Making a masterpiece
成大作
How Charlotte Brontë came towrite “Jane Eyre”
夏洛蒂.勃朗特如何创作出《简爱》？
A new bookseeks to discover the people and places that inspired the fiction
一本探寻何人何地启发《简爱》的新书
Print edition | Books and arts
Aug 10th 2017
The Secret History of Jane Eyre: How Charlotte Brontë Wrote Her Masterpiece.
By JohnPfordresher.W.W. Norton; 254 pages; $26.95; £20.
《简爱秘史：夏洛蒂.勃朗特如何成就大作》
作者：约翰.奥德雷瑟
诺顿出版社；总共254页；售价$26.95；£20
CRITICS relish a bit of detective work. Four hundred years after William Shakespeare died, people still offer new theories about the true identity of the “Dark Lady” and the “Fair Youth” of hissonnets. Journalists have been dogged in their attempts to discover the writer behind the pseudonym “Elena Ferrante”.
评论家总喜欢做些刨根问底的事。莎翁过世四百年了，世人还在为莎十四行诗中“黑夫人”和“俊青年”的真实身份炮制新论；新闻记者们也一直穷追埃莱娜·费兰特（Elena Ferrante）这个笔名背后的真实身份。
Charlotte Brontë has been the subject of many such investigations. During her lifetime, the pen name “CurrerBell” provoked wild speculations; reviewers variously concluded that the author was a man, a woman, or a mixed-sex writing duo. Readers past and present have wondered how a shy curate’s daughter from Yorkshire came to write “Jane Eyre”, a finely wrought tale of passion and darkness, when her life contained seemingly little of either. With “The Secret History of Jane Eyre”, John Pfordresher, a professor at Georgetown University, seeks to provide some answers.His aim is to unearth the real-life people and events that inspired Brontë’smuch-loved classic novel.
夏洛蒂.勃朗特就一直是这种追问的对象。在她的一生中，“柯勒.贝尔”（Currer Bell）这个笔名曾引起疯狂揣测；文评人各种推断，猜这是男作家、女作家、甚至男女混双写作二人组。新老读者也很好奇：这个生于约克郡牧师之家的害羞女孩是如何写出《简爱》的，这部佳作热爱和黑暗并举，而勃朗特的人生似乎跟这些都不怎么沾边。美国乔治城大学的教授约翰.奥德雷瑟（John Pfordresher）用《简爱秘史》尝试给出一些答案，教授想发掘出是什么样的真实人物和事件启发了勃朗特写出这部深受喜爱的经典小说。
Unfortunately, Mr Pfordresher cannot illuminate the writing process itself, save for noting the date that Brontë first put pen to paper. She left “no outlines, notes about characters,drafts scribbled over with revisions and additions” or any other such tantalising clues. So Mr Pfordresher chooses to follow the chronology of thenovel and weave in the biographical detail.
可惜的是奥德雷瑟教授除了知道勃朗特动笔创作的日期，对她的创作过程本身没有头绪，“没有故事大纲，没有人物笔记，没有修改增补的草稿”，也没有任何引发联想的线索，所以教授选择寻着这本小说的年代表，织入作者的生平细节。
John Reed, Jane Eyre’s young adversary, is based on Charlotte’s experience of the boys she met during hertime in Belgium, as well as the unpleasant sons of the Sidgwick family (for whom she served as a governess) and a character in “Agnes Grey”, her sister Anne’s novel. Jane’s time at the dreadful Lowood Institution is reconstructed from Charlotte’s grim memories of Cowan Bridge school, only made less “exquisitely painful” (tracts were published defending the school and its proprietors). The virtuous and stoical Helen Burns is a reincarnation of Maria, the sister who died at 11;Emily and Anne are also present as Diana and Mary Rivers. So extensive is the biographical framework on which Charlotte built, Mr Pfordresher argues, that readers should view “Jane Eyre” as autobiography rather than a work of fiction.
