和谐英语

经济学人下载:两性智慧-不完美的忠告(4)

2021-02-18来源:Economist

Ms Whitehorn, meanwhile, dealt with the eternal worries of women that they were not elegant or organised enough. Her most famous column, in 1963, defended all slatterns who had ever safety-pinned a hem, changed their stockings in a taxi, or seized some item back from the dirty-clothes basket “because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing”. 

与此同时,怀特霍恩正在处理女性永恒的困扰:不够优雅,不够有条理。她最著名的专栏是在1963年,为所有懒惰女人辩护——她们用别针别住裙摆,在出租车里换长筒袜,或是继续穿脏衣篮里的衣服,“因为相对来说,脏衣服相较更干净”。

She implied she was a slattern too, though Roedean, Cambridge, her dress sense and her darkly posh voice rather gave the lie to that. But at devil-may-care-ness she did well. 

她暗示自己也是一个邋遢的人,尽管她的尽管罗丁女中、剑桥大学、她的衣着品味和浓厚的上流社会腔调戳破了这一谎言。但不管怎样,她做得很好。

In “How to Survive Children” (she had two, chaotically balanced with work), she advised that bath-time went better after a glass of gin. As for housewifery, “no book of household management can ever tell you...how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.” 

在《女人如何养孩子》(How to Survive Children)一书中(她有两个孩子,在工作和育儿中的混乱地平衡着),她建议,喝一杯杜松子酒后洗澡会更舒适。至于家庭主妇,“没有一本家庭管理书籍能告诉你……如何开始。也许我的意思是为什么开始。”

Both columnists continued to a great age, thriving on long and generally happy marriages. Wisdom seemed to gather around them until both were national treasures. Their essential optimism was tempered: Dr Watsa’s by the beatings, abuse and unhappily arranged marriages he was told of, and could do nothing about; Ms Whitehorn’s by the feeling that sex had come to tyrannise relationships. 

两位专栏作家都到了耄耋之年,他们的婚姻长久而美满。智慧的光环似乎笼罩在他们周围,直到这两个人都成了国宝级人物。他们重要的乐观情绪被淡化了:沃特萨医生听闻那些遭受殴打、虐待和不幸的包办婚姻时,他无能为力;怀特霍恩女士认为性已经成为了一种专制的关系。

But the numbers of people they had braced with confidence were legion, and occasionally their advice was similar. To a woman worried about not being a virgin on her wedding night, Dr Watsa wrote: “Don’t worry, your husband won’t notice.” 

但他们满怀信心迎接的困惑者不计其数,有时他们的建议也大致相同。对于一位在新婚之夜担心自己不是处女的女士,沃特萨医生写道:“别担心,你的丈夫不会注意到的。While to a young bedsitter hostess, cooking for a man, Ms Whitehorn breezed: “Don’t apologise, and never ask ‘Is it all right?’” 

当怀特霍恩女士回复一位为男人做饭的年轻女士时,她轻松地说:“无需道歉,永远不要问‘是这样做吗?’”