Lesson4Professionsforwomen

1、Lesson Four Pro fessions for Women11Virginia WoolfBackground information1. About the authorAdeline Virginia Step hen was born on 25 January 1882 in London. Her father, Leslie Step hen (1832-1904), was a man of letters (and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography) who came from a family

2、distinguished for# J p ublic service (part of the ,in tellectual aristocracy, of Victoria n En gla nd). Her mother, Julia (1846-95), from whom Virginia inherited her looks, was the daughter and ni ece of the six beautiful P attle sisters (Julia Margaret Camero n was the seve nth: not beautiful but t

3、he only one remembered today). Both parents had bee n married before: her father to the daughter of the no velist, Thackeray, by whom he had a daughter Laura (1870-1945) who was in tellectually backward; and her mother to a barrister, Herbert Duckworth (1833-70), by whom she had three childre n, Geo

4、rge (1868-1934), Stella (1869-97), and Gerald (1870-1937). Julia and Leslie Stephen had four children: Vanessa (1879-1961), Thoby (1880-1906), Virgi nia, and Adrian (1883-1948). All eight childre n lived with the parents and a nu mber of serva nts at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.Long summer holiday

5、s were spent at Talla nd House in St Ives, Corn wall, and St Ives played a large part in Virginia?s imagination. It was the setting for her novel To the Lighthouse, despite its ostensibly being placed on the Isle of Skye. London and/or St Ives pro vided the principal sett ings of most of her no vels

6、.In 1895 her mother died unexp ectedly, and Virg inia suffered her first men tal breakdow n. Her half- sister Stella took over the running of the household as well as coping with Leslie?s dema nds for symp athy and emotio nal supp ort. Stella married Jack Hills in 1897, but she too died suddeniy on

7、her return from her honeymoon. The household burden then fell upon Van essa.Virgi nia was allowed uncen sored access to her father?s exte nsive library, and from an early age determ ined to be a writer. Her educati on was sketchy and she n ever went to school. Van essa trained to become a pain ter.

8、Their two brothers were sent to prep aratory and p ublic schools, and the n to Cambridge. There Thoby made frie nds with Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydn ey-Tu rner, Lytt on Strachey, and Maynard Keyn es. This was the nu cleus of the Bloomsbury Group.Leslie Stephen died in 1904, and Virg inia h

9、ad a sec ond breakdow n. While she was sick, Van essa arran ged for the four sibli ngs to move from 22 Hyde Park Gate to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. At the end of the year Virgi nia started reviewi ng with a clerical paper called the Guardian; in 1905 she started reviewing in The Times Literary Su

10、pplemen and continued writing for that journal for many years. Following a trip to Greece in 1906, Thoby died of typ hoid and in 1907 Van essa married Clive Bell. Thoby had started ,Thursday eve nin gs, for his friends to visit, and this kind of arran geme nt was continued after his death by Van ess

11、a and the n by Virgi nia and Adria n whe n they moved to 29 Fitzroy Square .In 1911 Virgi nia moved to 38 Brunswick Square. Leonard Woolf had joined the Ceylon Civil Service in 1904 and returned in 1912 on leave. He soon decided that he wan ted to marry Virgi nia, and she eve ntually agreed. They we

12、re married in St Pan eras Registry Office on 10 August 1912. They decided to earn money by writi ng and journ alism.Since about 1908 Virginia had been writing her first novel The Voyage Out(originally to be called Melymbrosia). It was fini shed by 1913 but, owing to ano ther severe men tal breakdow

13、n after her marriage, it was not p ublished un til 1915 by Duckworth & Co. (Gerald?s publishing house). The novel was fairly conventional in form. She then began writing her sec ond no vel Night and Day - if anything eve n more conven ti onal - which was p ublished in 1919, also by Duckworth.Fro

14、m 1911 Virginia had rented small houses near Lewes in Sussex, most notably Asheham House. Her sister Van essa ren ted Charlest on Farmhouse n earby from 1916 on wards. In 1919 the Woolfs bought Monks House in the village of Rodmell. This was a small weather-boarded house (now owned by the National T

