I Learned Everything I Needed to Know About Marriage From Pride and Prejudice  When I teach Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I take great pains to un-sully it from students’ film-adaptation-induced misconceptions that it’s a “romantic” novel. As a satirist, even if a gentle one, Austen offers rather unromantic corrections to vices and foibles, many of which range far beyond the surface themes of love and marriage. Indeed, like most early novels, Austen’s contend with the seismic social shifts birthed by modernity, particularly the rise of the individual. In Pride and Prejudice, as in Austen’s other works, the private angst surrounding the choice of a marriage partner really reflects the larger, public anxieties swirling around a disintegrating class structure, a new social mobility, and increasing personal autonomy. 在我教授《傲慢与偏见》时，我极力纠正同学们对这部文学作品的谬见。他们受电影改编版影响，认为这是一部“言情”小说。作为一名讽刺作家（尽管不甚辛辣），奥斯丁也写世间阴暗面，它们与浪漫无关且远远超出了表面上的婚姻与爱情主题。实际上，包括许多早期作品在内，奥斯丁都在探讨那些由现代化，尤其是人性解放所引发的重大的社会变革。正如奥斯丁的其他作品，在《傲慢与偏见》中，个人在择偶问题上的忧虑其实也是社会普遍的忧虑。这些忧虑往往围绕着门第划分、社会阶层间的流动以及个人自主权的提升问题而展开。 Nevertheless, the truth is that I still learned everything I needed to know about marriage from Pride and Prejudice. 然而事实上，我的全部婚姻观仍来自《傲慢与偏见》这部作品。 Marriages are foremost in Austen’s world, and, its place in literary theory and history aside, Pride and Prejudice enchants me again and again with its hairpin sharp insights into matrimonial matters. Here are nine lessons Pride and Prejudice taught me about marriage—and surely, there are many more. 不谈在文学理论和文学史中的地位，婚姻问题在奥斯丁的世界里，可是头等大事。《傲慢与偏见》对于婚姻问题的深刻解读总是令我着迷。这里介绍给大家我从中学到的9个方面，当然，一定还有更多。 Mutual Respect Is Essential to a Happy Marriage 互敬是幸福婚姻的关键 The first marriage we encounter in Pride and Prejudice is Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s. These two illustrate magnificently by negative example just how crucial respect for one another is to marital bliss. Mr. Bennet treats Mrs. Bennet like the fool she assuredly is, and Mrs. Bennet, in return, exerts the only authority she has: nagging. As readers, we may laugh with Mr. Bennet (and the narrator) at Mrs. Bennet, but we don’t side with him entirely. Even Elizabeth, as much as she loves her father and as much as he respects her, admits she “could not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort” based on her parents’ marriage. 在书中，我们遇到的第一对夫妻是班纳特夫妇。他们为此命题提供了很好的反面教材。班纳特老爷把妻子当傻子愚弄（当然，她也的确愚蠢），而班纳特夫人则以唠叨——她唯一的特权，回敬之。作为读者，我们也许也会跟着班纳特老爷（及作者）一起笑话班纳特夫人，但我们却无法完全认同他的做法。我们知道，伊丽莎白很爱她的父亲，其父也相当尊重她。然而即便是伊丽莎白，也坦言道，“倘若叫我根据自已的家庭，来说一说什么叫做婚姻的幸福，什么叫做家庭的乐趣，那一定说不出什么好话来。” We can’t help but wonder along with Elizabeth, who “had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband,” if Mrs. Bennet might have grown into a better partner and woman with more active loving-kindness from him. Instead, Mrs. Bennet fits the description of what one marriage expert—Pat Ennis of the marriage-enrichment program The Third Option—calls the “Critical Nag,” one who is never happy with how others do things. Mr. Bennet, meanwhile, is the “Ridiculer-Name Caller,” the person who constantly puts others down. Ennis says that respect is the bedrock of lasting love, wisdom the never-married Austen recognized long before psychology, life coaches, and marriage retreats were invented. 闻此说法，我们也不禁会和伊丽莎白一道，思索班纳特夫妇的婚姻。伊丽莎白“并不是看不出父亲在做丈夫方面的缺德。”而班纳特夫人呢，或许在做妻子和做女人方面，都可以做得更好；班纳特老爷也会更加怜爱她。然而，根据婚姻专家——帕特·恩尼斯(Pat Ennis)（他经营婚姻成长计划“第三种选择”）[2]的描述，班纳特夫人属于“唠叨毒舌”的典型代表——看什么都不顺眼。