南丁格爾是英國19世紀的傳奇人物,但她又是一個有爭議的形象,既被塑造為純潔、溫柔、勇敢的提燈女神,又被刻畫為冷血無情、野心勃勃的事業女魔。她本人也是一個矛盾體,有相當激進的一面,也有較為保守的一面。天使與魔鬼,是社會習俗評價女性慣用的二元模式,趨于程式化和簡單化,無助于我們理解南丁格爾的復雜形象與曲折思路。本文通過辨析女神和女魔形象的失真,進而分析她本人的激進觀念和保守立場,力圖還原一個復雜、多維、有血有肉的南丁格爾,并從她身上探究維多利亞女性的困境以及她們為走出困境所做的艱難努力。

Being a legendary figure in 19 th century Britain, Nightingale is constantly in dispute. She was portrayed on the one hand as a pure, gentle and brave Lady with the Lamp, on the other, as a cold, ambitious and ruthless female demon. What makes the issue more complicated is that she herself is a contradiction. The binary pattern of angel/demon, tending to be a formulism or simplification, is of little avail for us to understand such a complex figure. By revealing how far this dichotomy has distorted the image of Nightingale, and by carefully examining her radical and conservative thoughts, the paper intends to reanimate Nightingale as a rich, complex and multidimensional historical figure, in the meanwhile probe into the general predicament of Victorian women and demonstrate how they have struggled to break away from it.