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Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure. And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money—shall we say five hundred pounds a year? —so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living.
永远别让别人知道你有自己的思想。最重要的是，要纯洁。”她似乎在控制我的笔。下面我要说说多少是我自己决定做的一件事情，当然做此事的功劳主要还应归功于我的了不起的祖先，是他们给我留下了一笔财产——比如说每年五百英镑吧——这样我就不必完全靠女人的魅力去谋生了。
I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel in the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly—tell lies if they are to succeed.
我发起进攻，扼住她的喉咙。我尽全力杀死了她。如果把我诉上法庭，那么我的辩词将是正当防卫。如果我不杀死她，她就会杀死我。她会泯灭我写作的灵魂。因为我发现，在提笔之时，如果没有自己的思想，不能表达关于人与人的关系、道德及性的真理，我连对一部小说的评论也写不出来。按照“家里的天使”的规矩，女人不可以自由、公开地讨论这些问题。女人只能展示魅力，女人只能让步。直率地说，要想成功，她们必须说谎。
Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the struggle was severe; it took much time that had better have been spent upon learning Greek grammar; or in roaming the world in search of adventures. But it was a real experience; it was an experience that was bound to befall all women writers at that time. Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.
所以，每当我在纸上感到她翅膀的影子或是光晕时，我就会拿起墨水瓶向她砸去。杀死她很难。虚幻的本质给了她极大的帮助。杀死现实中的人易，杀死鬼影难。我认为已经将她杀死，可她却总是悄然再至。我因最终铲除了她而感到欣慰，但铲除的斗争过程却十分激烈，耗时很多，都不如把这些时间花在学习希腊语法或是周游世界去冒险好了。可这都是真实的经历；这种经历注定会发生在所有女作家的身上。杀死“家里的天使”是女作家职业的分内之事。
