The Conflict of the Night
Her brain was a steam-wheel throughout the night; everything that could be thought of was tossed, nothing grasped.
The unfriendliness of the friends who sought to retain her recurred1. For look—to fly could not be interpreted as a flight. It was but a stepping aside, a disdain2 of defending herself, and a wrapping herself in her dignity. Women would be with her. She called on the noblest of them to justify3 the course she chose, and they did, in an almost audible murmur4.
And O the rich reward. A black archway-gate swung open to the glittering fields of freedom.
Emma was not of the chorus. Emma meditated5 as an invalid6. How often had Emma bewailed to her that the most, grievous burden of her malady7 was her fatal tendency to brood sickly upon human complications! She could not see the blessedness of the prospect8 of freedom to a woman abominably9 yoked10. What if a miserable12 woman were dragged through mire13 to reach it! Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do. That man—but pass him!
And that other—the dear, the kind, careless, high-hearted old friend. He could honestly protest his guiltlessness, and would smilingly leave the case to go its ways. Of this she was sure, that her decision and her pleasure would be his. They were tied to the stake. She had already tasted some of the mortal agony. Did it matter whether the flames consumed her?
Reflecting on the interview with Redworth, though she had performed her part in it placidly14, her skin burned. It was the beginning of tortures if she stayed in England.
By staying to defend herself she forfeited15 her attitude of dignity and lost all chance of her reward. And name the sort of world it is, dear friends, for which we are to sacrifice our one hope of freedom, that we may preserve our fair fame in it!
Diana cried aloud, ‘My freedom!’ feeling as a butterfly flown out of a box to stretches of sunny earth beneath spacious16 heavens. Her bitter marriage, joyless in all its chapters, indefensible where the man was right as well as where insensately wrong, had been imprisonment17. She excused him down to his last madness, if only the bonds were broken. Here, too, in this very house of her happiness with her father, she had bound herself to the man voluntarily, quite inexplicably18. Voluntarily, as we say. But there must be a spell upon us at times. Upon young women there certainly is.
The wild brain of Diana, armed by her later enlightenment as to the laws of life and nature, dashed in revolt at the laws of the world when she thought of the forces, natural and social, urging young women to marry and be bound to the end.
It should be a spotless world which is thus ruthless.
But were the world impeccable it would behave more generously.
The world is ruthless, dear friends, because the world is hypocrite! The world cannot afford to be magnanimous, or even just.
Her dissensions with her husband, their differences of opinion, and puny19 wranglings, hoistings of two standards, reconciliations20 for the sake of decency21, breaches22 of the truce23, and his detested24 meanness, the man behind the mask; and glimpses of herself too, the half-known, half-suspected, developing creature claiming to be Diana, and unlike her dreamed Diana, deformed25 by marriage, irritable26, acerb, rebellious27, constantly justifiable28 against him, but not in her own mind, and therefore accusing him of the double crime of provoking her and perverting29 her—these were the troops defiling30 through her head while she did battle with the hypocrite world.
One painful sting was caused by the feeling that she could have loved—whom? An ideal. Had he, the imagined but unvisioned, been her yoke11-fellow, would she now lie raising caged-beast cries in execration31 of the yoke? She would not now be seeing herself as hare, serpent, tigress! The hypothesis was reviewed in negatives: she had barely a sense of softness, just a single little heave of the bosom32, quivering upward and leadenly sinking, when she glanced at a married Diana heartily33 mated. The regrets of the youthful for a life sailing away under medical sentence of death in the sad eyes of relatives resemble it. She could have loved. Good-bye to that!
A woman’s brutallest tussle34 with the world was upon her. She was in the arena35 of the savage36 claws, flung there by the man who of all others should have protected her from them. And what had she done to deserve it? She listened to the advocate pleading her case; she primed him to admit the charges, to say the worst, in contempt of legal prudence37, and thereby38 expose her transparent39 honesty. The very things awakening40 a mad suspicion proved her innocence41. But was she this utterly42 simple person? Oh, no! She was the Diana of the pride in her power of fencing with evil—by no means of the order of those ninny young women who realize the popular conception of the purely43 innocent. She had fenced and kept her guard. Of this it was her angry glory to have the knowledge. But she had been compelled to fence. Such are men in the world of facts, that when a woman steps out of her domestic tangle44 to assert, because it is a tangle, her rights to partial independence, they sight her for their prey45, or at least they complacently46 suppose her accessible. Wretched at home, a woman ought to bury herself in her wretchedness, else may she be assured that not the cleverest, wariest47 guard will cover her character.
Against the husband her cause was triumphant48. Against herself she decided49 not to plead it, for this reason, that the preceding Court, which was the public and only positive one, had entirely50 and justly exonerated51 her. But the holding of her hand by the friend half a minute too long for friendship, and the over-friendliness of looks, letters, frequency of visits, would speak within her. She had a darting52 view of her husband’s estimation of them in his present mood. She quenched53 it; they were trifles, things that women of the world have to combat. The revelation to a fair-minded young woman of the majority of men being naught54 other than men, and some of the friendliest of men betraying confidence under the excuse of temptation, is one of the shocks to simplicity55 which leave her the alternative of misanthropy or philosophy. Diana had not the heart to hate her kind, so she resigned herself to pardon, and to the recognition of the state of duel56 between the sexes-active enough in her sphere of society. The circle hummed with it; many lived for it. Could she pretend to ignore it? Her personal experience might have instigated57 a less clear and less intrepid58 nature to take advantage of the opportunity for playing the popular innocent, who runs about with astonished eyes to find herself in so hunting a world, and wins general compassion59, if not shelter in unsuspected and unlicenced places. There is perpetually the inducement to act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world, unless a woman submits to be the humbly60 knitting housewife, unquestioningly worshipful of her lord; for the world is ever gracious to an hypocrisy61 that pays homage62 to the mask of virtue63 by copying it; the world is hostile to the face of an innocence not conventionally simpering and quite surprised; the world prefers decorum to honesty. ‘Let me be myself, whatever the martyrdom!’ she cried, in that phase of young sensation when, to the blooming woman; the putting on of a mask appears to wither65 her and reduce her to the show she parades. Yet, in common with her sisterhood, she owned she had worn a sort of mask; the world demands it of them as the price of their station. That she had never worn it consentingly, was the plea for now casting it off altogether, showing herself as she was, accepting martyrdom, becoming the first martyr64 of the modern woman’s cause—a grand position! and one imaginable to an excited mind in the dark, which does not conjure66 a critical humour, as light does, to correct the feverish67 sublimity68. She was, then, this martyr, a woman capable of telling the world she knew it, and of, confessing that she had behaved in disdain of its rigider rules, according to her own ideas of her immunities69. O brave!
