Ubiquitous Paper in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend

本論文自新物質主義（New Materialism）和物理論（thing theory）出發，旨在探討查爾斯・狄更斯兩部晚期小說《遠大前程》及《我們共同的朋友》中，紙的物質性（materiality）和能動性（agency）。我提出紙乃此兩本小說敘事的基礎，並且是產生能動性的主動施為者（active actant）。 我首先爬梳十九世紀關於紙的物理性、製造、及快速繁增的討論，為要驗證維多 利亞時期對於「無所不在的紙」的焦慮。第一章論述《遠大前程》中人類對紙的 誤釋，將紙按照不同的能動性，分類為揭露事物、建立及破壞關係、塑造角色， 並且檢視數個紙類產品如何展現它們的物質力量（material power）。第二章討論 無所不在的紙在《我們共同的朋友》的意義。本章研究約翰・哈蒙的身份文件和 老哈蒙的遺囑，提出紙如同從源源不絕的泉水般，不斷地從地下湧出並漫溢到倫 敦各處，並且無時無刻不主動、持續地產生效用來推動故事的發展。This thesis investigates the materiality and active agency of paper in two of Charles Dickens’s late novels, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, from the perspective of New Materialism and thing theory. I argue that paper is the basis of narratives of both novels, and that it is an active actant which holds radiant agency to affect others with its materiality. I first delineate the nineteenth-century discussion on paper with a focus on the physicality, manufacture, and proliferation of the material to demonstrate the Victorian anxiety about ubiquitous paper. In my first chapter, I examine humans’ misinterpretation of paper in Great Expectations and classify paper by different kinds of agency––unfolding, establishing and severing relations between actants, and fashioning the characters. I look at a few of the many paper products in the novel to see how paper exerts its material force. Chapter Two on Our Mutual Friend probes into the unsettling ubiquity of paper. I study young Harmon’s identity papers and Old Harmon’s presence on wills to argue that paper is everywhere means it continuously and unexpectedly bubbles up like spring water and overflows London, and it actively and persistently takes actions to propel the story, whether it is “hidden underground” or not