女性的职业 Professions for Women ⑸ (中英对照)

Now came the experience, 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 trance 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.
现在，要谈谈我认为对女性作家而言远比男性作家常见的体验了。字行从女孩的指间飞速流淌。她的想象力已奔涌而出。它寻觅池塘，深入湖底，那儿有最大鱼群蛰伏的深暗地域。然后，一下撞击，轰然炸裂，泛起泡沫，混乱不堪。想象力猛撞到了什么硬物。女孩从梦中惊醒。诚然，她处于一种极其严重而艰难的困境中。直截了当地说，她已经想到一些事——关于身体、关于激情的一些事，后者对她来说，作为一个女人去谈不太合适。理智告诉她，男人因此会很震惊。一名女性真实谈论自己的激情，男性会如何看待——这一意识将她从艺术家的无意识状态中惊醒。她再也写不下去了。恍惚感无影无踪。想象力再无作用。我相信，这对女性作家来说是很常见的经历——她们被男性极端的传统思想所阻碍。尽管男性在这些方面明显给了自己很大的自由，但我怀疑他们是否意识到或能控制住他们在谴责女性拥有同样的自由时所表现出的那种极端严厉。

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.
这就是我自己的两段非常真实的经历，是我职业生涯的两段冒险。第一段——杀死“家庭天使”——我想我完成了。她一命呜呼。但第二段，真实描述自己身体的体验，我想我没完成。我怀疑任何女性都尚未完成。其障碍依然巨大——而且难以言表。

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?
从表面看，什么比著书更简单呢？从表面看，什么障碍只针对女性而非男性呢？从内部看，我想情况有很大差别；女性仍要和许多幽灵作斗争，仍有许多偏见要克服。我想，一个女性能坐下来写书而不用去斩杀幽灵、击碎礁岩，实现这一点确实还需要很长时间。如果在文学——这个所有职业中对女性而言最自由的职业——中尚且如此，那么你们首次加入的一些新职业，会是什么样呢？