第237期：谜一样的奥斯汀女士

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《谜一样的奥斯汀女士》 The Mysterious Miss Austen For the past two centuries, historians and literary scholars have attempted to solve the mystery that is Jane Austen’s life. How did a woman from a small village in Hampshire come to write six of the most beloved novels in the English language? Their search for answers has been complicated by the fact that Austen lived a quiet life. Scholars have used Austen’s letters, along with family diaries, correspondence by friends and family, and county records to reconstruct much of Austen’s life. When everything is assembled, it reveals a woman at the mercy of 1) her family’s finances for her very existence, yet nurtured and supported by her relatives when they recognized an uncommon talent in their midst. The Surety of Steventon Austen was born on December 16, 1775, which was a month later than her parents, George and Cassandra, reckoned she should arrive. With six other children—James, George, Edward, Henry, Cassandra, and Francis—the Austens might have been more adept at counting the weeks. They were happy for the arrival of another daughter. Another brother, Charles, followed four years later, marking an end to the family’s expansion. The Austens were continually strapped2) for money, even though the parsonage3) at Steventon, a small village in Hampshire, provided a living. Three years before Jane’s birth, the Austens opened a school for boys as a way to earn extra income. From an early age, Austen’s world was full of boyish antics4), bawdy5) humor, and outdoor exploration. Leaving that rough-and-tumble6) world behind, seven- year-old Jane was sent, along with her sister Cassandra, to a girls’ school in Oxford. The Austen girls stayed only a year, returning home after both became ill from typhoid7). Jane and Cassandra passed a year at Steventon before being enrolled in Mrs. La Tournelle’s Ladies’ Boarding School in Reading, where they again stayed only a year. Austen’s departure from Mrs. La Tournelle’s School put an end to her formal education at age ten. However, Austen was far from “unlearned”—indeed, it would have been difficult for her to escape getting an education. George Austen kept a sizable library—one bookcase reportedly covered sixty-four square feet of wall—which his children were encouraged to explore. There were ongoing science experiments and constant engagement with the natural world. Dinner table conversations, which included George’s pupils, ran on philosophy, literature, and science, along with dashes8) of racing, horses, and neighborhood gossip. When young Jane showed a spark of talent for writing, her father encouraged his budding author, buying her journals and writing paper, both expensive commodities. Austen wasn’t afraid to experiment, trying her hand at playwriting, as well as a novel with a morally suspect9) heroine. When she was nineteen, Austen began working on “Elinor and Marianne,” the precursor10) to Sense and Sensibility, which chronicles how the Dashwood11) sisters reconciled their hearts to the brutal realities of the marriage market for women without means12). Austen understood their predicament well, as neither she nor Cassandra had a dowry13), because of their father’s ongoing financial problems. Austen received a lesson in the cruel incompatibility of love and money when she fell hard for Tom Lefroy, a twenty-year-old Irishman. She met the “very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man” during the Christmas season of 1795~1796. Lefroy fell for Austen as well, but the match was impossible. As the oldest son of a retired soldier of limited means, he was expected to make a good marriage in order to provide for his five sisters. Austen began “First Impressions,” which would become Pride and Prejudice, in the fall of 1796, working on it for the next year. She had already begun exploring the implications of a woman professing14) her feelings—or keeping them closely guarded—in “Elinor and Marianne.” That theme again appeared in “First Impressions.” Betwixt and Between15) Between 1795 and 1799, Austen wrote early versions of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. It’s an extraordinary period of productivity, particularly given that she was still in her early twenties. That makes the dearth16) of writing over the next decade a bit of a puzzle. The letters that survive don’t hint at writer’s block or a lack of interest in writing. Instead, they reveal a life in a constant state of upheaval17). In December 1802, Austen received an unexpected marriage proposal. Her friends Alethea