美國女作家凱瑟琳，史多基特在2007年甫發表她的首部自傳式小說《姊妹》，極受到大眾市場熱烈的歡迎，2009年亦改編成同名電影，同樣在市場上獲得佳績。這本描寫在美國保守南方種族隔離社會中黑人幫傭與中產階級白人主婦的互動，雖標榜跨種族姊妹情誼，卻被學界批評嚴重扭曲了有色家庭幫傭的工作經驗，跳脫不了對過往刻板黑白關係的描寫印象。然而，細探《姊妹》一書，即可發現書中乍看養尊處優的白太太們，生活中實則也充滿絕望：人際上的疏離，個人志向及婚姻上的限制，都暗示著其社會彷彿一座「父權監獄」，符應傅柯描述現代權力透過空間配置使個別主體在時時刻刻執行自我監控，同時亦與其他受控者極度疏離的狀況。本文以傅科的全景敝視理論分析美國新銳女作家史多基特的《姊妹》，由種族，性別，與作者定位三個面向，循序解構小說中隱微的父權監獄是如何透過空間配置，人際網絡，及作者對有色幫傭的描繪，創造出終極的規訓社會，從而期許主流社會能打破自己刻板對傳統黑白關係的「意識」，進一步聚焦在現實中依舊看不見的弱勢聲音上。

This thesis analyzes popular American novelist Kathryn Stockett’s autobiographical novel The Help (2007) with a focus on race, gender, and authorship with Foucault’s theoretical paradigm of panopticism. Although this novel is known for its commercial successes in print form and in its cinematic adaptation, scholars and critics in recent years have pointed out a large number of the novel’s inaccurate documentations of American south in the late sixties, as well as its degrading representations of black women and men. However, what remains inadequately examined among analyses of the novel is the fictional characters of white housewives, whose desperate daily life form sharp contrast with their material privileges, and whose tension with their “colored maids” implies Foucault’s panopticism in a racially segregated society where both colored and white woman are involved and supervised by the gaze of patriarchal panopticon. Therefore, this thesis aims to take Foucault’s panopticism to analyze Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, in order to investigate how the subtle patriarchal panopticon creates a strictly disciplined society through women and varied forms of labor in domestic life assigned to them. By examining the spatial arrangements of the fictionalized town, the ways white housewives see their “colored maids” and themselves, and the parallels between the novel’s heroine and the author Kathryn Stockett, I hope to present a critical analysis of both the segregated town painted by the novel and the ambivalent white middle-class women living and struggling therein.

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