15、rust) which they used principally for summer holidays un til they were bombed out of their flat in Meckle nburgh Square in 1940 whe n it became their home.In 1917 the Woolfs had bought a small hand prin ti ng-p ress in order to take up printing as a hobby and as thera py for Virgi nia. By now they w

16、ere livi ng in Richm ond (Surrey) and the Hogarth P ress was n amed after their house. Virg inia wrote, prin ted and p ublished a couple of exp erime ntal short stories, The Mark on the Wall and Kew Garde ns. The Woolfs continued handprin ti ng un til 1932, but in the mean time they in creas in gly

17、became p ublishers rather tha n prin ters. By about 1922 the Hogarth P ress had become a bus in ess. From 1921 Virgi nia always p ublished with the P ress, exce pt for a few limited editi ons.Nin etee n-twe nty-one saw Virgi nia?s first collectio n of short storiesM on day or Tuesday, most of which

18、were exp erime ntal in n ature. In 1922 her first exp erime ntal no vel, Jacobs Room, app eared. In 1924 the Woolfs moved back to London, to 52 Tavistock Square. In 1925 Mrs. Dalloway was published, followed by To the Lighthousein 1927, and The Wavesn 1931. These three no vels are gen erally con sid

19、ered to be her greatest claim to fame as a moder nist writer. Her invoIvement with the aristocratic novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West led to Orlando (1928), a roman a clef inspired by Vita?s life and ancestors at Knole in Kent. Two talks to women?scolleges at Cambridge in 1928 led to A Room of O

20、nes Own (1929), a discussi on of wome n?s writ ing and its historical econo mic and social underpinning.The 1930s was a less happy time for the Woolfs as the deaths of friends and the prospect of war increasingly overshadowed the decade.Virginia produced Flush (1933), a ficti onal biogra phy of Eliz

21、abeth Barrett Brow nin g?s dog; The Years(1937), a family saga(传 说)(more unconven ti onal tha n that soun ds) which was a best-seller in America but had bee n a long and painful time in the writing; Three Guineas(1938), in a sense a successor to A Room of One?s Own; and in 1940 a biography of her fr

22、iend Roger Fry who had died in 1934. She had p ractically comp leted her final no vel Betwee n the Acts whe n she committed suicide by drow ning in the River Ouse near Monks House on 28 March 1941.2. Stream of consciousnessIt is the con ti nu ous flow of sen se, p erce pti ons, thoughts, feeli ngs,

23、and memories in the huma n mind; or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuate(不加打断的)or disjointed (杂乱的，脱节的)form of interior monologue. The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be disti

24、nguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it; thus Marcel P roust's novel A la recherche du temps p erdL(1913 7) is about the stream of consciousness,especially the connect

25、ion between sense- impressions and memory, but it does not actually use interior monologue. In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousnessis a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts ,directly?, without the apparent interve

26、ntion of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle (混合)them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream-of-consciousness technique also does one or both of these thingsT. he phrase st“ream of con

27、sciousness”to indicate the flow of inner experience was first used by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890).Stream-of-consciousness writing uses devices such as characters speaking to themselves, free association, and lists of words.An important device of modernist fiction and its later i

28、mitators, the tech nique was pion eered by Dorothy Richards on in P ilgrimage (19155), by Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time(or Remembranceof things Past) , and by JamesJoyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and

29、 the Fury (1928). But for the most part James Joyce in Ulysses(1922).Purposeof stream of consciousness writing: To show how a person's thoughts flow Characteristicsof stream of consciousness writing：a) Presents thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur.b) It shows a mind at work.c) It m

30、ay contain parts that do not seem coherent because that are based on the free association of ideas and feelings of an individual's mind.d) It is in 3rd personDisadvantageof using stream of consciousness writing: It is difficult to maintain sympathy for the reader and simply write for personal se

