評論
打印
Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your 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.
永遠別讓別人知道你有自己的思想。最重要的是，要純潔。”她似乎在控制我的筆。下面我要說說多少是我自己決定做的一件事情，當然做此事的功勞主要還應歸功于我的了不起的祖先，是他們給我留下了一筆財產——比如說每年五百英鎊吧——這樣我就不必完全靠女人的魅力去謀生了。
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-defence. 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 in 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.
我發(fā)起進攻，扼住她的喉嚨。我盡全力殺死了她。如果把我訴上法庭，那么我的辯詞將是正當防衛(wèi)。如果我不殺死她，她就會殺死我。她會泯滅我寫作的靈魂。因為我發(fā)現，在提筆之時，如果沒有自己的思想，不能表達關于人與人的關系、道德及性的真理，我連對一部小說的評論也寫不出來。按照“家里的天使”的規(guī)矩，女人不可以自由、公開地討論這些問題。女人只能展示魅力，女人只能讓步。直率地說，要想成功，她們必須說謊。
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 to befall all women writers at that time. Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.
所以，每當我在紙上感到她翅膀的影子或是光暈時，我就會拿起墨水瓶向她砸去。殺死她很難。虛幻的本質給了她極大的幫助。殺死現實中的人易，殺死鬼影難。我認為已經將她殺死，可她卻總是悄然再至。我因最終鏟除了她而感到欣慰，但鏟除的斗爭過程卻十分激烈，耗時很多，都不如把這些時間花在學習希臘語法或是周游世界去冒險好了。可這都是真實的經歷；這種經歷注定會發(fā)生在所有女作家的身上。殺死“家里的天使”是女作家職業(yè)的分內之事。
