失寵的婚姻？探尋中印女性的情愛生活

Rarely has a newlywed delivered a more withering assessment of marriage than Charlotte Brontë. “It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife,” she wrote to a friend — fresh off her honeymoon, no less.

很少會有哪個新婚人士能給出比夏洛蒂·勃朗特對婚姻更尖刻的評價。“一個女人成為妻子，是一件莊嚴、奇怪又危險的事情，”她在給朋友的信中寫道——居然還是剛剛渡完蜜月的朋友。

A number of recent books have taken up her argument, looking anew at marriage and how it benefits women (or mostly doesn’t), as well as how our ideas about courtship and intimacy have evolved: “All the Single Ladies” by Rebecca Traister, “Labor of Love” by Moira Weigel, “Spinster” by Kate Bolick and “Future Sex” by Emily Witt, to name just a few. They’ve taken a skeptical and lively interest in the public pressures shaping our private bonds. In many cases, they puzzle over one question: Why is this institution, long regarded as desirable, even compulsory, falling out of favor around the world?

最近好些書都采用了她的觀點，來重新看待婚姻以及它如何使女人受益(或者基本就不受益)，還有我們對求愛和親密的觀點是如何演化的，比如麗貝卡·崔斯特(Rebecca Traister)寫了《所有單身的女士們》(All the Single Ladies)，莫伊拉·韋格爾(Moira Weigel)寫了《愛的勞動》(Labor of Love)，凱特·博利克(Kate Bolick)寫了《不婚女子》(Spinster)，埃米莉·維特(Emily Witt)寫了《未來性愛》(Future Sex)。這些書對塑造了我們親密關系的公眾壓力持有一種懷疑的濃厚興趣。大多數(shù)時候，他們都在苦苦思索著一個問題：為什么這項長久以來被視為值得擁有，甚至是一項必須的習俗，會在全世界漸漸失寵?

Inspired by a similar curiosity, two new books — “Leftover in China” and “The Heart Is a Shifting Sea” — look to China and India, respectively, to assess how marriage withstands breakneck economic growth, social change and the increasing financial independence of women. (Spoiler: badly.)

在同樣的好奇心驅使下，兩本新書——《中國剩女》(Leftover in China)和《心靈是波動的大?！?The Heart Is a Shifting Sea)——分別把目光轉向了中國和印度，評估了在高速的經(jīng)濟增長、社會變化，以及女性在經(jīng)濟越來越獨立狀況下的婚姻狀況。(劇透：情況不妙。)

The books take opposite approaches. “Leftover in China,” the flimsier of the two, examines the phenomenon of sheng nu, or “leftover women” — highly educated, ambitious women who cannot find partners, or so the story goes. The author, Roseann Lake, a correspondent for The Economist, describes the dizzying rise of recent generations of Chinese women with a dizzying tempo of her own.

兩本書采用了相反的途徑。較薄的那本《中國剩女》審視了“剩女”現(xiàn)象，也就是受過高等教育、有抱負，卻找不到另一半的女性，至少據(jù)說是這樣。本書作者、《經(jīng)濟學人》(The Economist)記者羅絲安·萊克(Roseann Lake)以一種令人眼花繚亂的節(jié)奏，描繪了中國近幾代女性的快速崛起。

Lake zips through history. In 1949, 75 percent of Chinese women were illiterate. Today, China has one of the lowest rates of female illiteracy in the world — as well as the highest percentage of self-made female billionaires. She explains that the draconian one-child policy meant that families had to pour their resources into their only child, even if that child was a girl (and escaped sex-selective abortion, that is). Those daughters have grown into accomplished, tragically single women. They have so outpaced men professionally they can’t find suitable partners.

萊克在歷史中穿行。1949年，中國有75%的婦女都是文盲。今天，中國是世界女性文盲比例最低的國家之一——也是白手起家的女億萬富翁比例最高的國家。她解釋說，嚴格的獨生子女政策意味著家庭要把資源都傾注在他們唯一的孩子身上，即使是個女孩(還得逃過選擇性別的墮胎)。這些女孩長成了有成就、可惜單身的女性。她們在專業(yè)上的成就遠遠超過了男性，以至于找不到合適的伴侶。

Is that it? Or is it that their ambition itself has rendered them undesirable? Or that dating is such a novel concept in China that men and women don’t know how to talk to each other? Lake entertains all these ideas in a confused fashion. What she doesn’t do is give sufficient space to Chinese women to explain their decisions and desires themselves. When that happens, in a fleeting scene halfway through the book, a more intriguing picture emerges. The female founder of a dating website tells her: “Most of these so-called leftover women have voluntarily chosen their lifestyle.” Lake scarcely grapples with the implication of this statement — how could she? It’s too at odds with her story, which has so firmly cast her subjects as victims and not agents.

是這樣嗎?還是她們的抱負本身導致她們沒有人喜歡?或者是因為約會的概念在中國過于新奇，以至于男性和女性不知道如何與對方交談?萊克用一種混亂的方式觸及了所有這些想法。她沒有做的，是給中國女性足夠的空間，讓她們解釋自己的選擇和欲望。這樣的情況下，在這本書中間的一個一閃即過的場景里，一幅更令人好奇的畫面浮現(xiàn)了出來。一家約會網(wǎng)站的女創(chuàng)始人告訴作者：“大多數(shù)這些所謂的‘剩女’都自愿選擇了她們的生活方式。”萊克沒怎么思考這句話的含義——她怎么會呢?這太不符合她的故事了，她的敘述牢牢地把她筆端的對象刻畫成了受害者，而非自主行動的人。

In “The Heart Is a Shifting Sea,” Elizabeth Flock, a reporter for PBS NewsHour, offers a study as patient and careful as Lake’s is cursory. She followed three married couples in Mumbai for almost a decade: one couple is Marwari Hindu, another Muslim, a third Tamil Brahmin. In the mode of Katherine Boo and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Flock absents herself from the narrative, allowing us to enter the lives of her subjects and witness moments of almost unbearable intimacy.

