摘 要

凯瑟琳·安·波特擅长撰写短篇小说，在美国文坛声望颇高。《窃贼》是波特短篇小说中的杰作，短小精悍而又晦涩难懂，讲述了美国经济大萧条期间人际关系的恶化以及人们面临的经济危机。

本文拟以文本细读为指引，解读《窃贼》的题目内涵，挖掘出小说中潜在的所有窃贼和真正的窃贼。通过对人物的分析后发现，卡米洛，罗杰，比尔和女管理员各自窃取了女主人公的财产，然而真正的窃贼是女主人公自己。波特在这篇故事中，旨在说明增强自我身份认同的重要性和忽视自身生活的不可取。每个人在日常生活中都可能会失去一些东西，但是最糟糕的是你发现这一切都是因你自己对它们的忽视与漠不关心而造成的，因为这种形式的失去将会让你变得一无所有。

本文分为四章。第一章简要介绍作家凯瑟琳·安·波特和《窃贼》的主要内容以及文献综述。第二章详细阐述了小说中对女主人公物质财富的窃贼。第三章着重探讨谁是窃取女主人公精神财富的真正窃贼。通过分析女主人公对她失窃钱包的前后反应，本文揭示出她一直被盗窃的根源在于她自我意识的薄弱。第四章总结了小说中真正的窃贼和作为一个独立个体应具备的正确价值观念。

关键词：凯瑟琳·安·波特；《窃贼》；自我意识；人际关系

Abstract

Katherine Anne Porter is good at honing short stories, enjoying high prestige in American literature. Porter’s Theft, one of her appealing masterpieces, is a subtle and complicated short story about the deteriorating relationships and financial hardships that accompany adult life in the Great Depression in America.

This paper focuses on the implications of the story’s title Theft, pointing out all the latent thefts and the real theft. Camilo, Roger, Bill and the janitress are all thefts who steal the heroine’s material possessions, but the real one is the heroine herself. Through the story, Porter intends to emphasize the importance of establishing one’s identity and the risk of neglecting one’s life. Quite a few things may be taken from one’s daily life, but the worst thing is his or her neglect of and indifference to those things, which results in such kind of loss, and will leave him or her nothing.

This paper consists of four chapters. The first chapter is the brief introduction to Katherine Anne Porter and Theft. Chapter Two specifies all the latent thefts who steal the heroine’s material possessions. Chapter Three explores who is the real theft of stealing the heroine’s spiritual possessions. By analyzing the heroine’s response to her stolen purse, this paper intends to reveal that it is her loss of self-consciousness that leads to her being robbed. The final chapter summarizes the elements that make one person be a theft and the important value of the person as an individual.

Key words: Katherine Anne Porter; Theft; self-consciousness; human relationship

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Katherine Anne Porter and Theft 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

1.3 Structure of the Paper 3

2 The Theft’s Identification from the Physical Perspective 4

2.1 Setting: The Great Depression 4

2.2 The Theft in Different Relations 4

2.2.1 Camilo: superficiality 5

2.2.2 Roger: hypocrisy 6

2.2.3 Bill: selfishness 7

2.2.4 Janitress: arbitrariness 9

3 The Theft’s Identification from the Spiritual Perspective 11

3.1 The Heroine “She” 11

3.1.1 The heroine’s personality 11

3.1.2 The heroine’s attitude toward valuable things in the past 12

3.1.3 Her living condition: lonely and rejected 12

3.2 Revival from the Lost 13

3.2.1 Self-unawareness of the lost 14

3.2.2 Her awareness of the real thief of all 14

4 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Who is the Real Theft?: Reading the Title’s Implications of the Story Theft

1 Introduction

1.1 Katherine Anne Porter and Theft

Katherine Anne Porter is best at honing short stories although she also writes novels. As a short story writer, Porter becomes popular in the 1910s and 1920s and enjoys high prestige in American literature. Porter’s stories mainly focus on the revelation of human nature and the insight into generous faith. For example, Theft, one of her most remarkably ambitious short stories, portrays human nature at its worst — superficial, hypocritical, mean, selfish, bold, and deceptive. Compared with some other stories in Porter’s The Old Order (1994) such as The Source, The Last Leaf, and The Grave, all of which are mostly tender evocations of people’s past in the post-Reconstruction South, Theft portrays a view of human nature that is in direct response to the harsh realities of the western world (Robertson, 2009). That is to say, it can be found in the Theft that Porter intends to explore the connection between her stories and the awful experience of people’s life in reality.

