Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring5, I set out in the pursuit of truth. The day, though not actually wet, was dismal6, and the streets in the neighbourhood of the Museum were full of open coal-holes, down which sacks were showering; four-wheeled cabs were drawing up and depositing on the pavement corded boxes containing, presumably, the entire wardrobe of some Swiss or Italian family seeking fortune or refuge or some other desirable commodity which is to be found in the boarding-houses of Bloomsbury in the winter. The usual hoarse-voiced men paraded the streets with plants on barrows. Some shouted; others sang. London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards7 and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern. The British Museum was another department of the factory. The swing-doors swung open; and there one stood under the vast dome8, as if one were a thought in the huge bald fore9 head which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names. One went to the counter; one took a slip of paper; one opened a volume of the catalogue, and the five dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and bewilderment. Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? Here had I come with a notebook and a pencil proposing to spend a morning reading, supposing’ that at the end of the morning I should have transferred the truth to my notebook. But I should need to be a herd10 of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness11 of spiders, desperately12 referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all this. I should need claws of steel and beak13 of brass14 even to penetrate15 the husk. How shall I ever find the grains of truth embedded16 in all this mass of paper? I asked myself, and in despair began running my eye up and down the long list of titles. Even the names of the books gave me food for thought. Sex and its nature might well attract doctors and biologists; but what was surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex — woman, that is to say — also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women. Some of these books were, on the face of it, frivolous17 and facetious18; but many, on the other hand, were serious and prophetic, moral and hortatory. Merely to read the titles suggested innumerable schoolmasters, innumerable clergymen mounting their platforms and pulpits and holding forth19 with loquacity20 which far exceeded the hour usually alloted to such discourse21 on this one subject. It was a most strange phenomenon; and apparently22 — here I consulted the letter M— one confined to the male sex. Women do not write books about men — a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper. So, making a perfectly23 arbitrary choice of a dozen volumes or so, I sent my slips of paper to lie in the wire tray, and waited in my stall, among the other seekers for the essential oil of truth.
What could be the reason, then, of this curious disparity, I wondered, drawing cart-wheels on the slips of paper provided by the British taxpayer24 for other purposes. Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women? A very curious fact it seemed, and my mind wandered to picture the lives of men who spend their time in writing books about women; whether they were old or young, married or unmarried, red-nosed or hump-backed — anyhow, it was flattering, vaguely25, to feel oneself the object of such attention provided that it was not entirely26 bestowed27 by the crippled and the infirm — so I pondered until all such frivolous thoughts were ended by an avalanche28 of books sliding down on to the desk in front of me. Now the trouble began. The student who has been trained in research at Oxbridge has no doubt some method of shepherding his question past all distractions30 till it runs into his answer as a sheep runs into its pen. The student by my side, for Instance, who was copying assiduously from a scientific manual, was, I felt sure. extracting pure nuggets of the essential ore every ten minutes or so. His little grunts31 of satisfaction indicated so much. But if, unfortunately, one has had no training in a university, the question far from being shepherded to its pen flies like a frightened flock hither and thither32, helter-skelter, pursued by a whole pack of hounds. Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question — Why are some women poor? — until it became fifty questions; until the fifty questions leapt frantically33 into midstream and were carried away. Every page in my notebook was scribbled34 over with notes. To show the state of mind I was in, I will read you a few of them, explaining that the page was headed quite simply, Women and Poverty, in block letters; but what followed was something like this:
Condition in Middle Ages of,
Habits in the Fiji Islands of,
Worshipped as goddesses by,
Weaker in moral sense than, Idealism of,
Greater conscientiousness36 of,
South Sea Islanders, age of puberty among,
Attractiveness of,
Offered as sacrifice to,
Small size of brain of,
Profounder sub-consciousness of,
Less hair on the body of,
Mental, moral and physical inferiority of,
Love of children of,
Greater length of life of,
Weaker muscles of,
Strength of affections of,
Vanity of,
Higher education of,
Shakespeare’s opinion of,
Lord Birkenhead’s opinion of,
Dean Inge’s opinion of,
La Bruyere’s opinion of,
Dr Johnson’s opinion of,
Mr Oscar Browning’s opinion of, . . .