31、lf-indulgence. The author knows what?s going on but the reader may become totally lost.3. Women in the Victorian EraThe French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose demands for human liberty had been influential upon a number of movements for political reform, forcefully articulated some of the m

32、ost restrictive tenets of what can be called the nineteenth century?s ideology of femininity. The whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to console them, and to make life sweet and agreeable to themthese are the duties of women at all times, and what should be taught t

33、hem from theiirnfancy. 'The status of Women in the Victorian Era is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between England's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, con Sider its app alii ng骇人听闻的)social con diti ons.Women as generals of households were very

34、common at that time. Women always were basically the generals of a strict and proper household.Women were seen as pure and clean. Because of this view, their bodies were seen as temples which should not be adorned with jewelery nor used for physical exertion （运用） or pl easurable sex.The only role of

35、 women was to get married, to have children and tend to the house, in contrast to men, accord ing to the concept of Victoria n masculi nity.The young wome n were mai niy educated in acco mp lishme nts like Fren ch, draw ing, pain ti ng, singing, dancing everyth ing which helped them to get a p erfec

36、t suitor.They could not hold a job uni ess it was that of a teacher or a domestic serva nt, nor were they allowed to have their own check ing acco unts or sav ings acco un ts.Women as generals of households家务总管）In order to run a res pectable household and secure the happin ess, comfort and well-be i

37、ng of her family she must p erform her duties in tellige ntly and thoroughly.she has to orga ni ze, delegate （委派）and in struct her serva nts which is not an easy task as many of them are not reliable. Ano ther duty is that of being the "sick- nurse" who takes care of ill family members. Th

38、is requires a good temper, comp assi on for sufferi ng and symp athy with sufferers, n eat-ha nded ness, quiet mann ers, love of order and clea nii ness; all qualities a woma n worthy of the n ame should p ossess in the 19th cen tury.A very sp ecial connection existed betwee n wome n and their broth

39、ers. Sisters had to treat their brothers as they would treat their future husba nds. They were dependent on their male family members as the brother's affectio n might secure their future in case their husba nd treated them badly or they did not get married at all.A Woman's QualitiesThe acce

40、pted reasoning was that the career for women was marriage. To get ready for courtship and marriage a girl was groomed like a racehorse比匕赛用马）.In addition to being able to sing, play an instrument and speak a little French or Italian, the qualities a young Victoria n gen tlewoma n n eeded, were to be

41、innocent, virtuous, biddable, dutiful and be ignorant of in tellectual opinion.Whether married or sin gle all Victoria n wome n were exp ected to be weak and help less, a fragile delicate flower incap able of making decisi ons bey ond select ing the menu and en suri ng her many childre n were taught

42、 moral values. A gen tlewoma n en sured that the home was a pl ace of comfort for her husba nd and family from the stresses of In dustrial Britai n. A woma n's p rime use was to bear a large family and maintain a smooth family atmos phere where a man n eed not bother himself about domestic matte

43、rs. He assumed his house would run smoothly so he could get on with making mon ey.Women and sexVictorian society preferred to avoid talking about sex, especially fornicatio（通奸）.Although this is difficult to do, sexual activities were highly regulated in Europe by church and state law. Sexual relati

44、ons were solely for the purpose of rep roducti on; therefore the church oppo sed sexual relati ons for the inten ti ons of solely obta ining p leasure. As for adultery, courts treated wome n and men differe ntly. They typ ically gran ted more severe con seque ncesto female adulterers tha n to males.

