作者 ｜
張小虹(台灣大學外國語文系)
摘要 ｜
本文以發生在上海1930 年代中期知名女作家張愛玲姑姑張茂淵的遺產訴訟官司作為出發點，嘗試探討傳統宗法家規男系女不系的「宗祧繼承」，如何過渡到標榜男女平等的「遺產繼承」，不僅只從歷史或法律的角度將此官司當成民國女性反抗「父系宗法」壓迫的具體行動實踐，更重要的是希冀從文化批判的角度析剔出「宗」法父權從律法到親族、從姓氏到性事盤根錯節的掌控，亦即「性別」與「姓別」的糾纏不清。本文先處理《大清現行刑律》到《民法》的法律變革，再以張愛玲小說〈金鎖記〉與《怨女》中所呈現的「分家析產」，來帶出更具華文文化殊異性的「房事情結」與「姓／性別政治」。最後則以台灣二十一世紀「蔡（英文）家姑姑的官司」做結，以凸顯即便自1930 年代起法律早已保障女性平等繼承權，即便部分人士常以「去中國化」來強化台灣主體性，我們今日面對的恐怕依舊是宗法父權的陰魂不散與台海兩岸「一邊一國，都是『宗』國」的弔詭困境。
關鍵字 ｜
張愛玲、姓氏、性別政治、宗祧繼承、遺產繼承
Title ｜
The Aunt's Lawsuit: Family Property Settlement and the Gender Politics of the Lineage Name
Author ｜
Hsiao-Hung Chang(Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Taiwan University)
Abstract ｜
This paper will start with the inheritance lawsuit filed by Maoyuan Chang in Shanghai in the middle of the 1930s. Mao-yuan Chang was the aunt of the famous woman writer Eileen Chang. This lawsuit is taken as a point of departure to explore how the traditional inheritance of ancestor worship duties, strictly following the male line only, has been transformed by law into the modern property inheritance system that declares gender equality. This lawsuit will thus be read not merely from the historical or legal perspectives as a concrete action against the oppression of clan patriarchy taken by a particular woman in the Republican China period, but more importantly as a cultural critique. This is a critique of the dominance of clan patriarchy which extends kinship rights into law, as well as extending the family name strictures to sexuality. In all, there was traditionally an entwinement of gender, sexuality, and ancestral lineage name. The paper will first trace the legal changes from the Enacted Criminal Law of the Qing Dynasty to the Civil Code of the Republic of China. Two side scenes represented in “The Golden Cangue” and The Rouge of the North written by Eileen Chang will also be taken as examples that demonstrate the specific characteristics of the Chinese lineage branch cultural complex and family name/gender politics. The paper will end with another inheritance lawsuit filed in Taiwan in the twenty-first century by an aunt in President Ing-wen Tsai’s family. This second lawsuit highlights the continuing paradoxes of the political slogan “one country on each side” while both retain a cultural heritage of clan patriarchy. That is, we still face persistent clan patriarchy both in Taiwan and China, even though women’s equal rights to inherit property has been the law since the 1930s and even when an effort to distance from Chinese culture has been deployed by some in Taiwan as a way to differentiate and fortify the identity of Taiwan as separate from that of Mainland China.
Keywords ｜
Eileen Chang, lineage name, gender politics, ancestor worship, property inheritance