Here I drew breath and added, indeed, in the margin37, Why does Samuel Butler say, ‘Wise men never say what they think of women’? Wise men never say anything else apparently. But, I continued, leaning back in my chair and looking at the vast dome in which I was a single but by now somewhat harassed38 thought, what is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women. Here is Pope:
Most women have no character at all.
And here is La Bruyère:
Les femmes sont extrêmes, elles sont meilleures ou pires que les hommes ——
a direct contradiction by keen observers who were contemporary. Are they capable of education or incapable39? Napoleon thought them incapable. Dr Johnson thought the opposite.3 Have they souls or have they not souls? Some savages40 say they have none. Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account.4 Some sages41 hold that they are shallower in the brain; others that they are deeper in the consciousness. Goethe honoured them; Mussolini despises them. Wherever one looked men thought about women and thought differently. It was impossible to make head or tail of it all, I decided42, glancing with envy at the reader next door who was making the neatest abstracts, headed often with an A or a B or a C, while my own notebook rioted with the wildest scribble35 of contradictory43 jottings. It was distressing44, it was bewildering, it was humiliating. Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.
3 ‘“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” . . . In justice to the sex, I think it but candid45 to acknowledge that, in a subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he said.’— Boswell, the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
4 The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles46.’— Frazer, Golden Bough47.
I could not possibly go home, I reflected, and add as a serious contribution to the study of women and fiction that women have less hair on their bodies than men, or that the age of puberty among the South Sea Islanders is nine — or is it ninety? — even the handwriting had become in its distraction29 indecipherable. It was disgraceful to have nothing more weighty or respectable to show after a whole morning’s work. And if I could not grasp the truth about W. (as for brevity’s sake I had come to call her) in the past, why bother about W. in the future? It seemed pure waste of time to consult all those gentlemen who specialize in woman and her effect on whatever it may be — politics, children, wages, morality — numerous and learned as they are. One might as well leave their books unopened.
But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex. He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built; he had a great jowl; to balance that he had very small eyes; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing48 some noxious49 insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation50 remained. Could it be his wife, I asked, looking at my picture? Was she in love with a cavalry51 officer? Was the cavalry officer slim and elegant and dressed in astrakhan? Had he been laughed at, to adopt the Freudian theory, in his cradle by a pretty girl? For even in his cradle the professor, I thought, could not have been an attractive child. Whatever the reason, the professor was made to look very angry and very ugly in my sketch52, as he wrote his great book upon the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. Drawing pictures was an idle way of finishing an unprofitable morning’s work. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. A very elementary exercise in psychology53, not to be dignified54 by the name of psychoanalysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom55 — all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking56 among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had. It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon57; it was the professor’s statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially58 remarkable59, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man — I looked at the student next me — who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight. One has certain foolish vanities. It is only human nature, I reflected, and began drawing cartwheels and circles over the angry professor’s face till he looked like a burning bush or a flaming comet — anyhow, an apparition60 without human semblance61 or significance. The professor was nothing now but a faggot burning on the top of Hampstead Heath. Soon my own anger was explained and done with; but curiosity remained. How explain the anger of the professors? Why were they angry? For when it came to analysing the impression left by these books there was always an element of heat. This heat took many forms; it showed itself in satire62, in sentiment, in curiosity, in reprobation63. But there was another element which was often present and could not immediately be identified. Anger, I called it. But it was anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions. To judge from its odd effects, it was anger disguised and complex, not anger simple and open.