45、Limited Rights for Married WomenUn til late in the cen tury in 1887 a married woma n could own no prop erty. The n in 1887 the Married Woman's Property Act gave women rights to own her own property. Previously her property, frequently inherited from her family, belonged to her husband on marriag

46、e. She became the chattel（动产）of the man. During this era if a wife separated from her husba nd she had no rights of access to see her childrenA divorced woma n had no cha nee of acce ptance in society aga in.Social Differences Between Classes of WomenA wealthy wife was suppo sedto spend her time rea

47、d ing, sew in g, recei ving guests, going visit in g, letter writi ng, see ing to the serva nts and dress ing for the part as her husba nd's social rep rese ntative.For the very poor of Britain things were quite different. Fifth hand clothes were usual. Servants ate the pickings left over（挑剩的）in

48、 a rich household. The average poor mill worker could only afford the very inferior stuff, for example rancid（腐臭的）bacon, tiredvegetables, gree n po tatoes, tough old stri ngy meat, tain ted bread, po rridge, cheese, herri ngs or kipp ers.DetailedStudyoftheTextPara. 11. What is the main idea of Para.

49、 1?In the pro fessi on of literature, there are fewer exp erie nces p eculiar to wome n tha n in any other pro fessi ons.2. My pro fessi on is literature,that are p eculiar to wome n.Q: Why does the author say so?Because the road was cut many years ago by many famous wome n writers and many more unk

50、nown and forgotte n wome n writers who have bee n before me, making the p ath smooth, regulati ng my ste ps. The imp lied meaning is that other pro fessi ons, such as scie nee, medic ine, law, are n ewer for wome n, and therefore, the road is harder for them, with more exp erie nces peculiar to them

51、. The profession of drama is an exception it invoIves more women than other pro fessi ons.3. The family p eace was not broke n by the scratch ing of a pen.Here the family peace” has two meaningfirst: calm, quiet, tranquility; second: harmony, lack of worry and quarrels.4. Pianos and models, P aris,

52、Vie nna and Berlin- are not n eeded by a writer.P If you want to be a musicia n or a pain ter, you must own a piano or hire models, and you have to visit or eve n live in cultural cen ters like P aris, Vienna and Berli n. And also you have to be taught by masters and mistresses. However, if you want

53、 to be a writer, you don? n eed all this.Para. 21. What is the main idea of Para. 2?In this p aragra ph the author res ponds to the hosts suggestio n that she should tell the audie nee someth ing about her own pro fessi onal exp erie nces. So she now tells her own story how she became a book reviewe

54、r whe n she was a girl.2. But to tell you how little I deserve to be called a professional womanwith my n eighbours.a）The imp lied mea ning is that in the lives of pro fessi onal wome n there are usually struggles and difficulties. Whe n they make some mon ey, they would spend it on bread and butte,

55、 rent, shoes and stock ings or butch? bills, all of which are basic daily n ecessities.b) bread and butter *synecdoche: a kind of figure of speech by which a part is used for a whole, an in dividual for a class, a material for a thi ng, or the reverse of any of these. E.g.:We n eed 100 hands for the

56、 work.c) bread-and-butter adj. e.g.: bread-and-butter issues such as jobs and housingPara. 31. What is the main idea of Para. 3?This part is an imp orta nt part of her sp eech. In this p aragra ph the sp eaker focuses on the first obstacle to becoming a professional woman writer. She uses a figure o

57、f speech killing the An gel in the house” in describ ing her determ in ati on to get rid of the conven tio nal role of wome n in her writi ng.2. Pha ntoma) literally: someth ing that seems to app ear to the sight but also has no p hysical existe nee, a specterb) metaphorically: an apparition, a visi

58、on, something feared of or dreaded,somethi ng that exists only in the mind, an illusi on, any men tal image or rep rese ntati on.3. It was she who used to come betwee n me- writ ing reviews.P She used to cause argume nts or p roblems betwee n me and what I was writi ng.Tf就是她，总在我和我的写作之间制造麻烦。4. She wa

59、s inten sely symp athetic：utterly un selfish.The three adverbs before the three adjectives are all for emp hasis. Each of the adverbs suits the adjectives it modifies perfectly. In these three short sentences,the author lists three imp orta nt qualities of a Victoria n woma n.5. She was so con stituted that she n ever had a mind or wish of her own.P She was made up, formed of desig ned in such a way that she n ever had an opi