第四小节

 She is an amateur at her business, you say. Well, perhaps she is. But who brought her up to be an amateur? Are you not content to carry on the ancient tradition? As you meditate¹, and you often do meditate, upon that infant daughter of yours now sleeping in her cot, do you dream of giving her a scientific education in housekeeping, or do you dream of endowing her with the charms that music and foreign languages and physical grace can offer? Do you in your mind’s eye see her cannily² choosing beef at the butcher’s, or shining for your pleasure in the drawing-room?

 

And then Mrs. Omicron is, perhaps, not so much of an amateur as you assume. People learn by practice. Is there any reason in human nature why a complex machine such as a house may be worked with fewer breakdowns³ than an office or manufactory? Harness your imagination once more and transfer to your house the multitudinous minor⁴ catastrophes⁵ that happen in your office. Be sincere, and admit that the efficiency of the average office is naught⁶ but a pretty legend. A mistake or negligence⁷ or forgetfulness in an office is remedied and forgotten. Mrs. Omicron—my dear Mr. Omicron—never hears of it. Not so with Mrs. Omicron’s office, as your aroused imagination will tell you. Mrs. Omicron’s parlourmaid’s duster fails to make contact with one small portion of the hall-table. Mr. Omicron walks in, and his godlike glance drops instantly on the dusty place, and Mr. Omicron ejaculates sardonically⁸: “H’m! Four women in the house, and they can’t even keep the hall-table respectable!”

 

Mr. Omicron forgets a letter at the bottom of his unanswered-letter basket, and a week later an excited cable arrives from overseas, and that cable demands another cable. No real harm has been done. Ten dollars spent on cables have cured the ill. Mrs. Omicron, preoccupied⁹ with a rash on the back of the neck of Miss Omicron before-mentioned, actually comes back from town without having ordered the mutton. In the afternoon she realizes her horrid¹⁰ sin and rushes to the telephone. The butcher reassures¹¹ her. He swears the desired leg shall arrive. But do you see that boy dallying¹² at the street corner with his mate? He carries the leg of mutton, and he carries also, though he knows it not nor cares, the reputation and happiness of Mrs. Omicron. He is late. As you yourself remarked, Mr. Omicron, if a leg of mutton is put down late to roast, one of two things must occur—either it will be under-cooked or the dinner will be late.

 

Now, if housekeeping was as simple as office-keeping, Mrs. Omicron would smile in tranquillity¹³ at the contretemps, and say to herself: “Never mind, I shall pay the late-posting fee—that will give me an extra forty minutes.” You say that, Mr. Omicron, about your letters, when you happen to have taken three hours for lunch and your dictation of correspondence is thereby¹⁴ postponed¹⁵. Only there is no late-posting fee in Mrs. Omicron’s world. If Mrs. Omicron flung four cents at you when you came home, and informed you that dinner would be forty minutes late and that she was paying the fee, what, Mr. Omicron, would be your state of mind?

 

And your imagination, now very alert, will carry you even farther than this, Mr. Omicron, and disclose to you still more fearful difficulties which Mrs. Omicron has to face in the management of her office or manufactory. Her staff is uneducated, less educated even than yours. And her staff is universally characterized by certain peculiarities¹⁶ of mentality¹⁷. For example, her staff will never, never, never, come and say to her: “Please, ma’am, there is only enough coffee left for two days.” No! Her staff will placidly¹⁸ wait forty-eight hours, and then come at 7 p.m. and say: “Please, ma’am, there isn’t enough coffee——” And worse! You, Mr. Omicron, can say roundly to a clerk: “Look here, if this occurs again I shall fling you into the street.” You are aware, and he is aware, that a hundred clerks are waiting to take his place. On the other hand, a hundred mistresses are waiting to take the place of Mrs. Omicron with regard to her cook. Mrs. Omicron has to do as best she can. She has to speak softly and to temper discipline, because the supply of domestic servants is unequal to the demand. And there is still worse. The worst of all, the supreme¹⁹ disadvantage under which Mrs. Omicron suffers, is that most of her errors, lapses²⁰, crimes, directly affect a man in the stomach, and the man is a hungry man.

 

Mr. Omicron, your imagination, now feverishly²¹ active, will thus demonstrate to you that your wife’s earthly lot is not the velvet²² couch that you had unimaginatively assumed it to be, and that, indeed, you would not change places with her for a hundred thousand a year. Your attitude towards her human limitations will be modified, and the general mass of misunderstanding between sex and sex will tend to diminish.

 

(And if even yet your attitude is not modified, let your imagination dwell for a few instants on the extraordinary number of bad and expensive hotels with which you are acquainted—managed, not by amateurish²³ women, but by professional men. And on the obstinate²⁴ mismanagement of the commissariat of your own club—of which you are continually complaining to members of the house-committee.)