But was she holding the position by flight? It involved the challenge of consequences, not an evasion70 of them.
She moaned; her mental steam-wheel stopped; fatigue71 brought sleep.
She had sensationally72 led her rebellious wits to The Crossways, distilling73 much poison from thoughts on the way; and there, for the luxury of a still seeming indecision, she sank into oblivion.
1 recurred | |
再发生,复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 ); 治愈 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 disdain | |
n.鄙视,轻视;v.轻视,鄙视,不屑 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 justify | |
vt.证明…正当(或有理),为…辩护 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 murmur | |
n.低语,低声的怨言;v.低语,低声而言 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 meditated | |
深思,沉思,冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 ); 内心策划,考虑 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 invalid | |
n.病人,伤残人;adj.有病的,伤残的;无效的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 malady | |
n.病,疾病(通常做比喻) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 prospect | |
n.前景,前途;景色,视野 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 abominably | |
adv. 可恶地,可恨地,恶劣地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 yoked | |
结合(yoke的过去式形式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 yoke | |
n.轭;支配;v.给...上轭,连接,使成配偶 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 mire | |
n.泥沼,泥泞;v.使...陷于泥泞,使...陷入困境 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 placidly | |
adv.平稳地,平静地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 forfeited | |
(因违反协议、犯规、受罚等)丧失,失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 spacious | |
adj.广阔的,宽敞的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 imprisonment | |
n.关押,监禁,坐牢 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 inexplicably | |
adv.无法说明地,难以理解地,令人难以理解的是 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 puny | |
adj.微不足道的,弱小的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 reconciliations | |
和解( reconciliation的名词复数 ); 一致; 勉强接受; (争吵等的)止息 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 decency | |
n.体面,得体,合宜,正派,庄重 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 breaches | |
破坏( breach的名词复数 ); 破裂; 缺口; 违背 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 truce | |
n.休战,(争执,烦恼等的)缓和;v.以停战结束 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 detested | |
v.憎恶,嫌恶,痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 deformed | |
adj.畸形的;变形的;丑的,破相了的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 irritable | |
adj.急躁的;过敏的;易怒的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 rebellious | |
adj.造反的,反抗的,难控制的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 justifiable | |
adj.有理由的,无可非议的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 perverting | |
v.滥用( pervert的现在分词 );腐蚀;败坏;使堕落 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 defiling | |
v.玷污( defile的现在分词 );污染;弄脏;纵列行进 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 execration | |
n.诅咒,念咒,憎恶 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 bosom | |
n.胸,胸部;胸怀;内心;adj.亲密的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 heartily | |
adv.衷心地,诚恳地,十分,很 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 tussle | |
n.&v.扭打,搏斗,争辩 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 arena | |
n.竞技场,运动场所;竞争场所,舞台 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 prudence | |
n.谨慎,精明,节俭 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 thereby | |
adv.因此,从而 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 innocence | |
n.无罪;天真;无害 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 tangle | |
n.纠缠;缠结;混乱;v.(使)缠绕;变乱 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 prey | |
n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 complacently | |
adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 wariest | |
谨慎的,小心翼翼的( wary的最高级 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 exonerated | |
v.使免罪,免除( exonerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 quenched | |
解(渴)( quench的过去式和过去分词 ); 终止(某事物); (用水)扑灭(火焰等); 将(热物体)放入水中急速冷却 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 naught | |
n.无,零 [=nought] | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 duel | |
n./v.决斗;(双方的)斗争 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 instigated | |
v.使(某事物)开始或发生,鼓动( instigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 intrepid | |
adj.无畏的,刚毅的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 compassion | |
n.同情,怜悯 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 humbly | |
adv. 恭顺地,谦卑地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 hypocrisy | |
n.伪善,虚伪 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 homage | |
n.尊敬,敬意,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 virtue | |
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 martyr | |
n.烈士,殉难者;vt.杀害,折磨,牺牲 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 wither | |
vt.使凋谢,使衰退,(用眼神气势等)使畏缩;vi.枯萎,衰退,消亡 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 conjure | |
v.恳求,祈求;变魔术,变戏法 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 feverish | |
adj.发烧的,狂热的,兴奋的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 sublimity | |
崇高,庄严,气质高尚 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 immunities | |
免除,豁免( immunity的名词复数 ); 免疫力 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 evasion | |
n.逃避,偷漏(税) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 fatigue | |
n.疲劳,劳累 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
72 sensationally | |
参考例句: |
|
|
73 distilling | |
n.蒸馏(作用)v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )( distilled的过去分词 );从…提取精华 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |