这是一篇现代大学英语的经典范文，内容涉及女性在教育、法律、经济、政治和社会权益方面所遭受的不公正待遇和劣势地位等。
作为一篇涉及女权主义的文章，我想发在这里，或许能获得一些什么感想吧。
翻译来自网络。
听说你们协会是有关妇女就业的。协会秘书要我就职业问题谈谈自己的阅历。不错，我是女人，我也正在就业。可是我有些什么阅历呢？这个问题似乎很难回答。我的职业是文学，文学给予女人特有的阅历比其他职业要少，舞台表演除外。这是因为许多年前范妮 · 伯尼、阿普拉 · 贝恩、哈丽雅特 · 马蒂诺、简 · 奥斯丁、乔治 · 爱略特就在这条路上披荆斩棘了。无数知名的、不知名的女人在我之前扫除了障碍，调整了我的步伐。我开始写作时，这个职业已经不拒绝女性了。写作是个高尚而无害的职业，家庭的安宁不会被钢笔的嚓嚓声打破，也不需要很多的经济投资。花十六便士买的纸足够写下莎士比亚所有巨著——假如你也有个莎士比亚的脑袋的话。作家不需要有钢琴、模特儿，不要周游巴黎、维也纳和柏林，也不需聘请家庭教师。纸张便宜也许是女人在写作领域比其他领域成功的原因。
When your secretary invited me to come here, she told me that your Society is concerned with the employment of women and she suggested that I might tell you something about my own professional experiences. It is true that I am a woman；it is true I am employed；but what professional experiences have I had？It is difficult to say. My profession is literature；and in that profession there are fewer experiences for women than in any other, with the exception of the stage——fewer, I mean, that are peculiar to women. For the road was cut many years ago——by Fanny Burney, by Aphra Behn, by Harriet Martineau, by Jane Austen, by George Eliot—many famous women, and many more unknown and forgotten, have been before me, making the path smooth, and regulating my steps. Thus, when I came to write, there were very few material obstacles in my way. Writing was a reputable and harmless occupation. The family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen. No demand was made upon the family purse. For ten and six pence one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare——if one has a mind that way. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, masters and mistresses, are not needed by a writer. The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in the other professions.
言归正传吧。我当作家的故事其实很简单，你们大可想象一个手执钢笔的姑娘坐在卧室，从左到右不停地写着，写着，从十点写到一点。然后，她把这些稿件装进信封，贴上一便士邮票投进信筒。我就是这样成为报纸撰稿人的。第二个月的第一天——那对我是辉煌的一天——我竟收到编辑给我的信，还附了张一镑十六便士的支票。可我多不懂生活的艰辛呀!我没用这钱买面包和黄油，买鞋子或袜子，或者付杂货店老板的欠单，而是用它买了一只漂亮的波斯猫，一只不久便令我陷入邻里唇枪舌战的小猫。
But to tell you my story——it is a simple one. You have only got to figure to yourselves a girl in a bedroom with a pen in her hand. She had only to move that pen from left to right——from ten o‘clock to one. Then it occurred to her to do what is simple and cheap enough after all——to slip a few of those pages into an envelope, fix a penny stamp in the corner, and drop the envelope into the red box at the corner. It was thus that I became a journalist；and my effort was rewarded on the first day of the following month——a very glorious day it was for me——by a letter from an editor containing a check for one pound ten shillings and sixpence. But to show you how little I deserve to be called a professional woman, how little I know of the struggles and difficulties of such lives, I have to admit that instead of spending that sum upon bread and butter, rent, shoes and stockings, or butcher’s bills, I went out and bought a cat——a beautiful cat, a Persian cat, which very soon involved me in bitter disputes with my neighbors.