and Catherine Bigg decided to play matchmaker between Austen and their baby brother, Harris. The tall, strapping Harris was five years younger than Austen and had just completed his studies at Oxford. As the heir to a sizable estate, he could provide a comfortable life for a wife. Harris was a sweet boy but socially awkward. Austen agreed to the match, flattered by his regard and the security the marriage could provide for herself and her family, but after sleeping on18) it for a night, she reconsidered. “She esteemed him, she was honoured by his proposal, but on thinking it over she realized that esteem and respect were not enough, and that she would not be behaving fairly or rightly towards him if she accepted the offer of his hand,” writes biographer Claire Tomalin19). In the wake of20) the marriage proposal, Austen briefly returned to writing, revising the manuscript for Northanger Abbey. In early 1803, Henry arranged for the novel to be offered to Crosby and Co. , a London publisher, which paid £10 for it. An advertisement soon followed, trumpeting21) that it was on press, but the novel never appeared. Austen must have been disappointed, but she soldiered on22), beginning work on “The Watsons,” the story of a group of unmarried sisters who are anxious to make matches before their clergyman father dies. This time, fiction would mimic life, when George Austen died in January 1805. Austen set aside “The Watsons” not long after. Her nephew, James Austen-Leigh, suggests in A Memoir of Jane Austen that plot problems, namely setting the family too far down the social scale, caused her to abandon the story. But Tomalin notes that Austen planned to kill off Mr. Watson, so it is easy to see what an emotional challenge it would have been for her to keep working on the novel given the parallels to her own life. “The loss of such a Parent must be felt, or we should be Brutes23),” wrote Austen. George Austen’s death was both an emotional and financial blow to his wife and daughters. While Mother Austen and Cassandra both had small savings, Jane was penniless and entirely dependent on her family. It fell to her brothers to supplement24) their living and help settle them someplace comfortable. “Seven years I suppose are enough to change every pore of one’s skin, & every feeling of one’s mind,” Austen wrote Cassandra, reflecting back on the events that had led her to such a perilous25) position. The Austen women bounced between family and friends before settling in Southampton. A Cottage of One’s Own In July 1809, the Austen women left Southampton to take up residence in Chawton, a small village about fifty miles from London. At Chawton, Austen’s sole chore was to make nine o’clock breakfast, which consisted of tea and toast, leaving her free to write the rest of the day. The cottage seems to have provided Austen with the conditions she needed to thrive as a writer once again, and she immediately began revising Sense and Sensibility. In late 1810, Thomas Egerton of the Military Library agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility. Egerton agreed to take the three-volume novel on commission, which meant that Austen bore the financial risk. She paid for printing, advertising, and distribution, but kept the copyright. Of course, “she paid” meant Henry did because Austen had no money of her own. By the fall in 1811, the novel was fully typeset and a notice appeared in The Morning Chronicle on October 31, 1811, announcing “A New Novel by a Lady.” Austen would eventually make a profit of £140, no small sum for a woman who had never had her own money. When Sense and Sensibility proved a success—with both favorable reviews and chatter among the ton—Egerton was eager to publish another novel. Austen hadn’t been idle, having turned her attention to revising “First Impressions.” When Pride and Prejudice was published in January 1813—three volumes for 18 shillings—Egerton advertised it as the work of the author of Sense and Sensibility. Austen chose to remain anonymous again. 在过去的两百年中，历史学家和文学学者都试图解开简·奥斯汀的一生这个谜团。一位来自汉普郡小村庄的女子到底是怎样写出了英语文学中最受读者喜爱的六部小说？要探求这个谜团的答案并不容易，因为奥斯汀一辈子都过着清闲的日子。 学者们根据奥斯汀写的信、她家人的日记、她朋友和家人写的信件以及县志的记载，重现了奥斯汀一生中的大部分境况。当所有这些材料拼在一起的时候，呈现出了这样一位女性：她生活所需的钱全部来自家里，而当亲人们发现她身具非凡才华时，她得到了他们的培养和支持。 斯蒂文顿的安稳生活 奥斯汀生于1775年12月16日，比她的父母乔治和卡珊德拉推断的预产期迟了一个月。夫妇俩此前有六个孩子——詹姆斯、乔治、爱德华、亨利、卡珊德拉和弗朗西斯——所以这对夫妇在计算预产期方面本该更在行些才对。他们对于又迎来了一个女儿感到非常高兴。四年后，他们又生了一个男孩查尔斯，至此结束了家庭人口的增长。奥斯汀夫妇经常手头拮据，虽然在斯蒂文顿这个汉普郡的小村庄里，他们的牧师住宅所带来的收入使奥斯汀一家能勉强度日。在奥斯汀出生的三年前，奥斯汀夫妇开了一家男校，挣点外快贴补家用。从小，奥斯汀的世界就充满了男孩特有的搞怪、粗俗的幽默笑话和户外探险。 ……………… 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2017年7月号