该作者的其它作品
《How to Live on 24 Hours a Day》
《老妇人的故事 The Old Wives' Tale》
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《A Man from the North》

1 meditate   

v.想，考虑，（尤指宗教上的）沉思，冥想

参考例句：

• It is important to meditate on the meaning of life.思考人生的意义很重要。
• I was meditating,and reached a higher state of consciousness.我在冥想，并进入了一个更高的意识境界。

2 cannily   

精明地

参考例句：

• Cannily, the government is turning patron. 精明的是，政府正在转变为赞助人。
• All these plentiful and substantial achievement is based on the cannily build and bran-new deploitation. 这一切丰硕成就，基于上海外服23年来的用心营造、全新开拓。

3 breakdowns   

n.分解( breakdown的名词复数 )；衰竭；（车辆或机器的）损坏；统计分析

参考例句：

• Her old car was unreliable, so the trip was plagued by breakdowns. 她的旧车老不听使唤，一路上总是出故障。 来自辞典例句
• How do we prevent these continual breakdowns? 我们如何防止这些一再出现的故障？ 来自辞典例句

4 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

5 catastrophes   

n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难

参考例句：

• Two of history's worst natural catastrophes occurred in 1970. 1970年发生了历史上最严重两次自然灾害。 来自辞典例句
• The Swiss deposits contain evidence of such catastrophes. 瑞士的遗址里还有这种灾难的证据。 来自辞典例句

6 naught   

n.无，零 [=nought]

参考例句：

• He sets at naught every convention of society.他轻视所有的社会习俗。
• I hope that all your efforts won't go for naught.我希望你的努力不会毫无结果。

7 negligence   

n.疏忽，玩忽，粗心大意

参考例句：

• They charged him with negligence of duty.他们指责他玩忽职守。
• The traffic accident was allegedly due to negligence.这次车祸据说是由于疏忽造成的。

8 sardonically   

adv.讽刺地，冷嘲地

参考例句：

• Some say sardonically that combat pay is good and that one can do quite well out of this war. 有些人讽刺地说战地的薪饷很不错，人们可借这次战争赚到很多钱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Tu Wei-yueh merely drew himself up and smiled sardonically. 屠维岳把胸脯更挺得直些，微微冷笑。 来自子夜部分

9 preoccupied   

adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式)

参考例句：

• He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice anything wrong. 他只顾想着心事，没注意到有什么不对。
• The question of going to the Mount Tai preoccupied his mind. 去游泰山的问题盘踞在他心头。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 horrid   

adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的

参考例句：

• I'm not going to the horrid dinner party.我不打算去参加这次讨厌的宴会。
• The medicine is horrid and she couldn't get it down.这种药很难吃，她咽不下去。

11 reassures   

v.消除恐惧或疑虑，恢复信心( reassure的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A significant benefit of Undo is purely psychological: It reassures users. 撤销的一个很大好处纯粹是心理上的，它让用户宽心。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• Direct eye contact reassures the person that you are confident and honest. 直接的目光接触让人相信你的自信和诚实。 来自口语例句

12 dallying   

v.随随便便地对待( dally的现在分词 )；不很认真地考虑；浪费时间；调情

参考例句：

• They've been dallying with the idea for years. 他们多年来一直有这个想法，但从没有认真考虑过。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This kind of dallying is, in a sense, optimal. 从某种意义上来说，这种延迟是最理想的。 来自互联网

13 tranquillity   

n. 平静, 安静

参考例句：

• The phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished. 这个令人惶惑不安的现象，扰乱了他的旷达宁静的心境。
• My value for domestic tranquillity should much exceed theirs. 我应该远比他们重视家庭的平静生活。

14 thereby   

adv.因此，从而

参考例句：

• I have never been to that city,,ereby I don't know much about it.我从未去过那座城市，因此对它不怎么熟悉。
• He became a British citizen,thereby gaining the right to vote.他成了英国公民，因而得到了投票权。

15 postponed   

vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发）

参考例句：

• The trial was postponed indefinitely. 审讯无限期延迟。
• The game has already been postponed three times. 这场比赛已经三度延期了。

16 peculiarities   

n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪

参考例句：

• the cultural peculiarities of the English 英国人的文化特点
• He used to mimic speech peculiarities of another. 他过去总是模仿别人讲话的特点。

17 mentality   

n.心理，思想，脑力

参考例句：

• He has many years'experience of the criminal mentality.他研究犯罪心理有多年经验。
• Running a business requires a very different mentality from being a salaried employee.经营企业所要求具备的心态和上班族的心态截然不同。

18 placidly   

adv.平稳地，平静地

参考例句：

• Hurstwood stood placidly by, while the car rolled back into the yard. 当车子开回场地时，赫斯渥沉着地站在一边。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• The water chestnut floated placidly there, where it would grow. 那棵菱角就又安安稳稳浮在水面上生长去了。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

19 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

20 lapses   

n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失

参考例句：

• He sometimes lapses from good behavior. 他有时行为失检。 来自辞典例句
• He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. 他可以宽恕突然发作的歇斯底里，惊慌失措，恶劣的莫名其妙的动作，各种各样的失误。 来自辞典例句

21 feverishly   

adv. 兴奋地

参考例句：

• Feverishly he collected his data. 他拼命收集资料。
• The company is having to cast around feverishly for ways to cut its costs. 公司迫切须要想出各种降低成本的办法。

22 velvet   

n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的

参考例句：

• This material feels like velvet.这料子摸起来像丝绒。
• The new settlers wore the finest silk and velvet clothing.新来的移民穿着最华丽的丝绸和天鹅绒衣服。

23 amateurish   

n.业余爱好的，不熟练的

参考例句：

• The concert was rather an amateurish affair.这场音乐会颇有些外行客串的味道。
• The paintings looked amateurish.这些画作看起来只具备业余水准。

24 obstinate   

adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的

参考例句：

• She's too obstinate to let anyone help her.她太倔强了，不会让任何人帮她的。
• The trader was obstinate in the negotiation.这个商人在谈判中拗强固执。