现代大学英语精读5 Professions for Women中英文

Professions for Women

V

irginia Woolf (1882-1941)

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 sixpence one can

buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare--if one has a mind that way. Pianos and

models,

Paris,

V

ienna,

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.

But to tell you my story-- it is a simple one. Y

ou 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.

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. Y

ou 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

V

ictoria-- 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.

Y

ou 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.

But to continue my story. The Angel was dead; what then remained? Y

ou 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.

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.

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;