Whatever the reason, all these books, I thought, surveying the pile on the desk, are worthless for my purposes. They were worthless scientifically, that is to say, though humanly they were full of instruction, interest, boredom, and very queer facts about the habits of the Fiji Islanders. They had been written in. the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth. Therefore they must be returned to the central desk and restored each to his own cell in the enormous honeycomb. All that I had retrieved64 from that morning’s work had been the one fact of anger. The professors — I lumped them together thus — were angry. But why, I asked myself, having returned the books, Why, I repeated, standing65 under the colonnade66 among the pigeons and the prehistoric67 canoes, why are they angry? And, asking myself this question, I strolled off to find a place for luncheon. What is the real nature of What I call for the moment their anger? I asked. Here was a puzzle that would last all the time that it takes to be served with food in a small restaurant somewhere near the British Museum. Some previous luncher had left the lunch edition of the evening paper on a chair, and, waiting to be served, I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser68 ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe69 with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr justice —— commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered70 testimony71, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor72 of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He Was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders73. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit74 or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry. I knew that he was angry by this token. When I read what he wrote about women — I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself. When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument; and the reader cannot help thinking of the argument too. If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a canary yellow. So be it, I should have said. But I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry. Or is anger, I wondered, somehow, the familiar, the attendant sprite on power? Rich people, for example, are often angry because they suspect that the poor want to seize their wealth. The professors, or patriarchs, as it might be more accurate to call them, might be angry for that reason partly, but partly for one that lies a little less obviously on the surface. Possibly they were not ‘angry’ at all; often, indeed, they were admiring, devoted75, exemplary in the relations of private life. Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement — is arduous76, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable77, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self. By feeling that one has some innate78 superiority — it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney — for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination — over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment79 of the other day when Z, most humane80, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, ‘The arrant81 feminist82! She says that men are snobs83!’ The exclamation84, to me so surprising — for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex? — was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement85 of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would he unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains86 of mutton bones and bartering87 flints for sheep skins or whatever simple ornament88 took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized89 societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing90 natives, making laws, writing books, dressing91 up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling92 my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme93 importance because it charges the vitality94; it stimulates95 the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine96. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced97, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith’s tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.
But these contributions to the dangerous and fascinating subject of the psychology of the other sex — it is one, I hope, that you will investigate when you have five hundred a year of your own — were interrupted by the necessity of paying the bill. It came to five shillings and ninepence. I gave the waiter a ten-shilling note and he went to bring me change. There was another ten-shilling note in my purse; I noticed it, because it is a fact that still takes my breath away the power of my purse to breed ten-shilling notes automatically. I open it and there they are. Society gives me chicken and coffee, bed and lodging98, in return for a certain number of pieces of paper which were left me by an aunt, for no other reason than that I share her name.
My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy99 reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two — the vote and the money — the money, I own, seemed infinitely100 the more important. Before that I had made my living by cadging101 odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kindergarten. Such were the chief occupations that were open to women before 1918. I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction102 than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning103, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide — a small one but dear to the possessor — perishing and with it my self, my soul — all this became like a rust104 eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. However, as I say, my aunt died; and whenever I change a ten shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion105 is rubbed off, fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed106 income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred107 and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, for ever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs — the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people’s fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children’s lives. Walk through the Admiralty Arch (I had reached that monument), or any other avenue given up to trophies108 and cannon109, and reflect upon the kind of glory celebrated110 there. Or watch in the spring sunshine the stockbroker111 and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that five hundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine. These are unpleasant instincts to harbour, I reflected. They are bred of the conditions of life; of the lack of civilization, I thought, looking at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge, and in particular at the feathers in his cocked hat, with a fixity that they have scarcely ever received before. And, as I realized these drawbacks, by degrees fear and bitterness modified themselves into pity and toleration; and then in a year or two, pity and toleration went, and the greatest release of all came, which is freedom to think of things in themselves. That building, for example, do I like it or not? Is that picture beautiful or not? Is that in my opinion a good book or a bad? Indeed my aunt’s legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing112 figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration113, a view of the open sky.
So thinking, so speculating I found my way back to my house by the river. Lamps were being lit and an indescribable change had come over London since the morning hour. It was as if the great machine after labouring all day had’ made with our help a few yards of something very exciting and beautiful — a fiery114 fabric115 flashing with red eyes, a tawny116 monster roaring with hot breath. Even the wind seemed flung like a flag as it lashed117 the houses and rattled118 the hoardings.