在《心靈是波動的大?！?The Heart Is a Shifting Sea)里，美國公共電視新聞時間(PBS NewsHour)的記者伊麗莎白·弗洛克(Elizabeth Flock)提供了一份研究報告，萊克有多草率，這份研究就有多耐心和細致。她花了近十年時間跟隨三名孟買的夫婦：一對馬爾瓦印度教徒，一對穆斯林，還有一對泰米爾婆羅門。跟凱瑟琳·博(Katherine Boo)和艾德里安·妮可·勒布朗(Adrian Nicole LeBlanc)的方式一樣，弗洛克把自己從敘述中隱去，讓我們進入她的寫作對象的生活，親眼見證那些幾乎難以讓人承受的親密時刻。

Every agony of adulthood is presented with startling frankness — every miscarriage, every stupid investment, every sexual insecurity. The couples turned over their entire lives to the author; we can sift through their diary fragments, their text messages with their lovers, their bitter Gchats with their spouses. As a result, we learn everything about the couples, or so it seems: how they like to salt their food and part their hair, their pornography habits and preferences, their secret childhood traumas.

每一種成年的痛苦也以驚人的直率得以呈現(xiàn)——每一次流產(chǎn)，每一項愚蠢的投資，每一種在性方面的不安全感。這些夫妻把他們生活的全部交給了作者;我們可以翻閱他們的日記片段，他們和情人之間的短信，他們與伴侶充滿憤恨的Gchat[谷歌的及時信息傳輸服務——譯注]對話內(nèi)容。因此，我們能了解關于這些夫妻的一切，至少看上去如此：他們喜歡如何給自己的食物放鹽，如何給頭發(fā)分縫，他們看色情作品的習慣和偏好，還有他們私密的童年創(chuàng)傷。

Aside from the voyeuristic pleasures (which are substantial), we get a sense of entering the consciousness of each character. So much of our personal lives can feel like desperate improvisation, but Flock reveals the scripts we consult — from novels, television, family lore and religion. The couples find coordinates for their stories and desires in Bollywood and James Bond films, Pakistani soap operas, the stories of Jeffrey Eugenides and Kamala Das. One woman defends her infidelity by telling herself that Radha, the god Krishna’s favorite consort, was a married woman. Another, in love with a man of a different religion, finds consolation in “The God of Small Things,” Arundhati Roy’s novel of an intercaste romance.

除了窺視的樂趣(你能大飽眼福)之外，我們有一種走進每個人物的意識世界的感覺。我們個人生活中的很多事都感覺像是無可奈何的即興表演，但弗洛克揭示了我們從小說、電視、家庭傳承的智慧和宗教中獲得的用來參考的腳本。這些夫妻在寶萊塢和詹姆斯·邦德(James Bond)電影、巴基斯坦肥皂劇、杰弗里·尤金尼德斯(Jeffrey Eugenides)和卡馬拉·達斯(Kamala Das)的作品中找到了他們的故事與欲望的坐標。一名女性在為她的不忠進行辯護時告訴自己，克利須那神(Krishna)最喜愛的伴侶羅陀(Radha)是一名已婚婦女。另一個人在與一名來自不同宗教背景的男性相愛時，在阿蘭達蒂·洛伊(Arundhati Roy)的《微物之神》(The God of Small Things)中找到了安慰，這本小說講述了跨種姓的愛情故事。

A small armada of books have explored the aspirations of India’s booming middle class, including the excellent “The Beautiful and the Damned” by Siddhartha Deb and “The End of Karma” by Somini Sengupta, a reporter at The Times. What distinguishes Flock’s take is her interest in and access to the inner lives of married women who face particular constraints: Divorce is difficult to obtain and highly stigmatized, and fathers are considered the natural guardians of any child over the age of five under the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act.

已經(jīng)有一些書籍探索了印度冉冉升起的中產(chǎn)階級的渴望，其中包括悉達多德·德布(Siddhartha Deb)精彩的《美麗與詛咒》(The Beautiful and the Damned)，以及時報記者索米尼·森古塔(Somini Sengupta)所著的《因果的終結》(The End of Karma)。讓弗洛克的方式有所不同的是，她有興趣和途徑去進入那些面臨特殊限制的已婚婦女的內(nèi)心生活：離婚很難，并且會背上不好的名聲，而根據(jù)《印度教少數(shù)民族與監(jiān)護法》(Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act)，父親被認為是任何五歲以上兒童的天然監(jiān)護人。

Marriage is changing because women are changing — on this point, both “Leftover in China” and “The Heart Is a Shifting Sea” agree. We are, as Lake writes, meeting the protagonists of a new global narrative. Flock calls her subjects “romantics and rule breakers,” the women in particular. “They seemed impatient with the old middle-class morals. And where the established rules for love did not fit their lives, they made up new ones.” They also pay the price.

婚姻正在改變，因為女性正在發(fā)生改變——在這一點上，《中國剩女》和《心靈是波動的大?！愤_成了一致。如萊克所寫的那樣，我們所見到的是一個在嶄新的全球敘述里的主人公。弗洛克把她的對象，尤其是那些女性稱為“浪漫主義者和規(guī)則打破者”。“她們似乎對陳舊的中產(chǎn)道德感到厭倦。當既有的情愛規(guī)則不適應她們的生活，她們就制定新的規(guī)則。”她們也因此付出代價。