伍尔夫《一间属于自己的房间》的首段,有着清晰的逻辑结构,包括:主题的提出和界定,问题的提出,核心观点,作者的主旨意图,论证手法等等。
一、提出主题“女性与小说”
BUT,YOU MAY SAY, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to with a room of once own? I will try to explain.
首句提出主题“女性与小说”,共情读者,提出疑问:书名与主题有什么关系?激发好奇,“诱导”读者往下读。
二、思考探讨主题内涵
When you asked me to speak about women and fiction,I sat down on the banks of ariver and began to wonder what the words meant.
1、简浅内涵
They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney ; a few more about Jane Austen ; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow ; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford ; a respectful allusion to George Eliot ; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done .
2、深入思考后,各种可能的内涵
But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean , and you may have meant it to mean ,women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might meanwomen and the fiction that is written about them , or it might mean that some how all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light .
首句抛出主题后,紧接着,对主题“女性与小说”,展开思考,作者思考的过程由浅至深。浅表层面,可以简单谈谈著名女性作家的风格、故居、金句,向她们致敬等等,说说俏皮话。
但深入思考,主题可以是关于女性与女性形象、女性与女性创作的小说、女性和描写女性的小说,或者三者兼顾。后文显示三者兼顾其实是作者的意图。
3. 内涵界定,认为自己无法给出定论(提出问题)
But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback . I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand , the first duty of a lecturer– to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantel piece forever.
深入思考发现主题多层次且复杂性,作者认为自己无法给出定论,无法履行通常人们对一个演讲者的期待。这是一个问题,怎么办呢?这是问题的提出。接下来是给出这个问题的解决方法,给出一个更微观层面的想法。
三、给出核心观点,表明论文主旨、意义
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point–a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that , as you will see , leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fictionunsolved . I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions–women and fiction remain , so far as I am concerned , unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial–and any question about sex is that–one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold . One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusionsas they observe the limitations , theprejudices , the idiosyncrasies of the speaker .
这个更微观的想法,其实是作者的核心观点:a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,同时,作者要呈现核心观点的“论证过程”,希望读者做出自己的判断。所以伍尔夫给出的是一个开放性的探讨,希望读者有自己的思考空间,这与书名“a room of one’s own” 相呼应的,因为在英文里room除了房间的意思,也有空间的意思,一个属于自己的思考空间。她鼓励的是独立思考,这也她全书的宗旨,摆脱父权社会给女性的桎梏,做一位经济和心智都自由的独立女性。接下来伍尔夫说明,自己将会采取什么方法,来呈现自己是如何达到这个观点的。
四、表明写作手法
Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact . Therefore I propose , making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist , to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here – how , bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders , I pondered it , and made it work in and out of my daily life . I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence ; Oxbridge is an invention ; so is Fernham ; ‘ I ’is only a convenient term for somebody who hasno real being . Lies will flow from my lips , but there may perhaps be sometruth mixed up with them ; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decidewhether any part of it is worth keeping . If not , you will of course throw thewhole of it into the wastepaper basket and forget all about it .
就此而言,她认为小说包含的真理多于事实,所以她将采取小说的手法,用第一人称叙事的虚构故事,来阐述自己的观点,希望读者自己来寻找自己认可的真理。如果读者发现是满纸荒唐言,那就把书当废纸扔进垃圾桶。
从这里也可以再一次地看到,伍尔夫作为当时名声雀跃的作家,不希望自己被当成权威,其实底层传达的信息还是鼓励女性独立思考判断,等于是再次重申了本书的目的何在。其次也是在引导读者如何来读这本书。
所以,综上所述,不难发现本书的首段逻辑结构是十分清晰的,而且有着严整的学术论文导入部分(introduction)的架构。