In my little street, however, domesticity prevailed. The house painter was descending119 his ladder; the nursemaid was wheeling the perambulator carefully in and out back to nursery tea; the coal-heaver was folding his empty sacks on top of each other; the woman who keeps the green grocer’s shop was adding up the day’s takings with her hands in red mittens120. But so engrossed121 was I with the problem you have laid upon my shoulders that I could not see even these usual sights without referring them to one centre. I thought how much harder it is now than it must have been even a century ago to say which of these employments is the higher, the more necessary. Is it better to be a coal-heaver or a nursemaid; is the charwoman who has brought up eight children of less value to the world than, the barrister who has made a hundred thousand pounds? it is useless to ask such questions; for nobody can answer them. Not only do the comparative values of charwomen and lawyers rise and fall from decade to decade, but we have no rods with which to measure them even as they are at the moment. I had been foolish to ask my professor to furnish me with ‘indisputable proofs’ of this or that in his argument about women. Even if one could state the value of any one gift at the moment, those values will change; in a century’s time very possibly they will have changed completely. Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions122 that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shopwoman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared — as, for example (here a squad123 of soldiers marched down the street), that women and clergymen and gardeners live longer than other people. Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activities, make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock labourers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men that one will say, ‘I saw a woman to-day’, as one used to say, ‘I saw an aeroplane’. Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, I thought, opening the door. But what bearing has all this upon the subject of my paper, Women and Fiction? I asked, going indoors.
点击收听单词发音
1 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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2 luncheon | |
n.午宴,午餐,便宴 | |
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3 swarm | |
n.(昆虫)等一大群;vi.成群飞舞;蜂拥而入 | |
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4 strife | |
n.争吵,冲突,倾轧,竞争 | |
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5 enquiring | |
a.爱打听的,显得好奇的 | |
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6 dismal | |
adj.阴沉的,凄凉的,令人忧郁的,差劲的 | |
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7 backwards | |
adv.往回地,向原处,倒,相反,前后倒置地 | |
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8 dome | |
n.圆屋顶,拱顶 | |
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9 fore | |
adv.在前面;adj.先前的;在前部的;n.前部 | |
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10 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
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11 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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12 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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13 beak | |
n.鸟嘴,茶壶嘴,钩形鼻 | |
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14 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
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15 penetrate | |
v.透(渗)入;刺入,刺穿;洞察,了解 | |
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16 embedded | |
a.扎牢的 | |
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17 frivolous | |
adj.轻薄的;轻率的 | |
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18 facetious | |
adj.轻浮的,好开玩笑的 | |
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19 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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20 loquacity | |
n.多话,饶舌 | |
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21 discourse | |
n.论文,演说;谈话;话语;vi.讲述,著述 | |
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22 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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23 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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24 taxpayer | |
n.纳税人 | |
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25 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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26 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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27 bestowed | |
赠给,授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28 avalanche | |
n.雪崩,大量涌来 | |
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29 distraction | |
n.精神涣散,精神不集中,消遣,娱乐 | |
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30 distractions | |
n.使人分心的事[人]( distraction的名词复数 );娱乐,消遣;心烦意乱;精神错乱 | |
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31 grunts | |
(猪等)作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 ); (指人)发出类似的哼声; 咕哝着说; 石鲈 | |
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32 thither | |
adv.向那里;adj.在那边的,对岸的 | |
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33 frantically | |
ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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34 scribbled | |
v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 );乱画;草草地写;匆匆记下 | |
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35 scribble | |
v.潦草地书写,乱写,滥写;n.潦草的写法,潦草写成的东西,杂文 | |
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36 conscientiousness | |
责任心 | |
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37 margin | |
n.页边空白;差额;余地,余裕;边,边缘 | |
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38 harassed | |
adj. 疲倦的,厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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39 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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40 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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41 sages | |
n.圣人( sage的名词复数 );智者;哲人;鼠尾草(可用作调料) | |
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42 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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43 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
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44 distressing | |
a.使人痛苦的 | |
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45 candid | |
adj.公正的,正直的;坦率的 | |
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46 oracles | |
神示所( oracle的名词复数 ); 神谕; 圣贤; 哲人 | |
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47 bough | |
n.大树枝,主枝 | |
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48 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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49 noxious | |
adj.有害的,有毒的;使道德败坏的,讨厌的 | |
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50 irritation | |
n.激怒,恼怒,生气 | |
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51 cavalry | |
n.骑兵;轻装甲部队 | |
