经济学人下载:两性智慧-不完美的忠告(4)

Ms Whitehorn, meanwhile, dealt with the eternal worries of women that they were not elegant or organised enough. Her most famous column, in 1963, defended all slatterns who had ever safety-pinned a hem, changed their stockings in a taxi, or seized some item back from the dirty-clothes basket “because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing”. 

与此同时，怀特霍恩正在处理女性永恒的困扰：不够优雅，不够有条理。她最著名的专栏是在1963年，为所有懒惰女人辩护——她们用别针别住裙摆，在出租车里换长筒袜，或是继续穿脏衣篮里的衣服，“因为相对来说，脏衣服相较更干净”。

She implied she was a slattern too, though Roedean, Cambridge, her dress sense and her darkly posh voice rather gave the lie to that. But at devil-may-care-ness she did well. 

她暗示自己也是一个邋遢的人，尽管她的尽管罗丁女中、剑桥大学、她的衣着品味和浓厚的上流社会腔调戳破了这一谎言。但不管怎样，她做得很好。

In “How to Survive Children” (she had two, chaotically balanced with work), she advised that bath-time went better after a glass of gin. As for housewifery, “no book of household management can ever tell you...how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.” 

在《女人如何养孩子》(How to Survive Children)一书中(她有两个孩子，在工作和育儿中的混乱地平衡着)，她建议，喝一杯杜松子酒后洗澡会更舒适。至于家庭主妇，“没有一本家庭管理书籍能告诉你……如何开始。也许我的意思是为什么开始。”

Both columnists continued to a great age, thriving on long and generally happy marriages. Wisdom seemed to gather around them until both were national treasures. Their essential optimism was tempered: Dr Watsa’s by the beatings, abuse and unhappily arranged marriages he was told of, and could do nothing about; Ms Whitehorn’s by the feeling that sex had come to tyrannise relationships. 

两位专栏作家都到了耄耋之年，他们的婚姻长久而美满。智慧的光环似乎笼罩在他们周围，直到这两个人都成了国宝级人物。他们重要的乐观情绪被淡化了：沃特萨医生听闻那些遭受殴打、虐待和不幸的包办婚姻时，他无能为力；怀特霍恩女士认为性已经成为了一种专制的关系。

But the numbers of people they had braced with confidence were legion, and occasionally their advice was similar. To a woman worried about not being a virgin on her wedding night, Dr Watsa wrote: “Don’t worry, your husband won’t notice.” 

但他们满怀信心迎接的困惑者不计其数，有时他们的建议也大致相同。对于一位在新婚之夜担心自己不是处女的女士，沃特萨医生写道:“别担心，你的丈夫不会注意到的。While to a young bedsitter hostess, cooking for a man, Ms Whitehorn breezed: “Don’t apologise, and never ask ‘Is it all right?’” 

当怀特霍恩女士回复一位为男人做饭的年轻女士时，她轻松地说:“无需道歉，永远不要问‘是这样做吗?’”