还有什么比写文章、用稿费买只波斯猫更容易呢？可是，等等！文章总该关于些什么吧。我记得那篇文章是评论某个著名作家小说的。写那篇文章时我就发现，评论作品时我需要与一种幻影搏斗。这个幻影是一个女人。之后我渐渐清晰地感受到了她，我借一首著名诗歌里女主人公之名，称她为“屋子里的天使”。她横亘在我和稿纸之间，困绕我，折磨我，消耗我，令我最终忍无可忍，最终杀了她。你们年轻一代比较幸运，可能没听说过她——因而不知道何为“屋子里的天使”。我简要地解释一下。她温柔可爱，善良无私。她擅长持家，富有牺牲精神。如果餐桌上有一只鸡，她吃鸡腿[1]；如果屋里有穿堂风，她就坐在风口挡着。总之，她没有思想，没有欲望，只会附和与赞同。她最为引人注目的自然是她的单纯。单纯是她最为动人之处——那羞怯，那优雅，实在令人倾倒。维多利亚女王时代末期，每间屋子里都有这样的天使。我从写作伊始便面临这样的天使，每一页书稿上都碰到她的翼翅，听到她裙边相碰之声。当我握笔准备抨击某个作家作品时，她便悄悄溜到我身后低语，“亲爱的，你一个年轻女子竟要批评男人写的书？温柔贤淑些，显出虚心求教的样子，充分展示女人的妩媚和技巧，可不要表现自己的思想。单纯才是女性的美。” 她试图要指导我怎么写作。我可以自豪地告诉你们我是怎样采取行动的。也许这得归功于给我留下财产的我出色的先辈们，他们给我留下了一定数量的金钱——也许每年五百镑，它让我能不靠美貌可爱过活。我转过身，扼住她的喉咙用力杀死她。假如我被押上法庭，我的借口是：我是在进行正当防卫。我不杀她，她会杀我，她要抽掉我作品的精神。没有思想，我怎么表现自己对人性、道德和性别的理解？而“屋子里的天使”们声称女人是不该公开讨论这些问题的。她们要的是可爱、迷人，想成功还得说谎——说得粗鲁些。我一发现书桌上有她们羽翼的阴影或晕圈的光辉，就拿起墨水瓶向她们投去。是的，扼死她并不容易，她温柔可爱的外表极富欺骗性；而扼死假象中的幻影比扼死真实中的存在更困难。每每我要与其搏斗时，它便隐退了。虽然我自以为我终于杀死了她，但这场搏斗确实惊心动魄，其耗时不亚于学希腊语法，或进行漫游世界的探险。这便是我同时代女作家无从避免的经历。杀死“屋子里的天使”是女作家的职业组成部分之一。
What could be easier than to write articles and to buy Persian cats with the profits？But wait a moment. Articles have to be about something. Mine, I seem to remember, was about a novel by a famous man. And while I was writing this review, I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come between me an my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her. You who come off a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her——you may not know what I mean by The Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg；if there was a draft she sat in it——in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all——I need not say it——she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty——her blushes, her great grace. In those days——the last of Queen Victoria——every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page；I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered：“My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic；be tender；flatter；deceive；use all the art and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of our own. Above all, be pure.”And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money——shall we say five hundred pounds a year？——so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, If I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women；they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly-—tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the struggle was severe；it took much time that had better have been spent upon learning Greek grammar；or in roaming the world in search of adventures. But it was a real experience；It was an experience that was bound befall all women writers at that time. Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.
继续说我自己的故事。天使死了，剩下什么？你会说，当然是静坐桌前拿着笔的年轻女性了。换句话说，既然她已排除了幻影，她当然成为独立的自己了。那么，“她自己”，即一位女性，又是什么呢？我不知道，我想你们也不知道。任何女性在没从事人类所有艺术与职业之前是没法表达清楚“女性”的定义的。这便是我出于对你们的尊敬来这里的原因。你们正在以你们的经历，以你们的失败和成功，向人们说明着女性是什么，为人们提供尤为重要的信息。
But to continue my story. The Angel was dead；what then remained？You may say that what remained was a simple and common object——a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is“herself”？I mean, what is a woman？I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill. That indeed is one of the reasons why I have come here——out of respect for you, who are in process of showing us by your experiments what a woman is, who are in process of providing us, by your failures and succeeded, with that extremely important piece of information.
言归正传。继续说说我的职业经历。第一次书评赚的一镑十六便士买了波斯猫。以后，我胃口越来越大。波斯猫虽好，可远远不够。我还想要摩托车。这样，我便做了小说家——你给别人讲故事，别人给你摩托车，这是很奇妙的事。更奇妙的是，世界上再没有比讲故事更令人高兴的事了。它比写书评快乐多了。遵照你们秘书的指示，我得说一说我作为小说家的职业经历。这是一种很奇特的经历，你们得充分想象小说家的思想状态才能理解。我希望我在这里没有泄露职业机密。小说家的最大愿望是尽量做到心流，创造一个永久平静的内心世界。他希望生活平静而有规律，没有异常事情打搅和干扰。当他写作时，他要求看到同样的面孔，阅读同样的书，做同样的事，一天接一天，一个月接一个月，这样便不会破坏他沉浸其中的幻象，不会扰乱他想象力的探索、感觉、冲击和实现。这种思想状态对男性作家和女性作家都是一样的。尽管如此，我还是想说我是在恍惚中创造小说的，你们大可想象，一位手握笔杆的女孩在屋里连续坐几个小时，也不见把笔往墨水瓶里蘸一下。这情景绝象湖边神情专注的钓鱼翁。她在让想象力如奔腾的江水扫过沉寂在无意识深处每一块岩石，每一道缝隙。下面的经历我想或许对女作家比读男作家更为普遍。当她文思泉涌，想象力找到了蓄集处，寻到水底深处静眠的大鱼时，便妙笔生花，一行行文字跃然纸上。一次次碰撞，一回回爆发，溅起泡沫，翻起浪花。当想象力撞到某个硬物时，女孩从梦幻中惊醒。此刻她处于极度的痛苦与矛盾之中，无庸置疑，她强烈感受到的身心体验是不适合作她为女人表现出来的。理智告诉她男人会怎么评论一个倾吐自己真实情感的女人。这打破了她作为一个作家的心流。她无法继续写下去。恍惚荡涤殆尽，想象力无以为继。我相信女作家都会有这样的体验——她们被男作家创作的极端俗套阻碍了。在这方面男人们虽然明达地给予自己极大的自由，却极其严厉地责难女人身上的这种自由，而且还没有意识到自己的严厉，更不用说去控制这种严厉了。