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52 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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53 psychology | |
n.心理,心理学,心理状态 | |
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54 dignified | |
a.可敬的,高贵的 | |
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55 boredom | |
n.厌烦,厌倦,乏味,无聊 | |
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56 lurking | |
潜在 | |
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57 demon | |
n.魔鬼,恶魔 | |
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58 specially | |
adv.特定地;特殊地;明确地 | |
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59 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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60 apparition | |
n.幽灵,神奇的现象 | |
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61 semblance | |
n.外貌,外表 | |
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62 satire | |
n.讽刺,讽刺文学,讽刺作品 | |
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63 reprobation | |
n.斥责 | |
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64 retrieved | |
v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 );恢复;寻回;检索(储存的信息) | |
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65 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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66 colonnade | |
n.柱廊 | |
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67 prehistoric | |
adj.(有记载的)历史以前的,史前的,古老的 | |
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68 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
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69 axe | |
n.斧子;v.用斧头砍,削减 | |
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70 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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71 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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72 proprietor | |
n.所有人;业主;经营者 | |
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73 shareholders | |
n.股东( shareholder的名词复数 ) | |
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74 acquit | |
vt.宣判无罪;(oneself)使(自己)表现出 | |
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75 devoted | |
adj.忠诚的,忠实的,热心的,献身于...的 | |
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76 arduous | |
adj.艰苦的,费力的,陡峭的 | |
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77 invaluable | |
adj.无价的,非常宝贵的,极为贵重的 | |
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78 innate | |
adj.天生的,固有的,天赋的 | |
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79 astonishment | |
n.惊奇,惊异 | |
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80 humane | |
adj.人道的,富有同情心的 | |
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81 arrant | |
adj.极端的;最大的 | |
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82 feminist | |
adj.主张男女平等的,女权主义的 | |
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83 snobs | |
(谄上傲下的)势利小人( snob的名词复数 ); 自高自大者,自命不凡者 | |
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84 exclamation | |
n.感叹号,惊呼,惊叹词 | |
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85 infringement | |
n.违反;侵权 | |
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86 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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87 bartering | |
v.作物物交换,以货换货( barter的现在分词 ) | |
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88 ornament | |
v.装饰,美化;n.装饰,装饰物 | |
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89 civilized | |
a.有教养的,文雅的 | |
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90 civilizing | |
v.使文明,使开化( civilize的现在分词 ) | |
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91 dressing | |
n.(食物)调料;包扎伤口的用品,敷料 | |
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92 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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93 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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94 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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95 stimulates | |
v.刺激( stimulate的第三人称单数 );激励;使兴奋;起兴奋作用,起刺激作用,起促进作用 | |
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96 cocaine | |
n.可卡因,古柯碱(用作局部麻醉剂) | |
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97 braced | |
adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 );撑牢;使自己站稳;振作起来 | |
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98 lodging | |
n.寄宿,住所;(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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99 legacy | |
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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100 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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101 cadging | |
v.乞讨,乞得,索取( cadge的现在分词 ) | |
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102 infliction | |
n.(强加于人身的)痛苦,刑罚 | |
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103 fawning | |
adj.乞怜的,奉承的v.(尤指狗等)跳过来往人身上蹭以示亲热( fawn的现在分词 );巴结;讨好 | |
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104 rust | |
n.锈;v.生锈;(脑子)衰退 | |
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105 corrosion | |
n.腐蚀,侵蚀;渐渐毁坏,渐衰 | |
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106 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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107 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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108 trophies | |
n.(为竞赛获胜者颁发的)奖品( trophy的名词复数 );奖杯;(尤指狩猎或战争中获得的)纪念品;(用于比赛或赛跑名称)奖 | |
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109 cannon | |
n.大炮,火炮;飞机上的机关炮 | |
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110 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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111 stockbroker | |
n.股票(或证券),经纪人(或机构) | |
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112 imposing | |
adj.使人难忘的,壮丽的,堂皇的,雄伟的 | |
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113 adoration | |
n.爱慕,崇拜 | |
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114 fiery | |
adj.燃烧着的,火红的;暴躁的;激烈的 | |
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115 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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116 tawny | |
adj.茶色的,黄褐色的;n.黄褐色 | |
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117 lashed | |
adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 );煽动;紧系;怒斥 | |
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118 rattled | |
慌乱的,恼火的 | |
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119 descending | |
n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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120 mittens | |
不分指手套 | |
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121 engrossed | |
adj.全神贯注的 | |
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122 exertions | |
n.努力( exertion的名词复数 );费力;(能力、权力等的)运用;行使 | |
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123 squad | |
n.班,小队,小团体;vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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