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A Perfect Wife/完美的妻子
By Ellen Glasgow/ 埃伦·格拉斯哥
After thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that Victoria was endowed with every charm except the thrilling touch of human frailty. Though her perfection discouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the pride of a husband in her natural frigidity. For he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, to the discredited ideal of chivalry. In his youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of the long Victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures, of men. At the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biological factsintosa miraculous power, Virginius Littlepage, the younger son of an old and affluent family, had married Victoria Brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made a satisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobaccos into cigarettes. While Virginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had not stooped to folly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring Victoria. She was not only modest, which was usual in the nineties, but she was beautiful, which is unusual in any decade.
经过了三十年的幸福婚姻，他仍能时常提醒自己，维多利亚除了缺乏那么一点点令人心动的人性脆弱以外,拥有一切美妙的品质。尽管她的完美减少了乐趣，尤其是爱情的乐趣，经过长时间的生活，作为一个丈夫，他渐渐为她天性中的保守感到骄傲。虽然陈腐的道德已经没落，他却仍然坚守遭到怀疑的骑士风范。他年轻的时候，漫长的维多利亚时代的余晖仍未散去;如果说优雅的女性化风尚没有软化男人们的本性，那它也软化了他们的举止。在这个有趣的年代行将结束的时候，人们对女性的赞美已不再停留在对女人的自然属性的赞美上，而是近乎把女人作为神明来膜拜。在这个时候，弗吉尼亚斯·里托尔培奇，一个古老富有家庭中的小儿子，和维多利亚·布鲁克结婚了。维多利亚是一个大烟草种植园主的孙女，这个种植园主因不再种植烟草而是把烟草做成卷烟而发了财。尽管严格的传统教育使弗吉尼亚斯尊重所有不甘堕落至做蠢事的女性，女性独有的美德并不是他爱慕维多利亚的原因。她不仅谦虚——这个品质在九十年代很普遍，她还非常美丽，这在任何年代都是不常见的。
In the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribed intellect to her; but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions created by perfect features and noble expression. Everything about her had been smooth and definite, even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore a la Pompadour*, was rolled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head.
在他们相识之初，他甚至还认为她才华出众。但是几个月的婚姻生活证明了这不过是完美的外表和高贵的言辞带来的众多错觉之一。她的一切都是那么安详平淡，那么不事张扬，甚至包括她说话的声调和她选择的发式;她梳的是高卷式发型，淡褐色的头发从前额向后紧紧地卷过去用一根光亮的头绳盘绕在头顶上。那是一个凡事都严肃认真的年代，甚至恋人的情感和头脑都是有条理的。
A serious young man, ambitious to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secluded seat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness and precision of Victoria's orderly mind. For in that earnest period the minds, as well as the emotions, of lovers were orderly. It was an age when eager young men flocked to church on Sunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the Victorian poets in the middle of the week. He could afford to smile now when he recalled the solemn Browning class in which he had first lost his heart. How passionately he had admired Victoria's virginal features! How fervently he had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet!
弗吉尼亚斯就是这样一个严肃的年轻人，他梦想有朝一日能在世上赢得辉煌的地位，远胜于他名声不旺的祖先。他们第一次见面的时候，他就发现维多利亚不仅思想有条理，而且思维缜密精确，因而留下了深刻的印象。在那个年代，满怀激情的年轻男子星期天早晨都涌向教堂;每星期三牧师们绘声绘色地讲述维多利亚诗人的诗歌。现在他回想起在那讨论诗人布朗宁的严肃课堂上，自己竟然春心萌动，不禁哑然失笑。他那时是多么醉心于维多利亚清纯的容颜，而看到她对布朗宁的诗心领神会，爱不释手时，他又是多么妒忌!
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