新視野大學(xué)英語(yǔ)讀寫(xiě)教程第四冊(cè)u(píng)nit1-ab-Section A and Section B

 (The Temptation of a Respectable Woman)

Mrs.Baroda was a little annoyed to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.

 

Gouvernail's quiet personality puzzled Mrs.Baroda. After a few days with him, she could understand him no better than at first. She left her husband and his guest, for the most part, alone together, only to find that Gouvernail hardly noticed her absence. Then she imposed her company upon him, accompanying him in his idle walks to the mill to press her attempt to penetrate the silence in which he had unconsciously covered himself. But it hardly worked.

 

"When is he going — your friend?" she one day asked her husband. "For my part, I find him a terrible nuisance."

 

"Not for a week yet, dear. I can't understand; he gives you no trouble."

 

"No. I should like him better if he did — if he were more like others, and I had to plan somewhat for his comfort and enjoyment."

 

Gaston pulled the sleeve of his wife's dress, gathered his arms around her waist and looked merrily into her troubled eyes.

 

"You are full of surprises," he said to her. "Even I can never count upon how you are going to act under given conditions. Here you are," he went on, "taking poor Gouvernail seriously and making a fuss about him, the last thing he would desire or expect."

 

"Fuss!" she hotly replied. "Nonsense! How can you say such a thing! Fuss, indeed! But, you know, you said he was clever."

 

"So he is. But the poor fellow is run down by too much work now. That's why I asked him here to take a rest."

 

"You used to say he was a man of wit," she said, still annoyed. "I expected him to be interesting, at least. I'm going to the city in the morning to have my spring dresses fitted. Let me know when Mr.Gouvernail is gone; until that time I shall be at my aunt's house."

 

That night she went and sat alone upon a bench that stood beneath an oak tree at the edge of the walk. She had never known her thoughts to be so confused; like the bats now above her, her thoughts quickly flew this way and that. She could gather nothing from them but the feeling of a distinct necessity to leave her home in the next morning.

 

Mrs.Baroda heard footsteps coming from the direction of the barn; she knew it was Gouvernail. She hoped to remain unnoticed, but her white gown revealed her to him. He seated himself upon the bench beside her, without a suspicion that she might object to his presence.

 

"Your husband told me to bring this to you, Mrs.Baroda," he said, handing her a length of sheer white fabric with which she sometimes covered her head and shoulders. She accepted it from him and let it lie in her lap.

 

He made some routine observations upon the unhealthy effect of the night breeze at that season. Then as his gaze reached out into the darkness, he began to talk.

 

Gouvernail was in no sense a shy man. His periods of silence were not his basic nature, but the result of moods. When he was sitting there beside Mrs.Baroda, his silence melted for the time.

 

He talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating voice that was not unpleasant to hear. He talked of the old college days when he and Gaston had been best friends, of the days of keen ambitions and large intentions. Now, all there was left with him was a desire to be permitted to exist, with now and then a little breath of genuine life, such as he was breathing now.

 

Her mind only vaguely grasped what he was saying. His words became a meaningless succession of verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives; she only drank in the tones of his voice. She wanted to reach out her hand in the darkness and touch him — which she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman.

 

The stronger the desire grew to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she move away from him. As soon as she could do so without an appearance of being rude, she pretended to yawn, rose, and left him there alone.

 

Mrs.Baroda was greatly tempted that night to tell her husband — who was also her friend — of this foolishness that had seized her. But she did not yield to the temptation. Besides being an upright and respectable woman she was also a very sensible one.

 

When Gaston arose the next morning, his wife had already departed, without even saying farewell. A porter had carried her trunk to the station and she had taken an early morning train to the city. She did not return until Gouvernail was gone from under her roof.

 

There was some talk of having him back during the summer that followed. That is, Gaston greatly desired it; but this desire yielded to his honorable wife's vigorous opposition.

 

However, before the year ended, she proposed, wholly from herself, to have Gouvernail visit them again. Her husband was surprised and delighted with the suggestion coming from her.

 

"I am glad, my dear, to know that you have finally overcome your dislike for him; truly he did not deserve it."