与此同时，班纳特老爷则属于“讽刺挖苦者”，总是贬低别人。恩尼斯称，尊重是婚姻长久的基石，也是终身未嫁的奥斯丁的过人智慧所在，因为在所谓的心理学、生活导师、恩爱夫妻营(marriage retreat)[3]被发明前的很久，奥斯丁就已然认识到了这点。 First Impressions Can Be Misleading 第一印象很不准 As fans of Pride and Prejudice know, “First Impressions” was Austen’s original title for the work. The first half of the novel is an accumulation of false impressions, particularly Elizabeth’s misperceptions (leading to the titular prejudice) about the seemingly, titularly, proud Darcy. Ironically, Elizabeth’s confident assessment of Mr. Darcy as proud stems greatly from her own pride in her keen, but not infallible, perceptiveness. The rest of the story consists of the correction of those misreadings—and of the prejudice and pride that foster such misunderstandings. 《傲慢与偏见》的粉丝们都知道，其最初的书名就是《第一印象》。小说的前一半即是错误印象的不断累加，尤其是伊丽莎白对看似傲慢的达西的错误认识（这也导致了一种所谓的“偏见”）。讽刺的是，伊丽莎白对达西的傲慢深信不疑，而很大程度上，这都是因为她确信自已拥有敏锐的、但也并非毫无差错的洞察力。在小说的后半部分，则是写误解的更正以及导致误解产生的傲慢与偏见的消除。 Like Elizabeth, but for different reasons, I’m fortunate that my first impressions of the man who would become my husband were wrong, too. When as a Lydia Bennet-esque college freshman, I first spotted the man, marriage was far from my mind—and he appeared to be someone who might regard it the same way. He didn’t. Then I didn’t. We never looked back (as I have written about here). 跟伊丽莎白一样，我初识我丈夫时，也很“幸运地”对他产生了一些错误的印象。当年，我是一名像丽迪雅一样的大一学生。我们初次相遇时，我根本想不到有一天我会嫁给他，而他似乎也是这么想的。实际上，他的真实想法并非如此，我的想法后来也有所改变。往事不堪回首啊（欲知我们的故事，点击这里）。 You Can Judge a Man by the Size of His Library 男人的藏书很说明问题 In Austen’s world, size matters. The size of one’s book collection, that is. 在奥斯丁的世界里，大小很重要。我是指藏书数量的大小。 While stuck at Netherfield because her sister has fallen ill there, the hospitable Mr. Bingley offers Elizabeth access to his books, to “all that his library afforded.” Elizabeth assures him she is content with what she has. He admits, “I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more than I ever looked into." 当伊丽莎白因姐姐生病被困在尼日斐庄园时，热情的彬格莱邀请她去自已的书房，并拿给她“书房里所有的书”。伊丽莎白对他说，房间里那几本书尽够她看了。彬格莱则坦言道，“要是我的藏书多一些就好啦，无论是为你的益处着想，还是为我自已的面子着想；可是我是个懒鬼，藏书不多，读过的就更少了。” Then coy Miss Bingley attempts to converse with Darcy while he is engaged in reading. “When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library," Miss Bingley proclaims. "I am astonished that my father should have left so small a collection of books. What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!" 接着，彬格莱小姐献媚地与正在看书的达西搭讪。她说，“将来有一天我自已有了家，要是没有个很好的书房，那会多么遗憾哟。”“我很奇怪，爸爸怎么只遗留下来了这么几本书。——达西先生，你在彭伯里的那个藏书室真是好极了！” "It ought to be good," he replies. "It has been the work of many generations." "And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying books,” Miss Bingley says flirtatiously. 达西说：“那有什么稀奇，那是好几代的成绩啊。” “你自已又添置了那么不少书，只看见你老是在买书。”彬格莱小姐卖弄风情地说道。 Later, after Elizabeth has shed her initial false impressions about Darcy, she recollects the evolution of her feelings toward him. She explains that her love for Darcy “has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." Indeed. 后来，伊丽莎白消除了对达西的误解，她追忆起自已对达西的情愫，说到，“它是慢慢儿发展起来的，我也说不出从什么时候开始，不过我觉得，应该是从看到彭伯里他那美丽的庄园算起。”的确如此。 In the provincial world of Austen’s novels, small-mindedness is among the greatest of personal and social follies, for which an expansive library serves as a counterbalance. Darcy’s fetching library serves as metaphor for a variety of qualities in a marriage partner today which might counteract contemporary excesses and limitations: broad-mindedness in an age of identity politics and narrow partisanship, integrity in an era of brutal pragmatism, strong work ethic in a culture of shortcuts, steadiness in a swirl of passing fancies. While countless other qualities might substitute for those represented by Darcy’s library, these attracted me to my husband and have deepened my love for him more over the years. Not to mention the fact that he built me my own library, and its shelves are overflowing. 