評論
打印
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 and 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.
這個鬼影就是女人。當我進一步了解她后，我就借一首著名詩歌中女主人公之名用“家里的天使”來稱呼她。我寫評論時，就是她總出現在我和我的文章之間。她不停地困擾我，浪費我的時間，折磨我，所以，最終我殺死了她。
You who come of 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 a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught 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.
你們年輕快樂的一代或許沒聽說過她，可能不知道我所說的“家里的天使”是什么意思。我將盡可能簡短地描述一下。她極富同情心，極有魅力，毫不自私，擅長家庭生活的各項髙難度技能，天天自我犧牲。如果家里吃雞，她只吃雞腿；如果家里有穿堂風，她坐在風口。她就是這樣一個人，從來沒有想到過自己的想法與期望，總是喜歡按照別人的想法和期待來做出犧牲。
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 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 arts and wiles of our sex.
總之，我不必說她是純潔的。她的純潔應該被看作是她主要的動人之處：她常常臉紅，舉止優雅。在維多利亞時代后期，每個家庭都有個天使。每當我開始寫作，她總會在我剛剛寫出幾個字時就出現。她翅膀的影子映在我的紙上；我在房間里能聽到她的裙子沙沙作響。當我提筆要為一個名人的小說寫書評時，她就溜到我身后輕聲對我說：“親愛的，你是一個年輕女子。你所評的這本書是男人寫的。你要有同情心，要溫柔、要奉承、要欺騙，用盡女人所有的小把戲。
