凯拉·奈特莉 | 朗读弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫《女性的职业》

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 I am a woman; it is true I am employed; but what professional experiences have I had?

你们的秘书邀请我来到这里时告诉我，你们的妇女服务团关注女性就职问题。她建议我讲一讲我自己的职业体验。我的确是一个女人，也的确有工作，但是我又有什么职业体验呢？

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.

这就很难说了。我以文学写作为职业。对女人来说，这个职业，当然戏剧行业例外，并没有像从事其他的职业那么特别的体验，我是说没有那么多女性的特别的体验。

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.

很多年前，范妮·伯尼、阿芙拉·贝恩、哈丽雅特、马蒂诺、简·奥斯汀、乔治·艾略特这些著名的女性作家以及更多的不那么出名或被遗忘的作家已经打通了这条路，指引我前行。

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 sixpence 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.

所以，当我开始从事写作时，已没有什么实际的障碍！写作是一个名声好且没有危害的职业。家庭的节奏不会因为写作的沙沙声而打乱。写作不需要家庭开销，如果愿意，任何人都可以花上16便士买下纸张。这些纸足够写出莎士比亚的戏剧全集了。钢琴和模特，去巴黎、维也纳和柏林，或者是请家庭教师——作家不需要这些！

The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in the other professions.

写作用纸的廉价当然就是女性先于其他行业而首先能够以写作为职业的原因。

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.

但是我要告诉大家我的故事。很简单。你们只需自己想象一下，一个女孩儿在卧室里手里握着一支笔，她需要左右地移动它，从十点写到一点。

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.

然后她就想到了一件很简单，而且不用花很多钱的事：选出一些纸放到信封里，在一个角上贴上一便士邮票，把信封投到街角的红箱子里。

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 cheque for one pound ten shillings and sixpence.

我就是这样成为一个撰稿人的。下个月的第一天，我的努力得到了回报。那对我来说是快乐的一天，因为编辑寄来一封信，里面有一张一英镑十先令六便士的支票。

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 neighbours.

但是我要告诉你们，我不配被称作一个职业女性，也不知道生活中的挣扎与困苦，因为我得承认，我并没有拿这笔钱买食物、付房租、买鞋袜和肉，而是出去买了一只猫，一只漂亮的波斯猫，它使我在不久后与邻居发生严重纠纷。

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.

有什么能比写文章并用其报酬来买波斯猫更容易的事呢？但是，请等一下。文章要有内容。我记得那篇文章评论了一位男性名人的一部小说。写这篇评论时，我发现，如果我想写书评，我需要与某个鬼影抗争。

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.

这个鬼影就是女人。当我进一步了解她后，我就借一首著名诗歌中女主人公之名用“家里的天使”来称呼她。我写评论时，就是她总出现在我和我的文章之间。她不停地困扰我，浪费我的时间，折磨我，所以，最终我杀死了她。

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.

你们年轻快乐的一代或许没听说过她，可能不知道我所说的“家里的天使”是什么意思。我将尽可能简短地描述一下。她极富同情心，极有魅力，毫不自私，擅长家庭生活的各项髙难度技能，天天自我牺牲。

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.

如果家里吃鸡，她只吃鸡腿；如果家里有穿堂风，她坐在风口。她就是这样一个人，从来没有想到过自己的想法与期望，总是喜欢按照别人的想法和期待来做出牺牲。

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.

总之，我不必说她是纯洁的。她的纯洁应该被看作是她主要的动人之处：她常常脸红，举止优雅。在维多利亚时代后期，每个家庭都有个天使。

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.

每当我开始写作，她总会在我刚刚写出几个字时就出现。她翅膀的影子映在我的纸上；我在房间里能听到她的裙子沙沙作响。当我提笔要为一个名人的小说写书评时，她就溜到我身后轻声对我说：“亲爱的，你是一个年轻女子。

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.

你所评的这本书是男人写的。你要有同情心，要温柔、要奉承、要欺骗，用尽女人所有的小把戏。永远别让别人知道你有自己的思想。最重要的是，要纯洁。”她似乎在控制我的笔。

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.

下面我要说说多少是我自己决定做的一件事情，当然做此事的功劳主要还应归功于我的了不起的祖先，是他们给我留下了一笔财产——比如说每年五百英镑吧——这样我就不必完全靠女人的魅力去谋生了。

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.

我发起进攻，扼住她的喉咙。我尽全力杀死了她。如果把我诉上法庭，那么我的辩词将是正当防卫。如果我不杀死她，她就会杀死我。她会泯灭我写作的灵魂。

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.

因为我发现，在提笔之时，如果没有自己的思想，不能表达关于人与人的关系、道德及性的真理，我连对一部小说的评论也写不出来。

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.

按照“家里的天使”的规矩，女人不可以自由、公开地讨论这些问题。女人只能展示魅力，女人只能让步。直率地说，要想成功，她们必须说谎。

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.

所以，每当我在纸上感到她翅膀的影子或是光晕时，我就会拿起墨水瓶向她砸去。杀死她很难。虚幻的本质给了她极大的帮助。杀死现实中的人易，杀死鬼影难。

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.

我认为已经将她杀死，可她却总是悄然再至。我因最终铲除了她而感到欣慰，但铲除的斗争过程却十分激烈，耗时很多，都不如把这些时间花在学习希腊语法或是周游世界去冒险好了。

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.

可这都是真实的经历；这种经历注定会发生在所有女作家的身上。杀死“家里的天使”是女作家职业的分内之事。