A Room of One's Own

1.细节摘录 Chapter SIX的第一段描写得很美. 2. Who cares about lit. ? When ?"It was tempting, after all this reading, to look out of the window and see what London was doing on the morning of the 26th of October 1928. And what was London doing? Nobody, it seemed, was reading ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. London was wholly indifferent, it appeared, to Shakespeare’s plays. Nobody cared a straw — and I do not blame them — for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind." (It seems that during any phase in history each person felt that nobody cared about literature or cared less about lit. than those in the past.)引出topic/话题:"The sight of two people coming down the street and meeting at the corner seems to ease the mind of some strain, I thought, watching the taxi turn and make off. Perhaps to think, as I had been thinking these two days, of one sex as distinct from the other is an effort. ""The mind is certainly a very mysterious organ, I reflected, drawing my head in from the window, about which nothing whatever is known, though we depend upon it so completely. "Repression in mind."In order to keep oneself continuing in them one is unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression becomes an effort. But there may be some state of mind in which one could continue without effort because nothing is required to be held back. And this perhaps, I thought, coming in from the window, is one of them. ""But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness? "An interesting insigt of human mind -- androgynous (by Coleridge). "And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating.""Thus, when one takes a sentence of Mr B into the mind it falls plump to the ground — dead; but when one takes a sentence of Coleridge into the mind, it explodes and gives birth to all kinds of other ideas, and that is the only sort of writing of which one can say that it has the secret of perpetual life.""They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.""There runs through these comments and discursions the conviction — or is it the instinct?— that good books are desirable and that good writers, even if they show every variety of human depravity, are still good human beings.""and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; ..."

小时候看这本书的时候，与主旨关系不大地，学到了一件事情，而且觉得是非常重要的一件事情。就是，要写出什么东西的话，需要的条件是，文学传统带给你的“句子”跟你的思考是合拍的。

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 theycame to set their thoughts on paper—that 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. 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 ready 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 generations 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 Brontë, 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 Brontë, 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.

[Thesis]

...a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction

"I" is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being

Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different...

[Fiction]

Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction

[Food]

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

[beautiful though desperate]

I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky. Once seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were laid asleep-prone, horizontal, dumb.

[male privilege]

men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women

..that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was he power and the money and the influence....With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry... When I read what he wrote about women I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself... But I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd... 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...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.

[Female roles, struggles and salvation]

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle.

[women-men relation]"Wise men never say what they think of women"- Samuel Butler

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... Whatever may be their use in civilised societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action... For if she begins to tell the truth , the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished...Take it away and man may die...

TBC

A room of one’s ownChapter 14All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point— a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. Fiction here is likely to contain more truths than facts.11No need to be anybody but oneself.14The very reason why the poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rupture, is that it celebrates some feelings that one used to have, so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. 24I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions that its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. Chapter 225… imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across people’s hats and vans and motor-cars to other windows, and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large letters WOMEN AND FICTION, but no more. 26London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern.34… I had ben 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?… he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. 35Life for both sex—and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, 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 invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate 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.Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses processing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. 41Anything 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. Chapter 3 43… fiction is kike a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. 45Shakespeare’s women do not seem wanting in personality and character. A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant.46History scarcely mentions her. 50 … it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius. For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among laboring, uneducated, servile people. 58Unfortunately, it is precisely the men and women if genius who mind most what is said of them. … it is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. …what state of mind is most propitious for creative work …For though we say that we know nothing about Shakespeare’s state of mind, even as we say that, we are saying something about Shakespeare’s state of mind. … his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not held up desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardships or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.Chapter 4 66I talked to them and find they want nothing to make them the happiest People in the world, but the knowledge that they are so. 70 … it would be easier to prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play. Less concentration is required. 71 “then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen … ”74 Life conflicts with something that is not life.75 What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. 79… they has not tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help. … she may have learnt a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use. … 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. Chapter 5 96… nevertheless, she had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her “the opposing faction”; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb on to the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her. Fear and hatred were almost gone, or traces of them showed only in a slight exaggeration of the joy of freedom, a tendency to the caustic and satirical rather than to the romantic, in her treatment of the other sex. Then there could be no doubt that as a novelist she enjoyed some natural advantages of a high order. She had a sensibility that was very wide, eager and free. …. she wrote as a woman, but as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that curious sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself. Chapter 6 99London was then winding itself up again; the factory was astir; the machines were beginning. It was tempting, after all this reading, to look out of the window ad see what London was doing on the morning of the twenty-sixth of October 1928.100 Perhaps to think … of one sex as distinct from the other is an effort. It interferes with the unity of mind. 101Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives. In order to keep oneself from continuing in them one is unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression becomes an effort. But there may be some state of mind in which one could continue without effort because nothing is required to be held back. And this perhaps, I thought, coming from the window, is one of them. For certainly when I saw the couple get into the taxi-cab the mind felt as if, after being divided, it had come together again in a natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. 102 Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. 107 Shakespeare was androgynous … Proust was wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman. 110 So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. 112 That is it. Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom.