碩研英一甲 MA1C0203
吳姵樺
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN
Women as Writers
. . . And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those
of real life. But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which
have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that
prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are "important"; the worship of fashion, the
buying of clothes "trivial". And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction.
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an
insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in
a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop --every-where and much more subtly
the difference of value persists.
由於小說和實際生活有對應關係，它的價值觀也反映了真實生活，但是很明顯的，女性
價值觀常常不同於其他性別的價值觀，當然也不會一樣。然而，男性的價值觀比較優勝，
簡單的說，足球和運動是「重要的」
，崇拜時尚，買衣服，則是「沒有價值的」
。這些價
值觀，不可避免的從現實生活轉移到小說裡。評論家認為這是本重要的書，因為它跟戰
爭有關；這是本不重要的書，因為它講的是女人在客廳的想法。戰爭場景一定比商店的
場景重要，到處都有價值觀的不同，而且更加微妙。
The whole structure, therefore, of the early nineteenth-century novel was raised, if one was a
woman, by a mind which was slightly pulled from the straight, and made to alter its clear
vision in deference to external authority. One has only to skim these old forgotten novels and
listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting
criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation. She was
admitting that she was "only a woman", or protesting that she was "as good as a man". She
met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and
emphasis. It does not matter which it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing
itself. Down comes her book upon our heads. There was a flaw in the centre of it. And I
thought of all the women's novels that lie scattered, like small pock-marked apples in an
orchard, about the second-hand book shops of London. It was the flaw in the centre that had
rotted them. She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.
因此，早期的十九世紀小說，如果由女性所寫，整個架構，就是有點偏離直線的心智，
為了遵從外來的權威，必須改變她清楚的洞察力，我們只需要閱覽這些老舊、被遺忘的
小說，聽那些腔調，就可以發現作者受到批評，這樣說，是侵略的意思，那樣說，是合
好的意思，她承認「她只是個女人」
，或是抗議「她跟男人一樣好」
，她面對批評的時候，
由她的性情決定，有時溫順、羞怯，有時生氣、強調，不管是什麼都沒關係，因為她想
到的多於事情本身。她的書像在頭上打一下，在中心有個瑕疵，我認為，全部女性寫的
小說，像是在果園裏有坑洞的蘋果，散佈在倫敦的二手書店，中心有瑕疵，蘋果才會腐
爛，她為了遵從別人的意見，而扭曲了自己的價值觀。
But how impossible it must have been for them not to budge either to the right or to the left.
What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of
that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking. Only
Jane Austen did it and Emily Bronte. It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps.
They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels
then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue---write
this, think that. They alone were deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now
patronising, now domineering, now grieved, now shocked, now angry, now avuncular, that
voice which cannot let women alone, but must be at them, like some too conscientious
governess, adjuring them, like Sir Egerton Brydges, to be refined;
但是要左右他們意見實在是多麼不可能，多麼聰明，多麼誠實必須面對所有批評，在完
全父系社會中，堅持他們的意見而不退縮，只有珍奧斯丁‧及愛蜜麗‧布蘭特做到這點，
這是他們帽子上的另一根羽毛，或許是最好的那根。他們以女性身分寫作，不是以男性
身分，在寫小說的幾千個女人裡，只有他們完全忽視永久的勸告，不管說教，寫這個，
想那個，只有他們對這反覆的聲音不理不睬，一下抱怨，一下庇護，一下跋扈，一下悲
傷，一下驚嚇，一下生氣，一下慈祥，那個聲音不讓女人獨自，一定要看著他們，像是
一些認真的家庭女教師，嚴令他們，像是布里吉士爵士一樣，還要再琢磨。
1 ; admonishing them, if they
dragging even into the criticism of poetry criticism of sex○
would be good and win, as I suppose, some shiny prize, to keep within certain limits which
the gentleman in question thinks suitable---“ . . . female novelists should only aspire to
2 That puts the
excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex". ○
matter in a nutshell, and when I tell you, rather to your surprise, that this sentence was written
not in August 1828 but in August 1928, you will agree, I think, that, however delightful it is
to us now, it represents a vast body of opinion ---I am not going to stir those old pools; I take
only what chance has floated to my feet---that was far more vigorous and far more vocal a
century ago. It would have needed a very stalwart young woman in 1828 to disregard all
those snubs and chidings and promises of prizes. One must have been something of a
firebrand to say to oneself, Oh, but they can't buy literature too. Literature is open to
everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up
your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the
freedom of my mind.
甚至連詩歌評論都要加入性別評論，還要告誡他們，我猜，可能是在他們寫得很好，或
得獎的時候，讓他們在某種紳士認為合適的界線內，「…女性小說家知道自己性別限度
在哪裡，才有可能寫出好的作品。」說得很言簡意賅。接下來我要告訴你的，很可能會
使你驚訝，這句話不是寫在 1828 年 8 月，而是在 1928 年 8 月，我想，你們會同意，不
管這想法對我們來說多麼好笑，它可是代表很多人的意見，我不想攪拌在古老的池子
裡，我只是拿飄到我腳邊的機會，在世紀之前，比較強有力且更有聲音。在 1828 年，
需要一位堅決且年輕的女人，將這些冷落、這些責備，和這些承諾全部漠視。他必須要
有一些火爆性格才能對自己說，噢！他們沒辦法買文學，文學敞開給每個人，我不允許
你把我從草地上趕走，就算你是差役要如何，如果你想鎖上圖書館，就去做，但是沒有
門、沒有鎖、沒有門栓，可以讓你把我心靈的自由鎖住。
But whatever effect discouragement and criticism had upon their writing---and I believe
that they had a very great effect---that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty
which faced them (I was still considering those early nineteenth-century novelists) when they
came to set their thoughts on paper
hat is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so
short and partial that it was of little help. For we think back through our mothers if we are
women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to
them for pleasure. Lamb, Browne, Thackeray, Newman, Sterne, Dickens, De
Quincey---whoever it may be---never helped a woman yet, though she may have learnt a few
tricks of them and adapted them to her use.
不管阻礙或批評他們的作品結果會如何，我相信這會有非常大的影響，跟其他他們面對
的困難比起來顯得不重要(我仍然在說十九世紀早期的小說家)，當他們想在紙上設立想
法，在他們背後沒有傳統可以遵從，如果有一點幫助，也只是短短的、不完全的，對於
我們，我們是回去找媽媽如何當女人，這些女作家如果去找偉大的男作家尋求幫忙，好
像沒什麼幫助，然而只是為了樂趣，蘭、布朗、薩克萊、紐曼、時坦、狄柯斯、德坤西，
不論是誰都一樣，然而對女人都是沒有幫助，雖然她們可能會學到些戲法，會採納歸自
己使用。
The weight, the pace, the stride of a man's mind are too unlike her own for her to lift anything
substantial from him successfully. The ape is too distant to be sedulous. Perhaps the first
thing she would find, setting pen to paper, was that there was no common sentence for her
use. All the great novelists like Thackeray and Dickens and Balzac have written a natural
prose, swift but not slovenly, expressive but not precious, taking their own tint without
ceasing to be common property. They have based it on the sentence that was current at the
time. The sentence that was current at the beginning of the nineteenth century ran something
like this perhaps: "The grandeur of their works was an argument with them, not to stop short,
but to proceed. They could have no higher excitement or satisfaction than in the exercise of
their art and endless generation of truth and beauty. Success prompts to exertion; and habit
facilitates success." That is a man's sentence: behind it one can see Johnson, Gibbon, and the
rest. It was a sentence that was unsuited for a woman's use. Charlotte Bronte, with all her
splendid gift for prose, stumbled and fell with that clumsy weapon in her hands. George Eliot
committed atrocities with it that beggar description. Jane Austen looked at it and laughed at it
and devised a perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her own use and never departed
from it. Thus, with less genius for writing than Charlotte Bronte, she got infinitely more said.
Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art, such a lack of
tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the
writing of women.
男人頭腦裡的重量、步調、和步伐，與女人相差太大，無法讓女人從中拿取任何實在的
東西來用，那隻大猩猩太遠了，以致於不能勤勉。或許當她拿起筆來，發現的第一件事
就是沒有共通的語言可以用，全部好的小說家像是薩克萊、狄柯斯、巴爾札克，已經寫
了天生的好散文，流利但不凌亂，情緒豐富但不過分精雕細琢，各有色彩但也有共同特
性，他們句子的基礎都在那時的流行語句，在十九世紀初期的流行句子，或許應該是這
樣：「他們作品的宏偉，是句子的爭論，不會突然停頓，而會繼續進行。他們最開心或
最滿足就是發揮藝術，讓真誠和美麗慢慢產生，成就激勵努力，習慣促進成就。」這是
男性的句子，在這樣的句子可以看見約翰生、吉柏等人。不過這樣的句子不適合女生使
用，像是夏綠蒂‧布朗蒂，她的散文那麼傑出，拿了這樣的武器在手裡，會被絆倒。喬
治‧艾利特有了這不好的敘述，才會犯了暴行，珍‧奧斯丁看了句子，笑了笑，寫出另
一完美、天生、美觀的句子，她自己的句子，而且從不離去，然而，雖然她沒有比夏綠
蒂‧布朗蒂聰明，但她寫出來的句子確實比較多，的確，因為表達的自由及豐富是藝術
的要素，像是缺少了傳統，工具缺乏及不足，一定在女性作品留下巨大的痕跡。
Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image
helps, into arcades or domes. And this shape too has been made by men out of their own
needs for their own uses. There is no reason to think that the form of the epic or of the poetic
play suits a woman any more than the sentence suits her. But all the older forms of literature
were hardened and set by the time she became a writer. The novel alone was young enough to
be soft in her hands---another reason, perhaps, why she wrote novels. Yet who shall say that
even now "the novel" (I give it inverted commas to mark my sense of the words' inadequacy),
who shall say that even this most pliable of all forms is rightly shaped for her use? No doubt
we shall find her knocking that into shape for herself when she has the free use of her limbs;
and providing some new vehicle, not necessarily in verse, for the poetry in her. For it is the
poetry that is still denied outlet. And I went on to ponder how a woman nowadays would
write a poetic tragedy in five acts. Would she use verse?---would she not use prose rather?
