バーネットの『白いひと』と人種問題 Burnett's _The White People_ and Race Matters [The White People]
フランセス・ホジソン・バーネット (Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1849-1924) はイギリスのマンチェスターの生まれだけれど、父親の死後1865年に家族と一緒にアメリカのテネシー州ノックスヴィル（ノックスヴィルというと、『家族の死 Death in the Family』を書いたジェイムズ・エイジー James Agee を思い出します）に十代半ばで移住して、1868年には婦人雑誌 Godey's Lady's Book に短篇小説の寄稿を始めます。『ゴーディーズ・レイディーズ・ブック』は1830年にフィラデルフィアで創刊された女性向け雑誌で、ポーが「約束事」とか「鋸山奇譚」とか「おまえが犯人だ」とか「長方形の箱」とかいった短篇小説を載せたものとして個人的にはなじみがあります。調べてみると1898年まで刊行が続いたようですけれど、1860年代にはアメリカの婦人総合雑誌としては中心的なものだったようです。
その後、結婚、出産、長男ライオネルの死、離婚などあって、1890年代なかばごろからはイギリスでの生活が多くなるのだけれど、1905年にアメリカ市民権を正式に取得し、アメリカとイギリスのあいだで大西洋を行ったり来たりする生活をして、1924年、ニューヨーク州の自宅で亡くなります。
作品をたいして読んだわけでないから、適当な分類しかできませんけれど、アメリカとヨーロッパにまたがるもの、インドとイギリスにまたがるもの、イギリスを舞台にするもの、そしてたぶんアメリカを舞台にするものがあって、でも最後のものはおそらくは少数かもしれない。
それで、アメリカ作家としても、イギリス作家としても捉えられるという、ちょうどアメリカ生まれの小説家のヘンリー・ジェイムズとか詩人のエリオットとかパウンドとかの逆みたいな感じがあるのだけれど、近年の批評の流れに乗って考えられる線は、ポストコロニアリズム批評みたいなところがひとつあります（典型的には『秘密の花園』における大英帝国と植民地インド、ならびにコレラ問題とか）。
そのラインでいうと、『白いひと』なんて、タイトルからしてあからさまに人種の問題にからみそうな気配があるわけです。
でも、おもしろいのは、人種問題文脈をあたかも作家自身が先んじて記述しているところです（こういうのってポーにもあって、いったい批評というのはなんなんじゃろ――（フランク・カーモドが言ったように、作家自身が最初の批評家か）――、という思いにときどき駆られたりもします）。主人公で語り手の少女イザベルがロンドンに出てきて後見人の邸のパーティーで初めて作家ヘクター・マクネアンと話をするところ。ロンドンに向かう汽車にふたりは偶然に乗り合わせていて、喪に沈む母親と、その母親にしがみつくようにしている男の子（この子を見ているのは実はイザベルだけなのだけれど、その事実を誰も知りません）について、イザベルは以前からの彼女の呼称「白いひと White People」をもちだして話します。
"It was not six years old, poor mite," I answered. "It was one of those very fair 〔色白の〕 children one sees now and then. It was not like its mother. She was not one of the White People."
"The White People?" he repeated quite slowly after me. "You don't mean that she was not a Caucasian〔コーカソイド〕? Perhaps I don't understand."
That made me feel a trifle shy again. Of course he could not know what I meant. How silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
"I beg pardon. I forgot," I even stammered a little. "It is only my way of thinking of those fair people one sees, those very fair ones, you know―the ones whose fairness looks almost transparent. There are not many of them, of course; but one can't help noticing them when they pass in the street or come into a room. You must have noticed them, too. I always call them, to myself, the White People, because they are different from the rest of us. The poor mother wasn't one, but the child was. Perhaps that was why I looked at it, at first. It was such a lovely little thing; and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I could not help thinking―" I hesitated, because it seemed almost unkind to finish.
"You thought that if she had just lost one child she ought to take more care of the other," he ended for me. There was a deep thoughtfulness in his look, as if he were watching me. I wondered why.
"I wish I had paid more attention to the little creature," he said, very gently. "Did it cry?"
"No," I answered. "It only clung to her and patted her black sleeve and kissed it, as if it wanted to comfort her. I kept expecting it to cry, but it didn't. It made me cry because it seemed so sure that it could comfort her if she would only remember that it was alive and loved her. I wish, I wish death did not make people feel as if it filled all the world―as if, when it happens, there is no life left anywhere. The child who was alive by her side did not seem a living thing to her. It didn't matter."
I had never said as much to any one before, but his watching eyes made me forget my shy worldlessness.
"What do you feel about it―death?" he asked.
The low gentleness of his voice seemed something I had known always.
"I never saw it," I answered. "I have never even seen any one dangerously ill. I―it is as if I can't believe it."
"You can't believe it? That is a wonderful thing," he said, even more quietly than before.
"If none of us believed, how wonderful that would be! Beautiful, too."
"How that poor mother believed it!" I said, remembering her swollen, distorted, sobbing face. "She believed nothing else; everything else was gone."
"I wonder what would have happened if you had spoken to her about the child?" he said, slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
"I'm a very shy person. I should never have courage to speak to a stranger," I answered.
"I'm afraid I'm a coward, too. She might have thought me interfering."
"She might not have understood," he murmured.
"It was clinging to her dress when she walked away down the platform," I went on. "I dare say you noticed it then?"
"Not as you did. I wish I had noticed it more," was his answer. "Poor little White One!"
That led us into our talk about the White People. He said he did not think he was exactly an observant person in some respects. Remembering his books, which seemed to me the work of a man who saw and understood everything in the world, I could not comprehend his thinking that, and I told him so. But he replied that what I had said about my White People made him feel that he must be abstracted sometimes and miss things. He did not remember having noticed the rare fairness I had seen. He smiled as he said it, because, of course, it was only a little thing―that he had not seen that some people were so much fairer than others.
"But it has not been a little thing to you, evidently. That is why I am even rather curious about it," he explained. "It is a difference definite enough to make you speak almost as if they were of a different race from ours."
I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over. Suddenly I realized what I had never realized before.
"Do you know," I said, as slowly as he himself had spoken, "I did not know that was true until you put it into words. I am so used to thinking of them as different, somehow, that I suppose I do feel as if they were almost like another race, in a way. Perhaps one would feel like that with a native Indian, or a Japanese."
"I dare say that is a good simile," he reflected. "Are they different when you know them well?" (The White People 40-44 [ch. 4])
訳している余裕がなくなったので、次回につづきま～す。（なんかカリフォルニア時間に戻ったみたいｗ）。