In the Theft, an unnamed heroine realizes, after a long string of events, that her cherished gold cloth purse is lost. The janitress in her building claims not to have laid her eyes on the purse, and refuses to give it back, and then creates a bold and confusing argument with the heroine. The heroine ends up with the purse in her possession, thinking deeply about what has just occurred and what has already lost. Theft is a unique short story for some reasons. Firstly, it is Porter’s first attempt to apply autobiographical elements into the story (Wang, 2010). Secondly, more extensive use of flashbacks than in any of Porter’s previous writing is a highlight in the story. Most of the story takes place in the heroine’s mind and memory. The events that lead up to the loss of the purse are shown in a series of flashbacks recollected by the heroine. Thirdly, Porter adopts a range of stylistic devices to depict each character in the story. To be more specific, she uses the wet weather to establish a desolate environment, setting a basic tone of the story. Besides, she also employs a large number of material objects like the gold cloth purse, hats, a letter and a cup of coffee, which helps readers have a deeper understanding of the story.

1.2 Literature Review

In the western literary circle, studies and researches on Katherine Anne Porter were expanded in the 1960s. Critics mainly focused on the aspects of the themes of her works, on her skilled narrative structures and on her Miranda’s experiences (Fox, 2014). Some of them agreed that Porter’s stories are about love, outrage, betrayal, and spiritual reckoning that are severe but never cruel, and always exquisite. Darlene Harbour Unrue once made a research on Porter’s political views such as feminism and socialism in her fiction (Unrue, 1993). Eudora Welty, an American short story writer and novelist, once said that Katherine Anne Porter writes stories with a power that stamps them to their very detail on the memory (Porter, 2008). She also noted that Katherine Anne Porter’s stories reflect the interior of people’s mind, and that is exactly the reason why her short stories are popular for years. As Robert Penn Warren ever commented on Porter’s special talent for her fiction writing, the form of her writing is a “rich surface detail scattered with apparently casual profuseness and the close structure which makes such detail meaningful; the great compression and economy which one discovers upon analysis; the precision of psychology and the observation, the texture of the style” (李曼, 2009, p.6).

In China, studies on Porter did not appear until the year 1981 and critics have made a systematic research on Porter since then. To be more specific, most papers like A Brief Account of Katherine Anne Porter’s Novel Writing (2001) and Feminist Ideas in Katherine Anne Porter’s Theft (2008) are about the symbolism in Porter’s stories, women’s awareness in her Miranda stories and her religious thoughts. However, as the paper Summary of the Study on Katherine Anne Porter in China over the Past Twenty Years (2010) points out, researchers should conduct further studies on Porter’s paradoxical sense to her reminiscent southern land, the relationship between female consciousness and feminism, and especially the comparison with other female writers contemporarily.

As one of Porter’s remarkably appealing short stories, Theft attaches great importance to the female consciousness which is reflected in the paper The Analysis on the Perspective of Feminism in Anne Porter’s Theft (2008). Usually critics analyze the Theft from the perspectives of the female character “She” and the symbolic meanings of the purse. As the most important symbol in the story, the purse assumes relationships between the “haves” and “have-nots”, between men and women, between two women, and between ideals and reality (吴定柏, 2009). However, less attention has ever been paid to the analysis of who the real theft is — whether only the janitress herself or all the other people in the story, and what is really stolen. Furthermore, based on the beautiful purse, it is worth studying the heroine’s encounters with other characters like Camilo, Roger, Bill and the janitress as well as the change of the heroine’s inner world. In this case, this paper tries to make the study on the story Theft from the perspective of its title’s implications, bringing more valuable insights into the understanding of Porter’s short stories. Moreover, to support the study, the paper will not only analyze the heroine’s characteristics, but also intend to reveal what actually leads a man to be a theft. Therefore, reading the title’s implications carefully is of great value.