在奥斯丁小说描写的乡间村庄里，无论对于个人还是群体，最大的缺点莫过于思想狭隘，而一个宽敞的藏书室却可将之抵消。达西迷人的藏书室代表了诸多当代理想人生伴侣的优良品质。这些品质能使人与当代社会中种种极端主义相抗衡，比如说：身份政治(Identity politics)[4]与狭隘的党派纠纷盛行的年代下的一种胸襟雅量、极端个人主义纵横下的一份坚守、捷径文化流行下的一种强烈的职业道德以及浮光流云中的一分淡定。或许，世间还有许多优点可以替代这些品质。但于我而言，当初我先生吸引我的正是以上这些品质，而且，随着时间的积累，我对我丈夫的爱也因它们变得更浓更醇。更不用说他还为我专门建造了属于我的藏书室，里面的藏书可谓汗牛充栋啊。 Romance Is Not Enough 浪漫是不够的 Mr. and Mrs. Bennet married, we learn later, out of youthful imprudence and passion. This same error is repeated by their daughter Lydia (who is all romance, no prudence) when she elopes with the conniving Wickham (who is all prudence with no romance). It doesn’t take long for the honeymoon luster to fade, and upon hearing of her sister Elizabeth’s impending marriage to Darcy, Lydia is reduced to begging the couple for a court appointment for her husband, confessing, “I do not think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help.” Such dire straits are not in keeping with Lydia’s former romanticism. 在小说的后半部分，我们知道了当初班纳特夫妇结婚纯属年少荒唐和一时冲动。当他们的女儿丽迪雅（只要浪漫，毫不谨慎）与诡计多端的威克姆（只管算计，不谈感情）一起私奔，同样的错误便再次上演。这两人蜜月的甜蜜根本没有持续多久。一听说姐姐要嫁给达西了，丽迪雅赶紧求他们给自已丈夫在皇宫里找个差事做，并坦言称，“要是再没有别人帮帮忙，我们便很难维持生计了。”这般悲惨境地与先前的风花雪月真是大相径庭。 Austen would not likely be surprised at recent findings reported here at The Atlantic that for the middle class today (which is approximately the class of the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice) the difference between a happy marriage and a miserable one is something decidedly unromantic: chores. 近日《大西洋月刊》对当今中产阶级（大约相当于《傲慢与偏见》中的班纳特家）进行了一次调查（点击此处查看），其结果恐怕并不会使奥斯丁感到十分吃惊：婚姻生活幸福与否取决于一个毫不浪漫的因素——日常琐事。 You Really Do Marry a Family, Not Just a Person 结婚不是跟一个人，而是跟一大家子建立关系 A survey in the November issue of Glamour found that the majority of men polled by the magazine said that they judge a woman by her family. This truth universally acknowledged forms one of the great obstacles between Elizabeth and Darcy, a point revealed in the explanatory letter Darcy writes to Elizabeth following her refusal of one of the most infamous marriage proposals in all of literature. Darcy’s objections to the marriage between his friend Bingley and Elizabeth’s sister Jane, he explains in the letter, owed “to that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by [Mrs. Bennet], by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you.” It does offend Elizabeth—at first. But once her pride subsides, she recognizes the truth and the validity of Darcy’s concerns. 《魅力》杂志(Glamour)11月刊的一份调查显示，参与调查的多数男士表示他们衡量一位女性的标准是她的家庭。这个举世公认的真理也成了伊丽莎白与达西之间的最大障碍之一。达西求婚被拒（“文学史上最不光彩的一次求婚”）后写的那封解释信里，就提到了这点。达西在信中写道，自已反对好友彬格莱娶伊丽莎白的姐姐吉英，是因为“你们家人完全没有体统。你母亲和三个妹妹都是始终一贯地做出许多没有体统的事情来，有时甚至连你父亲也难免。请原谅我这样直言无讳，其实得罪了你，也使我自已感到痛苦。”这话的确冒犯了伊丽莎白，但只是在一开始时。当伊丽莎白收敛起傲慢，她觉得达西所言不无道理。 These familial objections are, of course, overcome in time for the happily ever after. But Darcy has recognized, wisely, that he is marrying into a family and he does so with open eyes and readiness—as much as that is possible—to accept that fact of life. Indeed, my own “happily ever after” has, after many years, come to mean a household that includes my aging parents. Anyone who doesn’t believe that you marry a family should talk to a man in my husband’s situation. 