重讀童話：再也不是小時候的那個單純世界
Adults often find surprising subtexts in children’s literature – but are they really there? Hephzibah Anderson delves into the world of Freud and fairy tales.
成年人經常能在兒童讀物中發現令人意想不到的潛臺詞——但這些潛臺詞真的存在嗎？赫弗齊芭•安德森深入探究了弗洛伊德理論和童話世界。
As a child many of my favourite books had food as a theme. One in particular told the story of a boy who helped save his local burger bar by becoming a gastro-sleuth to track down a lost secret ingredient.
小時候，我最喜歡看的是以食物爲主題的書。令我印象尤爲深刻的一個故事是：有一個小男孩爲了拯救當地的漢堡店，從而化身爲“味覺偵探”去尋找遺失的祕方。
Long after losing track of the book and forgetting its title, I found myself in Edinburgh to interview Alexander McCall Smith. He was already the mega-selling author of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but years earlier, he had published a few children’s books. There among them on a shelf was The Perfect Hamburger.
很多年過去了，書已經找不到了，甚至連書名也已記不清。直到我去愛丁堡拜訪亞歷山大·考爾史密斯。那時他已經憑着《第一女子偵探事務所》系列小說成爲了超級暢銷作家，但早年，他也出版過一些兒童書籍。這些書籍在他的書架上放着，其中有一本就是《一個完美的漢堡》。
It was my book. Except that it wasn’t – not really. While burgers do indeed feature in lip-smacking detail, this time it was clear to me that The Perfect Hamburger is actually a tale of corporate greed and the fate of small businesses forced to compete with big chains.
這就是我說的那本小說。其實不是——至少不完全是。小時候我覺得這是一個關於美味的漢堡的故事，而如今我再次讀它，看到的卻是一個大企業的貪婪以及小企業被迫同大型連鎖店競爭的悲慘命運。
Revisiting kids’ books in adulthood can yield all sorts of weird and Wonderful subtexts, some more obvious than others. How could Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas be anything other than a parable of consumerism? Why would it not seem blindingly clear that CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia are in fact a fantastical re-imagining of Christian theology?
成年人重讀兒童讀物總會衍生出很多奇特的潛臺詞，而且有的尤其明顯。蘇斯博士的《聖誕怪傑》其實是一個消費主義的預言。而C.S.路易斯的《納尼亞傳奇》實際上是一個關於基督教神學的神奇重構。
Similar close readings have rendered the Paddington Bear books fables about immigration and Babar the Elephant an endorsement of French colonialism. Alice’s Wonderland adventures have been seen as everything from a paean to mathematical logic to a satire about the War of the Roses or a trippy caper with drugs as an underlying theme.
同樣地，當你重新細讀《小熊帕丁頓》系列叢書時，你會發現，這是關於移民問題的寓言，而《大象巴巴》則是對法國殖民主義的認可。《愛麗絲夢遊仙境》的再讀便會發現小說是從“對數理邏輯的讚歌”，到“玫瑰戰爭的諷刺”，再到“以毒品爲潛在主題的迷幻劇”。
And what about The Little Engine That Could? You might know it as a story about trains that fosters can-do optimism, but it has also been taken as a you-go-girl feminist tale. (The eponymous little engine is a lady train and when she breaks down, only another female train will stop to help out.) As for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: why, it’s an allegorical representation of the debate surrounding late 19th Century US monetary policy, of course.
那麼《小火車頭做到了》呢？你可能會認爲這是一本能夠培養積極進取的樂觀精神的小火車頭歷險故事。但它也是一個宣揚女權主義的故事。（故事中同名的小火車頭是一個女孩形象，而且當她遇到故障時，只有另一輛女性火車停下來幫助她。）至於《綠野仙蹤》，它就美國十九世紀後期貨幣政策的大爭論進行了寓言式的描述。
