卑鄙者的墓志铭

The Bloomsbury group
Pantry power
厨房的力量
Sep 25th 2008
From The Economist print edition

VIRGINIA WOOLF and her sister, Vanessa Bell, may have been early icons of liberated womanhood, but who made their lunch every day or ran the bath? Woolf was famously undomesticated while the more home-oriented Bell needed someone to help look after her children while she carried on with her work as a painter—and her love affairs. Put simply: without an army of staff much of the work produced by the Bloomsbury group of writers and artists might never have seen the light of day.
VIRGINIA WOOLF和她的妹妹Vanessa Bell，或许算是早期妇女解放的代表人物。不过你有没有想过，谁给她们做午饭，或者烧洗澡水呢？Woolf是出了名的不做家务，Bell则稍微顾家一点 儿，不过当她出去作画，或者……谈情说爱的时候，也还是要找人看着她的孩子们。说白了，要是没有一个强大的家务后援团，布卢姆茨伯里派的那些文学家艺术家 们的作品，只怕我们今天也无缘得见了。

In her book which has just come out in America, Alison Light, a lecturer in English at Newcastle University, ferrets out the hidden toil of the working-class women who made sure that the lives of the group ran smoothly. She starts in 1880s Kensington, where the young Stephen sisters lived with their well-to-do parents and numerous servants, including Sophie Farrell, who joined the household as cook in 1886. After their parents died, Sophie accompanied “Miss Genia” and Vanessa to Bloomsbury where the girls were determined to try a new kind of living. Some of the old-fashioned ways of doing things—dressing for dinner, for example—went by the board, but the sisters still expected Sophie to produce three meals a day. And they did not help with the washing up.
Alison Light刚刚在美国出 版了一本新书。这位纽卡斯尔大学英语语言文学的讲师在书中为我们描述了那些被雇佣的妇女们鲜为人知的辛劳，正是她们，才使布卢姆茨伯里派的人们得以更加轻 松地生活。她的记录从19世纪80年代的肯辛顿开始，年轻的Stephen姐妹正跟她们富有的父母以及一大堆仆人住在那里，其中包括Sophie Farrell，他在1886年来这里作了一名厨师。在她们的父母去世后，Sophie陪着“Genia小姐”以及Vanessa搬到了布卢姆茨伯里，然 后，姑娘们决定开始一种新的生活。一些老的习惯──例如要穿戴整齐再吃晚餐──被扔掉了，但两姐妹依然让Sophie为她们准备一日三餐，并且她们吃过饭 从不洗碗。

This, really, is the crux of Ms Light’s absorbing book. Woolf and the other Bloomsbury group members regarded themselves as socialist and held what they considered to be “advanced” views on the mingling of different social groups—their servants were not expected to wear uniforms, for example, or address them as “sir” and “madam”. Yet they seem to have been quite clueless about what life was like below stairs.
不错，这便是Light小姐这本引人入胜的书中的关键部分。Woolf以及布卢姆茨伯里派的其他成员们自认为 是社会主义者，他们实行着他们觉着“先进”的方法来调和各个不同的社会阶级。比如，他们不要求仆人们穿制服，也不用称呼他们“先生”或者“太太”。不过， 他们依然对下层社会的生活知之甚少。

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Woolf’s diary. She complains endlessly about Nellie Boxall, who succeeds Sophie as her cook. Despite Woolf’s sympathy for these “obscure” women, her complaints have a nasty tone: “She is in a state of nature: untrained; uneducated…so that one sees a human mind wriggling undressed.” The cook, using the only power available to her, responds by giving in her notice 165 times, though she begs to be taken back.
Woolf的日记便是再好不过的例子，她在里面无休止地抱怨接替Sophie的Nellie Boxall。相对其对那些”卑微妇女“的同情态度而言，她在日记中的抱怨却相当难听：“她完全没有开化，不懂礼节，未受教育……所以，你只能看到一个空 白的灵魂在扭动。”而那位厨师也用她仅有的一点力量予以反击，给Woolf递交了165次警告便条，虽然后来她又恳请要回那些便条。

Ms Light has done an excellent job of weaving together social history and literary criticism. Her book not only gives voice to previously silent subjects but also adds to our understanding of both Woolf and Bell, of whom it is sometimes easy to feel one has heard quite enough already.
Light女士在书中把社会历史与文化批评结合得相当巧妙。她不但提起了一个此前一直沉寂的话题，也使我们对Woolf与Bell有了更多的了解，而很多时候我们会觉着我们已经了解得足够多了。