But to continue the story of my professional experiences. I made one pound ten and six by my first review；and I bought a Persian cat with the proceeds. Then I grew ambitious. A Persian cat is all very well, I said；but a Persian cat is not enough. I must have a motorcar. And it was thus that I became a novelist——for it is a very strange thing that people will give you a motorcar if you will tell them a story. It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It is far pleasanter than writing reviews of famous novels. And yet, if I am to obey your secretary and tell you my professional experiences as a novelist, I must tell you about a very strange experience that befell me as a novelist. And to understand it you must try first to imagine a novelist‘s state of mind. I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living——so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings round, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination. I suspect that this state is the same both for men and women. Be that as it may, I want you to imagine me writing a novel in a state of trance. I want you to figure to yourselves a girl sitting with a pen in her hand, which for minutes, and indeed for hours, she never dips into the inkpot. The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl‘s fingers. Her imagination had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber. And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion. The imagination had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure, she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told her, would be shocked. The consciousness of what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about her passions had roused her from her artist’s state of unconsciousness. She could write no more. The trace was over. Her imagination could work no longer. This I believe to be a very common experience with women writers——they are impeded by the extreme conventionality of the other sex. For though men sensibly allow themselves great freedom in these respects, I doubt that they realize or can control the extreme severity with which they condemn such freedom in women.
这就是我的两个亲身经历，这就是我职业生活的两大历险。杀死“屋子里的天使”，这个问题我想我已经解决了，天使死了。但写出？自己作为人的真正感受和体验，这第二个问题还尚待解决。我想还没有任何女性已经解决了这个问题。防碍她的阻力依然很大——然而它们又是很难以接定。表面上看，难道还有什么比写书更容易的吗？实际上，情况完全不同，她要和许多魔鬼搏斗，要克服无数偏见。女性写作不必杀死幻影、跨越障碍的时代依然遥远得很。如果文学这个所有职业中对于女性来说最自由的职业尚且如此，那么女性第一次进入的全新职业又将如何呢？
These then were two very genuine experiences of my own. These were two of the adventures of my professional life. The first——killing the Angel in the House——I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet. The obstacles against her are still immensely powerful——and yet they are very difficult to define. Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books？Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man？Inwardly, I think, the case is very different；she has still many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time entering？
假如有时间，这是我要问你们的问题。我之所以强调了我的职业经历，是因为我觉得它一定也是你们的经历，也许表现形式不同而已。即便职业的大门已向女性敞开，女性不再被拒绝做医生、律师、公务员，幻影和阻力依然在向她逼近。我以为讨论和界定这幻影和阻力很有必要。只有这样，才能分享劳动，解决难题。此外我们还要弄清我们奋斗的目的，我们超越阻力的目的是什么。我们当然不能想当然，我们必须不断质疑和探讨。在座的诸位从事各种各样的职业，起多样性是有史以来空前的，其重要性是无可比拟的。你们已在一直被男性独占的屋子里赢得了自己的房间。你们靠自己劳动和努力交了房租。你们靠自己每年赚五百英镑。这只是刚刚开始。房间是自己的了，可它依然空空的，它需要装潢修饰，需要与人共享。怎么修饰？与谁共享？基于什么样的条件？这些，我认为都是些极其重要和有趣的问题。有史以来你们第一次可以提出这样的问题，也能够决定自己的答案了。我很愿意留下来讨论这些问题，但不是今晚。因为时间的关系，我就此打住。
Those are the questions that I should like, had I time, to ask you. And indeed, if I have laid stress upon these professional experiences of mine, it is because I believe that they are, though in different forms, yours also. Even when the path is nominally open——when there is nothing to revert a woman from being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant——there are many phantoms and obstacles, as I believe, looming in her way. To discuss and define them is I think of great value and importance；for thus only can the labor be shared, the difficulties be solved. But besides this, it is necessary also to discuss the ends and the aims for which we are fighting, for which we are doing battle with these formidable obstacles. Those aims cannot be taken for granted；they must be perpetually questioned and examined. The whole position, as I see it——here in this hall surrounded by women practicing for the first time in history I know not how many different professions——is one of extraordinary interest and importance. You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. You are able, though not without great labor and effort, to pay the rent. You are earning your five hundred pounds a year. But this freedom is only a beginning；the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished；it has to be decorated；it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it？With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms？These, I think are questions of the utmost importance and interest. For the first time in history you are able to ask them；for the first time you are able to decide for yourself what the answers should be. Willingly would I stay and discuss those questions and answers——but not tonight. My time is up；and I must cease.
当时人们更喜欢吃鸡胸肉 ↩︎