此外，一本書不是只有句子從頭連到尾，如果要以意象幫忙，是由句子構成拱門或圓屋
頂，而這形狀，是由男人自己建造，自己使用，所以史詩或詩劇一點都不適合女性，更
何況是句子，但是更老形式的文學在女性作家出現時已經定型，只有小說是新的，可以
被塑造，或許這是另一個她要寫小說的原因，然而，誰敢說現在這「小說」(我把小說
加上引號是覺得這名字不合適)，這目前最有可塑性的文學類型，就最適合女性塑造呢？
毫無疑問的，當她可以自由施展時，我們可以發現她會開始敲打，塑造屬於她自己的形
狀，創造新的工具，不一定是韻文，說不定在她的詩歌裡。因為詩仍然是被否認的出口，
所以，我持續想，如果女性要寫五幕詩歌悲劇，她會如何寫？她會用韻文而不用散文嗎？
But these are difficult questions which lie in the twilight of the future. I must leave them,
if only because they stimulate me to wander from my subject into trackless forests where I
shall be lost and, very likely, devoured by wild beasts. I do not want, and I am sure that you
do not want me, to broach that very dismal subject, the future of fiction, so that I will only
pause here one moment to draw your attention to the great part which must be played in that
future so far as women are concerned by physical conditions. The book has somehow to be
adapted to the body, and at a venture one would say that women's books should be shorter,
more concentrated, than those of men, and framed so that they do not need long hours of
steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be. Again, the nerves that
feed the brain would seem to differ in men and women, and if you are going to make them
work their best and hardest, you must find out what treatment suits them---whether these
hours of lectures, for instance, which the monks devised, presumably hundreds of years ago,
suit them---what alterations of work and rest they need, interpreting rest not as doing nothing
but as doing something but something that is different; and what should that difference be?
All this should be discussed and dis-covered; all this is part of the question of women and
fiction. And yet, I continued, approaching the bookcase again, where shall I find that
elaborate study of the psychology of women by a woman? If through their incapacity to play
football women are not going to be allowed to practice medicine--Happily my thoughts were now given another turn.
但是在未來的微光裡，這些都是很難回答的問題，我必須離開它們，不然它們可能會促
使我離開主題，而到無人跡的森林，有可能會迷路或是被野獸吞沒，我不想要這樣，我
很確定你們也不想要我如此，去鑿這個憂鬱的話題，小說的未來，所以我只能在這暫停，
把妳們的注意力拉向在未來有一樣重要部分的議題，就是女性的生理條件。書，不管如
何，都必須和作家身體有相對應關係，我們不如說，女性的作品比男性更短、更集中，
至於結構，不需要長時間、不被打擾比較好，因為在未來還是會被打擾。另外，男女腦
部的神經好像也是有差別，如果你要讓它們運作好的話，你必須發現什麼樣的對待適合
它們，舉例來說，上課時間長短，大概是幾百年前由神父訂出來的，適合她們嗎？他們
需要什麼樣的工作和休閒？這裡的休閒不是什麼都不做，而是做其他不同的東西，那這
不同的事，應該是什麼呢？這些全部應該要被討論、要被發覺，全部都是女性和小說這
問題其中的一部份，然而，我繼續，我再次靠近書架，在那我找的到女性寫的女性心理
學詳細研究嗎？如果因為女性不會踢足球，而不准她當醫生，那──
高興的是我的思想現在轉彎了。
ps
1 (She) has a metaphysical purpose, and that is a dangerous obsession, especially with a
○
woman, for women rarely possess men's healthy love of rhetoric. It is a strange lack in the
sex which is in other things more primitive and more materialistic."---New Criterion, June
1928.
她，有著哲學的目的，這是危險的著迷，特別是在女性上，因為女性很少擁有男性對修
辭學上健康的愛，缺乏這，是很奇怪的事，她們在其他事情上，更加原始、更加實利主
義。(新評論)，1928 年 6 月。
2 "If, like the reporter, you believe that female novelists should only aspire to excellence
○
by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex (Jane Austen (has) demonstrated
how gracefully this gesture can be accomplished . . .)."---Life and Letters, August 1928.
如果你像那記者，相信女性小說家只有勇敢承認性別限度，才能寫出極好的作品，珍‧
奧斯丁證明了這姿態可以擺的多優雅。(生命和信)，1928 年 8 月。