当然，这些关于对方家庭的不满最终消散，二人终成眷属。不过，达西智慧过人，早早就意识到了自已的婚姻涉及的是对方整个的家庭。为更好地迎接现实，他也尽量了解状况并充分做好准备。的确，在我婚后多年，我的“（男女主人公）永远幸福地生活在一起了”渐渐变成了包括年迈老人的一大家子。谁不相信结婚是跟一大家子建立关系，就应该找个我丈夫这样处境的人聊聊。 Missed Communication Is Miscommunication 错过交流=错误交流 In other words, silence is the voice of complacency. The lovely match between Elizabeth Bennet’s eldest sister Jane and Mr. Bingley nearly doesn’t happen, in large part because neither makes their feelings clearly known to the other. Natural reserve isn’t a character flaw (see: Darcy), but it’s a trait that must be overcome when reticence means letting something—or someone—important slip away. 换句话说，沉默即满足于现状。伊丽莎白的姐姐吉英和彬格莱先生差点没成，主要就是因为两人都没有向对方表白。天生寡言不能算缺点（比如：达西），但如果这将意味着使生命中重要的人或事溜走的话，这点就必须要克服。 Experts even have a name for this tendency we have to think our communication is stronger and clearer than it actually is: signal amplification bias. Motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson writes that this general assumption that we have said more than we actually have is the “most common source of miscommunication in any relationship” because “people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating.” I don’t think my marriage is unusual in consisting of one overcommunicative partner (guess who that is!) and one partner whose signal amplification bias is, shall we say, strong. Jane and Bingley’s relationship and the misunderstandings that surround it offer a textbook’s worth of insight for navigating real-life communication problems. 有时，我们觉得自己说的已经够清楚明白了，但实际效果并没有那么理想。专家们特地为这种倾向起了个名字：信号夸大倾向。动机学心理学家海蒂·格朗特·霍尔沃森(Heidi Grant Halvorson)写道，通常情况下，我们以为我们所言比实际所言要多。这即是“所有人际交往中产生误会的最常见的原因”，因为“人们经常意识不到自已根本没说什么。”在这点上，我不认为我的婚姻是个例外，或是结婚伴侣交流频繁（猜猜我说的是谁！）。可以说，这位同志的信号夸大倾向很严重。吉英和彬格莱的关系以及他们之间的误解值得我们对日常交流中出现的问题进行反思。 In Marriage, One Size Doesn’t Fit All 在婚姻问题上，没有单一范式 This is one of the more nuanced and difficult—but no less important—lessons from Pride and Prejudice, as Noah Berlatsky argued earlier this year. When Elizabeth’s best friend Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins, that fawning prig whom Elizabeth had easily turned down earlier, Elizabeth is understandably disappointed in her friend’s choice. But of course, “choice” plays little part in the matter since the primary social problem in the world of the novel is that its women have so few choices. Marriage is, the novel explains, “the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.” This “preservative,” Elizabeth comes to realize, Charlotte obtains in her marriage to Mr. Collins. “And at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she [Charlotte] felt all the good luck of it.” When Elizabeth visits the newlywed pair later, she observes that Charlotte has made peace with her choice. Charlotte’s new home has “really an air of great comfort throughout,” and Elizabeth can see Charlotte's “contentment” and her “evident enjoyment of it.” 正如年初时诺亚·伯拉斯基(Noah Berlatsky)所言，《傲慢与偏见》教给我们的接下来这点更加细微，也更难领会到，但却相当重要。当伊丽莎白的闺蜜夏绿蒂·卢卡斯嫁给了柯林斯牧师——那个之前伊丽莎白果断拒绝的好巴结人的自命不凡的人，可想而知，伊丽莎白对夏绿蒂的决定感到相当失望。不过，当然了，“选择”的意义微乎其微，因为，在小说所描写的世界中，最主要的社会问题是女性根本没什么可选。书中解释道， “大凡家境不好而又受过相当教育的青年女子，总是把婚姻当成仅有的一条体面的退路。尽管结婚并不一定会叫人幸福，但总算给自已安排了一个最可靠的储藏室，日后可不致忍冻受饥。”伊丽莎白渐渐意识到，这个所谓的“储藏室”，夏绿蒂已经通过与柯林斯结婚得到了。“今年她已经二十七岁了，人长得又不标志，这个储藏室当然会使她觉得无限幸运。”后来，伊丽莎白到这对新婚夫妇家做客，她发现，夏绿蒂对其做出的选择，已然完全想通了。夏绿蒂的新家充满了“一种非常舒适的气氛”，伊丽莎白看得出她很“满意”且“享受其中”。 