Three little girls she brought into the world in the first three years of her married life, then after a brief interval6 of indifferent health she had a fourth girl baby of a physique quite obviously inferior to its predecessors7, and then, after—and perhaps as a consequence of—much whispered conversation of the two mothers-in-law, protests and tactful explanation on the part of the elderly and trustworthy family doctor and remarks of an extraordinary breadth (and made at table too, almost before the door had closed on Snagsby!) from Ellen's elder sister, there came a less reproductive phase....
But by that time Lady Harman had acquired the habit of reading and the habit of thinking over what she read, and from that it is an easy step to thinking over oneself and the circumstances of one's own life. The one thing trains for the other.
Now the chief circumstance in the life of Lady Harman was Sir Isaac. Indeed as she grew to a clear consciousness of herself and her position, it seemed to her he was not so much a circumstance as a circumvallation. There wasn't a direction in which she could turn without immediately running up against him. He had taken possession of her extremely. And from her first resignation to this as an inevitable9 fact she had come, she hardly knew how, to a renewed disposition10 to regard this large and various universe beyond him and outside of him, with something of the same slight adventurousness11 she had felt before he so comprehensively happened to her. After her first phase of despair she had really done her best to honour the bargain she had rather unwittingly made and to love and to devote herself and be a loyal and happy wife to this clutching, hard-breathing little man who had got her, and it was the insatiable excesses of his demands quite as much as any outer influence that made her realize the impossibility of such a concentration.
His was a supremely12 acquisitive and possessive character, so that he insulted her utmost subjugations by an obtrusive13 suspicion and jealousy14, he was jealous of her childish worship of her dead father, jealous of her disposition to go to church, jealous of the poet Wordsworth because she liked to read his sonnets15, jealous because she loved great music, jealous when she wanted to go out; if she seemed passionless and she seemed more and more passionless he was jealous, and the slightest gleam of any warmth of temperament16 filled him with a vile17 and furious dread18 of dishonouring19 possibilities. And the utmost resolution to believe in him could not hide from her for ever the fact that his love manifested itself almost wholly as a parade of ownership and a desire, without kindliness20, without any self-forgetfulness. All his devotion, his self-abjection, had been the mere21 qualms22 of a craving23, the flush of eager courtship. Do as she would to overcome these realizations24, forces within her stronger than herself, primordial25 forces with the welfare of all life in their keeping, cried out upon the meanness of his face, the ugly pointed26 nose and the thin compressed lips, the weak neck, the clammy hands, the ungainly nervous gestures, the tuneless whistling between the clenched27 teeth. He would not let her forget a single detail. Whenever she tried to look at any created thing, he thrust himself, like one of his own open-air advertisements, athwart the attraction.
As she grew up to an achieved womanhood—and it was even a physical growing-up, for she added more than an inch of stature28 after her marriage—her life became more and more consciously like a fencing match in which her vision flashed over his head and under his arms and this side of him and that, while with a toiling29 industry he fought to intercept30 it. And from the complete acceptance of her matrimonial submission31, she passed on by almost insensible degrees towards a conception of her life as a struggle, that seemed at first entirely32 lonely and unsupported, to exist—against him.
In every novel as in every picture there must be an immense simplification, and so I tell the story of Lady Harman's changing attitude without any of those tangled33 leapings-forward or harkings-back, those moods and counter moods and relapses which made up the necessary course of her mind. But sometimes she was here and sometimes she was there, sometimes quite back to the beginning an obedient, scrupulously34 loyal and up-looking young wife, sometimes a wife concealing35 the humiliation36 of an unhappy choice in a spurious satisfaction and affection. And mixed up with widening spaces of criticism and dissatisfaction and hostility37 there were, you must understand, moments of real liking38 for this outrageous39 little man and streaks40 of an absurd maternal41 tenderness for him. They had been too close together to avoid that. She had a woman's affection of ownership too, and disliked to see him despised or bettered or untidy; even those ridiculous muddy hands had given her a twinge of solicitude42....
And all the while she was trying to see the universe also, the great background of their two little lives, and to think what it might mean for her over and above their too obliterating43 relationship.
6
It would be like counting the bacteria of an infection to trace how ideas of insubordination came drifting into Sir Isaac's Paradise. The epidemic44 is in the air. There is no Tempter nowadays, no definitive45 apple. The disturbing force has grown subtler, blows in now like a draught46, creeps and gathers like the dust,—a disseminated47 serpent. Sir Isaac brought home his young, beautiful and rather crumpled48 and astonished Eve and by all his standards he was entitled to be happy ever afterwards. He knew of one danger, but against that he was very watchful49. Never once for six long years did she have a private duologue with another male. But Mudie and Sir Jesse Boot sent parcels to the house unchecked, the newspaper drifted in not even censored50: the nurses who guided Ellen through the essential incidents of a feminine career talked of something called a "movement." And there was Georgina....
The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a mask. Behind that mask was a formless invincible51 discontent with the lot of womanhood. It wanted,—it was not clear what it wanted, but whatever it wanted, all the domestic instincts of mankind were against admitting there was anything it could want. That remarkable52 agitation53 had already worked up to the thunderous pitch, there had been demonstrations54 at Public Meetings, scenes in the Ladies' Gallery and something like rioting in Parliament Square before ever it occurred to Sir Isaac that this was a disturbance55 that touched his home. He had supposed suffragettes were ladies of all too certain an age with red noses and spectacles and a masculine style of costume, who wished to be hugged by policemen. He said as much rather knowingly and wickedly to Charterson. He could not understand any woman not coveting56 the privileges of Lady Harman. And then one day while Georgina and her mother were visiting them, as he was looking over the letters at the breakfast table according to his custom before giving them out, he discovered two identical newspaper packets addressed to his wife and his sister-in-law, and upon them were these words printed very plainly, "Votes for Women."