约翰.里德是简.爱的年轻对手，这个人物的原型是夏洛蒂居于比利时期间遇到的男孩，同是原型的还有西季威克（Sidgwick）家（夏洛蒂在那做过家庭教师）的淘气儿子，以及她妹妹安妮的小说中《艾格尼斯.格雷》中的一个人物。而简在罗沃德孤儿院（Lowood Institution）的可怕经历则是重塑于夏洛蒂在柯文桥（Cowan Bridge）学校的悲惨记忆，只是写得没那么“强烈的痛苦”（有文章发表为这个学校和学校所有人辩护）。书中善良克制的海伦.伯恩斯（Helen Burns），这个11岁就离世的小姐妹，是玛丽亚的化身；而黛安娜和玛丽.里弗斯则是基于艾米莉和安妮[1]。由于夏洛蒂构建的人物框架如此之广，奥德雷瑟教授认为读者们应该把《简.爱》视作一本自传而非一部非虚构小说。
Yet when it comes to the inspiration for Mr Rochester and Bertha Mason, two of the most compelling figures in English literature, Mr Pfordresher stumbles. His argument that Charlotte drew on her father Patrick’s demanding presence, fiery temper and “sexual energy” for Mr Rochester is unconvincing: Patrick’s attempts to remarry after his wife’s death seem more to do with caring for his six children than with lust. The claim that Bertha’s lunacy was based on Charlotte’s trip to North Lees Hall—where the mistress of the house “reputedly went mad, was confined ina padded room,and died in a fire”—is a fair one. But Branwell, the author’s miscreant brother, is an equally good candidate that Mr Pfordresher ignores. In her biography of Charlotte, Claire Harman points out that he kept the household awake at night “with his noisy despairing” over a past lover and is rumoured tohave set his own bed on fire.
但是说到罗切斯特先生和伯莎.梅森的灵感来源，这两个都属于英国文学最扣人心弦的角色之列，奥德雷瑟教授就没有拿捏准确。教授认为夏洛蒂描写罗切斯特先生是基于她父亲帕特里克的威严形象、火爆脾气和“性能量”，这一点没有说服力：因为帕特里克想在妻子逝后再婚，似乎更多地为了养育自己六个子女，而不是自身欲望。而教授认为关于伯莎精神失常的描写源自夏洛蒂的North Lees Hall之旅则相对合理，那里房屋女主“据说已经疯了，被禁闭在一个四墙铺设软垫的房间里，后来死于一场火宅”。但教授忽视了另一个同等重要的人物，即作者的无良弟弟布伦威尔（Branwell）[2]。在克莱尔.哈曼（Claire Harman）有关夏洛蒂的传记中，提到夏洛蒂弟弟大晚上让一家人不得安宁，他因为过去的一个爱人“癫狂绝望”，传言他还把自己的床点火烧着。
The verisimilitude of Brontë’s novel has long been one of its greatest strengths (The Economist, reviewing it in 1847, argued that it was “perfectly fresh and lifelike” and, as such, “farremoved from the namby pamby stuff of which fashionable novels are made”). Though this “secret history” illuminates much of the real-life mould that shaped the novel, it at times confuses autobiographical elements with autobiography. In its determination that Charlotte Brontë is Jane Eyre, many of the comparisons between true incidents and those of the fiction feel forced. Literary sleuthingis often illuminating—but it can also see clues where none really exist.
勃朗特小说的真实性长久以来都是其强项之一（《经济学人》曾在1847年点评过，认为“取材十分新鲜、逼真”，并且“远离时髦小说的为赋新词强说愁”）。尽管这本“秘史”点出了很多塑造原小说的真实模板，但有时候也混淆了自传元素和自传。教授认定夏洛蒂.勃朗特就是简.爱原型，但在很多真实事件和小说内容的对比上又显得勉强。文学的探索常让人醍醐灌顶，但也能看出有些线索并非源于现实。
This article appeared in theBooks and arts section of the print edition under the headline "The factsof fiction"
英文链接：https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21726052-new-book-seeks-discover-people-and-places-inspired-fiction-how-charlotte
[1]艾米莉.勃朗特和安妮.勃朗特是夏洛蒂.勃朗特的两个亲生妹妹，三人在英国英国文学史上有“勃朗特三姐妹”之称。
[2]帕特里克.布伦威尔.勃朗特（Patrick Branwell Brontë），1817 –1848，是一位英国画家和作家，是勃朗特家族的独子、“勃朗特三姐妹”的弟弟，后来染上毒瘾和酒瘾，因为爱上有夫之妇不得，早逝。资料来源：维基百科。
翻译参考：
https://baike.baidu.com/item/夏洛蒂·勃朗特
https://baike.baidu.com/item/简·爱/5526?fr=aladdin&fromid=379080&fromtitle=简爱#3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branwell_Brontë
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Harman_(writer)
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