 

"Oh," she told him, laughingly, after pressing a long, tender kiss upon his lips, "I have overcome everything! You will see. This time I shall be very nice to him."

(Words: 927)

The Obligations and Responsibilities to Marriage

I had given a talk on family change one night. At dinner afterwards I was subjected to a hostile quizzing by a group of women in their thirties who claimed that my whole analysis ignored the most basic change of all. They took offense to my statement that a family consists of a husband, a wife and children, they said. They, as a group of single women,

 

were best friends, supported one another, and defined one another as "family". Marriage and having kids were now irrelevant, and in their opinion, that was the most basic social change. Looking back on it, I find they were right, but this rising tide of change is itself the problem.

 

Family is, if anything, the link between generations, the center of child rearing and cultural transmission. It's not just a " big stadium " where everyone can enjoy the show. Both marriage and family involve long-term obligations and responsibility for shared care, not just the search of happiness, that hollow goal of the modern age.

 

It seems that love has got out of hand. The modern nuclear family was rooted in the desire to live happily in a more equal marriage, where the raising of children and the investment of both parents in the children's lives were guaranteed by bonds of friendship between the parents, which were based on rational love.

 

There is a natural tendency for any relationship based on voluntary affection to come apart, but marriage provides the glue needed to keep a couple together by providing ties of family, in conjunction with the obligations of parents to children. What people call the new Love Family, unfortunately, has replaced a permanent relationship with a new ideal of unlimited choice.

 

We can now not only choose our marriage partner, we also can divorce that partner at will, subject children to our own adult worship of happiness, and deny the other parent any regular contact with their children. We can even, if we want, interpret the term "family" to include people who are not related to us either by blood or marriage — a set of close friends who support one another, like the women I mentioned above. Throw in the faithful dog if you like. Family is whatever we want it to be.

 

The trouble is, such an elastic classification ignores the problem of children and the wider problem of caring for others. If marriage exists only as a romantic relationship that can be ended at will, and family exists only by virtue of bonds of affection, both marriage and family come second to the search for love.

 

Under this scheme, individuals attempt to march towards maximum happiness as they move through a procession of more or less satisfying romantic relationships. Children, relatives, and the ties of mutual obligation and care are left behind, with no place to go. Independent adults may find this okay.

 

But dependent children can't just be left behind when it's time to move on to a new relationship: they demand sacrifice and unselfishness, a long-term investment of the parents' time and money. The whole point of marriage is that it imposes clear obligations, not just the right to pursue your own happiness.

 

And the main obligation is to provide both emotional and practical care for children. The glory of burning passion may well have faded, and your love for your wife or husband may not be as exciting or satisfying as it once was, but going off in search of another love will not help your children.

 

The Love Family is either too casual for children — your friends have no obligation to provide for them — or it's too unstable, with adults moving on if the relationship no longer answers their search for perfect happiness. What divorce does is to damage children, making them into refugees as the people in their lives scatter in all directions.

 

I am aware of the complex research concerning the effects of divorce on children and I acknowledge that some children are better off without a violent father, a family income wasted on drinking or gambling, or unhappy parents taking out their anger on everyone in the family.

 

But divorce destroys the stability, security, and continuity that children need: it results in poverty for many women and children; it damages the natural link between father and children and replaces it with one of regulated, arranged visits; it removes the father from the household, the only sensible basis for a working parental relationship; it places a

 

terrible strain on the mother-child bond by saddling the mother with the double burden of playing the role of both mother and father; and it often interrupts the child's schooling, friendships and neighborhood contacts, those beginnings of trust and social relationships needed to mold a child into a healthy member of society.

 

It even weakens the child's links with grandparents and other family (usually on the father's side), and few lovers are willing to take on real responsibility for the welfare of another person's child. Love is not enough, compared with the presence and support of both a mother and a father. Nor,

 

I would venture to suggest, is love enough to sustain a marriage relationship. The Love Family, in the end, doesn't have to make concessions for children and relatives. And complete freedom will finally become our chain, leaving us with no choice but to live in loneliness, with no one who need to care about us.