"Good Lord!" he cried. "What's this? It oughtn't to be allowed." And he pitched the papers at the wastepaper basket under the sideboard.
"Eh?" cried Sir Isaac.
"We're subscribers. Snagsby, just give us those papers." (A difficult moment for Snagsby.) He picked up the papers and looked at Sir Isaac.
"Put 'em down there," said Sir Isaac, waving to the sideboard and then in an ensuing silence handed two letters of no importance to his mother-in-law. His face was pale and he was breathless. Snagsby with an obvious tactfulness retired58.
Sir Isaac watched the door close.
"What you been thinking about, Elly," he asked, "subscribing60 to that thing?"
"I wanted to read it."
"But you don't hold with all that Rubbish——"
"Well, rot then, if you like," said Sir Isaac, unamiably and panting.
With that as Snagsby afterwards put it—for the battle raged so fiercely as to go on even when he presently returned to the room—"the fat was in the fire." The Harman breakfast-table was caught up into the Great Controversy62 with heat and fury like a tree that is overtaken by a forest fire. It burnt for weeks, and smouldered still when the first white heats had abated63. I will not record the arguments of either side, they were abominably64 bad and you have heard them all time after time; I do not think that whatever side you have taken in this matter you would find much to please you in Sir Isaac's goadings or Georgina's repartees. Sir Isaac would ask if women were prepared to go as soldiers and Georgina would enquire65 how many years of service he had done or horrify66 her mother by manifest allusion67 to the agonies and dangers of maternity,—things like that. It gave a new interest to breakfast for Snagsby; and the peculiarly lady-like qualities of Mrs. Sawbridge, a gift for silent, pallid68 stiffness, a disposition, tactful but unsuccessful, to "change the subject," an air of being about to leave the room in disdain69, had never shone with such baleful splendour. Our interest here is rather with the effect of these remarkable disputes, which echoed in Sir Isaac's private talk long after Georgina had gone again, upon Lady Harman. He could not leave this topic of feminine emancipation70 alone, once it had been set going, and though Ellen would always preface her remarks by, "Of course Georgina goes too far," he worried her slowly into a series of definite insurgent71 positions. Sir Isaac's attacks on Georgina certainly brought out a good deal of absurdity72 in her positions, and Georgina at times left Sir Isaac without a leg to stand on, and the net result of their disputes as of most human controversies73 was not conviction for the hearer but release. Her mind escaped between them, and went exploring for itself through the great gaps they had made in the simple obedient assumptions of her girlhood. That question originally put in Paradise, "Why shouldn't we?" came into her mind and stayed there. It is a question that marks a definite stage in the departure from innocence74. Things that had seemed opaque75 and immutable76 appeared translucent77 and questionable78. She began to read more and more in order to learn things and get a light upon things, and less and less to pass the time. Ideas came to her that seemed at first strange altogether and then grotesquely79 justifiable80 and then crept to a sort of acceptance by familiarity. And a disturbing intermittent81 sense of a general responsibility increased and increased in her.
You will understand this sense of responsibility which was growing up in Lady Harman's mind if you have felt it yourself, but if you have not then you may find it a little difficult to understand. You see it comes, when it comes at all, out of a phase of disillusionment. All children, I suppose, begin by taking for granted the rightness of things in general, the soundness of accepted standards, and many people are at least so happy that they never really grow out of this assumption. They go to the grave with an unbroken confidence that somewhere behind all the immediate8 injustices82 and disorders83 of life, behind the antics of politics, the rigidities of institutions, the pressure of custom and the vagaries84 of law, there is wisdom and purpose and adequate provision, they never lose that faith in the human household they acquired amongst the directed securities of home. But for more of us and more there comes a dissolution of these assurances; there comes illumination as the day comes into a candle-lit uncurtained room. The warm lights that once rounded off our world so completely are betrayed for what they are, smoky and guttering85 candles. Beyond what once seemed a casket of dutiful security is now a limitless and indifferent universe. Ours is the wisdom or there is no wisdom; ours is the decision or there is no decision. That burthen is upon each of us in the measure of our capacity. The talent has been given us and we may not bury it.
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1
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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truncated
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| adj.切去顶端的，缩短了的，被删节的v.截面的( truncate的过去式和过去分词 )；截头的；缩短了的；截去顶端或末端 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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adventurousness
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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dishonouring
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| 使（人、家族等）丧失名誉（dishonour的现在分词形式） | |
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kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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qualms
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| n.不安；内疚 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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realizations
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| 认识，领会( realization的名词复数 )； 实现 | |
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primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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intercept
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| vt.拦截，截住，截击 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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41
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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43
obliterating
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| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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definitive
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| adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的 | |
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46
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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47
disseminated
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| 散布，传播( disseminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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censored
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| 受审查的，被删剪的 | |
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51
invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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53
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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54
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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coveting
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| v.贪求，觊觎( covet的现在分词 ) | |
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57
subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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subscribing
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| v.捐助( subscribe的现在分词 )；签署，题词；订阅；同意 | |
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61
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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abated
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| 减少( abate的过去式和过去分词 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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enquire
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| v.打听，询问；调查，查问 | |
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horrify
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| vt.使恐怖，使恐惧，使惊骇 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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insurgent
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| adj.叛乱的，起事的；n.叛乱分子 | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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controversies
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| 争论 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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justifiable
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| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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84
vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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guttering
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| n.用于建排水系统的材料；沟状切除术；开沟 | |
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