Elizabeth would not—and did not—settle for the same choice. (She’d not have been our heroine if she had!) But despite their being the best of friends, Charlotte and Elizabeth are not the same. Likewise, no two marriages are the same. Nor need they be: Trying to force a one-size-fits-all formula on individual marriages invites disaster. A couple I know who are part of a conservative religious community, for example, tried for the first decade of their marriage to conform to roles they thought were expected by their community and failed miserably. Finally, she went to work full-time and he stayed home with the children—and they’ve never been happier or more stable. 伊丽莎白不会，也根本没有做出相同的选择（她要是做了就不会是我们的女主角了！）。不过，尽管伊丽莎白与夏绿蒂十分要好，却不尽相同。同样，世间没有哪两桩婚姻是一模一样的。也完全没必要一样：如果试图将一个万能模式强加到所有婚姻之中，其后果将不堪设想。举个例子，我认识的一对夫妇是一个保守宗教群体的成员。在他们婚后头十年里，他们依照这个宗教群体的期望扮演着各自的角色，结果过得很不好。最后，女方开始全职工作，男方在家带孩子。这之后，他们的生活变得从未有过的和谐与安定。 The Best Marriages Balance Prudence and Passion 最好的婚姻是理性与感性的调和 Have you ever known a couple whose love is rooted in pure passion, defying all reason (or any need for a good résumé or health insurance)? Or a couple on the opposite end of the spectrum, for whom love means never saying the mortgage is late? I think we’ve all seen, or even experienced, relationships in which either passion or reason reigns like a tyrant over the other. 您见过哪对夫妻，他们的爱情生活只讲感情，不管理性（或不需要对方有良好的个人经历或健康保险）？亦或是相反，对这对夫妇而言爱情就意味着永远不用说抵押贷款已经过期。我想我们都见过，甚至亲身经历过这种感性或理性独占上风的关系。 In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia marries out of pure passion and Charlotte marries out of sheer prudence: “Marriage had always been her object,” despite not "thinking highly either of men or of matrimony.” But the novel extols the best marriages as those that balance prudence and passion, sense and sensibility. Jane and Bingley’s marriage fits this description, even though both their wit and passion are more subdued than those of Elizabeth and Darcy. 在《傲慢与偏见》中，丽迪雅结婚单纯出于感性层面，而夏绿蒂出于理性层面：“结婚是她一贯的目标”，虽然她“对于婚姻和夫妇生活，估价都不甚高。”然而，小说歌颂的理想婚姻是理性与感性、理智与情感的完美调和。吉英和彬格莱的结合就属这一类，尽管就智慧与情感而言，二人都不及伊丽莎白与达西。 It is, of course, Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage which the novel holds up as exemplary. Theirs is a match crowned by the twin laurels of romance and reason. Both the heart and the head assent that this is a match made in Austen’s heaven—and that of many readers as well. 毋庸置疑，伊丽莎白与达西的结合才是小说中婚姻的典范。这二人的搭配可被授予浪漫与理智的双重桂冠。心灵与头脑都会赞同这才是奥斯丁以及许多读者的理想世界中的完美结合。 A Good Marriage Challenges Both Partners to Grow 一段金玉良缘会让双方共同成长 Despite being well-matched in both intellect and passion for each other, Elizabeth and Darcy have to undergo painful chastening, admit their errors, enlarge their perspectives, and see matters through the eyes of the other before they can love each other. And although the novel ends, as all classical comedies do, with their felicitous union, we know enough of their strong minds and robust personalities to perceive that challenges will lie ahead. But we are certain that Elizabeth and Darcy are, like iron that sharpens iron, equally matched. Their marriage provides the best marriage lesson of all: Marry someone whose love will develop you into a better person. 尽管伊丽莎白与达西在智商与情商上都非常般配，但他们都首先经历了痛苦的懊悔，承认自已的错误，拓宽思想并换位思考问题之后，才够格拥有这段姻缘。虽然小说像经典喜剧的结局那样，使两人终成眷属，但我们太清楚这两人一个比一个有主见、个性强，因此可想而知，他们婚后的生活肯定少不了磕磕绊绊。不过，我们也很肯定，伊丽莎白与达西是卤水点豆腐，一物降一物。他们的婚姻教给了我们最好的一课：选对人，合适的婚姻会让你成长。 And to borrow a line from another novel, “Reader, I married him.” 我愿引用另一本小说中的一句话：“读者们，我嫁给他了。” |
[ 此帖被搁浅七夜在2014-03-05 09:40重新编辑 ]