Pregnancy and the Novel: Representation and Concealment from Richardson to Hardy

怀孕与小说：从理查森到哈代的再现与隐藏

• 批准号: AH/W011204/1
• 负责人: Tracy Brain
• 金额: $ 18.66万
• 依托单位: Bath Spa University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW011204%2F1
• 关键词: Pregnancy; Novel; Representation; Concealment; Richardson

This project will be driven by my insights as a novelist who writes literary adaptations of eighteenth- and nineteenth century texts partly to explore the challenges of representing pregnancy in fiction. It will also be informed by my expertise as a literary critic who has long been fascinated by how those before me have responded to pregnancy, especially in the context of violence and other forms of external control. The project's major output will be an academic monograph, Pregnancy and the Novel: Representation and Concealment from Richardson to Hardy. This will draw on medical texts to illuminate the ways that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelists simultaneously hide and reveal problematic pregnancies and births. It will reveal a reciprocal influence between literature and science.My study of the techniques of Richardson, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickens and Hardy informs my own fiction, especially the ways they embed reproductive events, utilise first- and second-person point of view, and depict sensitive or taboo subject matter. The research will also consider the strategies by which the novelists who follow Richardson and precede the Brontes depict pregnancy. Smollett, Sterne, Burney, Lewis, Inchbald, Dacre, Austen and Scott frequently utilise an explicitness or euphemism in order to reflect a character's immodesty or morality. They develop Richardson's strategies for linking pregnancy time to story time, and utilise his techniques of misdirection so that pregnancy masquerades as other illnesses; in light of this, I have made similar experiments in my own novels.By reconstructing historical knowledge of reproductive medicine and utilising my novelist's habit of reverse engineering the writer's planting of clues, this project will uncover what can easily be missed by twenty-first century readers. The project will change and deepen our understanding of multiple scenes in all of these novels. A few examples will illustrate this. Numerous critics dismiss the possibility of pregnancy in Clarissa (1747-48) or at best attribute the heroine's symptoms to a nervous disorder (e.g. Wilt, Meek, and Lovett). Yet her fainting, weeping and delirium are straight out of contemporary midwifery textbooks. Anne Bronte uses the diary form and references to the seasons to track her heroine's pregnancy in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). In a clever feint, she describes pregnancy symptoms (a rush of blood, feeling 'ill' and 'unwell', being 'white in the face') that readers are primed to interpret as responses to distress and provocation (Ch. XXVII). Fanny's 'birth giving and death' in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) have been seen as 'significant narrative ellipses' by a critic (Bronfen, 1993, 70) who overlooked the milestones and posts that Fanny counts and leans against at 'intervals' (Ch. XL) as she struggles to reach the poorhouse, which are surely Hardy's way of writing his heroine's labour into the text.This project is original because it will recalibrate Richardson's legacy in light of a new understanding of his strategies for embedding pregnancy. It will break new ground by revealing how, after Richardson, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelists depict pregnancies and labours that are seemingly absent from their texts but are in fact present. The project will utilise creative methods to involve non-academics in the research and create impact, especially when it comes to ideas of pregnancy and control of our own bodies, and how the language around this might change. Public engagement materials will help pregnant women and birthing people to tell stories and reflect upon experiences, and be of use to advocacy organisations as well as literary societies. I will collaborate with medical practitioners, enhancing their well-being by leading a creative writing workshop for those who are interested in developing their own medical memoirs; and a specialist reading group on concealed pregnancy.

这个项目将由我的见解驱动，作为一个小说家谁写的文学改编的十八和十九世纪的文本部分探索的挑战，代表怀孕的小说。我作为一名文学评论家，长期以来一直对我之前的人如何应对怀孕感到着迷，特别是在暴力和其他形式的外部控制的背景下。该项目的主要产出将是一本学术专著，《怀孕与小说：从理查森到哈代的表现与隐蔽》。这将借鉴医学文本来阐明18世纪和19世纪小说家同时隐藏和揭示有问题的怀孕和分娩的方式。我对理查德森、勃朗特、艾略特、狄更斯和哈代的写作技巧的研究，尤其是他们如何嵌入生殖事件、如何利用第一和第二人称视角、如何描绘敏感或禁忌的主题，都为我的小说提供了启发。研究还将考虑理查森之后和勃朗特之前的小说家描绘怀孕的策略。斯摩莱特、斯特恩、伯尼、刘易斯、英奇博尔德、达克、奥斯汀和斯科特经常使用明确或委婉的说法来反映人物的不谦虚或道德。他们发展了理查森的策略，将怀孕时间与故事时间联系起来，并利用他的误导技术，使怀孕伪装成其他疾病;有鉴于此，我在自己的小说中也做了类似的实验，通过重构生殖医学的历史知识，利用小说家的习惯，对作家植入的线索进行逆向工程，这个项目将揭示二十一世纪的读者很容易错过的东西。该项目将改变和加深我们对所有这些小说中多个场景的理解。几个例子将说明这一点。许多评论家认为《克拉丽莎》（Clarissa，1747- 1748）中的女主人公可能怀孕，或者最多将女主人公的症状归因于神经紊乱（例如Wilt，Meek和Lovett）。然而，她的昏厥，哭泣和精神错乱是直接从当代助产教科书。安妮勃朗特在《怀尔德费尔庄园的房客》（1848）中使用日记的形式和季节的参照来记录女主人公的怀孕。她巧妙地伪装了一下，描述了怀孕的症状（一股血液，感觉“不舒服”和“不适”，“脸是白色”），读者们会把这些症状解释为对痛苦和挑衅的反应（第27章）。《远离尘嚣》（1874）中范妮的“生与死”被一位评论家视为“重要的叙事省略（布朗芬，1993年，70）谁忽略了里程碑和职位，范妮计数和倾斜在'间隔'（第四十章）当她挣扎着到达救济院时，这无疑是哈代将女主角的劳动写进文本的方式。这个项目是原创的，因为它将根据对理查森策略的新理解来重新调整理查森的遗产嵌入怀孕。它将通过揭示理查德森之后，18世纪和19世纪的小说家如何描绘似乎不在他们的文本中但实际上存在的怀孕和分娩来开辟新的天地。该项目将利用创造性的方法，让非学者参与研究并产生影响，特别是当涉及到怀孕和控制我们自己身体的想法时，以及围绕这一点的语言可能会发生变化。公众参与材料将帮助孕妇和产妇讲述故事和反思经历，并对倡导组织和文学协会有用。我将与医生合作，通过为那些有兴趣开发自己的医学回忆录的人领导一个创意写作研讨会来提高他们的福祉;以及一个关于隐蔽怀孕的专家阅读小组。