviation or (seeming) inconsistency.