失宠的婚姻？探寻中印女性的情爱生活

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.

很少会有哪个新婚人士能给出比夏洛蒂·勃朗特对婚姻更尖刻的评价。“一个女人成为妻子，是一件庄严、奇怪又危险的事情，”她在给朋友的信中写道——居然还是刚刚渡完蜜月的朋友。

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?

最近好些书都采用了她的观点，来重新看待婚姻以及它如何使女人受益(或者基本就不受益)，还有我们对求爱和亲密的观点是如何演化的，比如丽贝卡·崔斯特(Rebecca Traister)写了《所有单身的女士们》(All the Single Ladies)，莫伊拉·韦格尔(Moira Weigel)写了《爱的劳动》(Labor of Love)，凯特·博利克(Kate Bolick)写了《不婚女子》(Spinster)，埃米莉·维特(Emily Witt)写了《未来性爱》(Future Sex)。这些书对塑造了我们亲密关系的公众压力持有一种怀疑的浓厚兴趣。大多数时候，他们都在苦苦思索着一个问题：为什么这项长久以来被视为值得拥有，甚至是一项必须的习俗，会在全世界渐渐失宠?

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.)

在同样的好奇心驱使下，两本新书——《中国剩女》(Leftover in China)和《心灵是波动的大海》(The Heart Is a Shifting Sea)——分别把目光转向了中国和印度，评估了在高速的经济增长、社会变化，以及女性在经济越来越独立状况下的婚姻状况。(剧透：情况不妙。)

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.

两本书采用了相反的途径。较薄的那本《中国剩女》审视了“剩女”现象，也就是受过高等教育、有抱负，却找不到另一半的女性，至少据说是这样。本书作者、《经济学人》(The Economist)记者罗丝安·莱克(Roseann Lake)以一种令人眼花缭乱的节奏，描绘了中国近几代女性的快速崛起。

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.

莱克在历史中穿行。1949年，中国有75%的妇女都是文盲。今天，中国是世界女性文盲比例最低的国家之一——也是白手起家的女亿万富翁比例最高的国家。她解释说，严格的独生子女政策意味着家庭要把资源都倾注在他们唯一的孩子身上，即使是个女孩(还得逃过选择性别的堕胎)。这些女孩长成了有成就、可惜单身的女性。她们在专业上的成就远远超过了男性，以至于找不到合适的伴侣。

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.

是这样吗?还是她们的抱负本身导致她们没有人喜欢?或者是因为约会的概念在中国过于新奇，以至于男性和女性不知道如何与对方交谈?莱克用一种混乱的方式触及了所有这些想法。她没有做的，是给中国女性足够的空间，让她们解释自己的选择和欲望。这样的情况下，在这本书中间的一个一闪即过的场景里，一幅更令人好奇的画面浮现了出来。一家约会网站的女创始人告诉作者：“大多数这些所谓的‘剩女’都自愿选择了她们的生活方式。”莱克没怎么思考这句话的含义——她怎么会呢?这太不符合她的故事了，她的叙述牢牢地把她笔端的对象刻画成了受害者，而非自主行动的人。

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《心灵是波动的大海》(The Heart Is a Shifting Sea)里，美国公共电视新闻时间(PBS NewsHour)的记者伊丽莎白·弗洛克(Elizabeth Flock)提供了一份研究报告，莱克有多草率，这份研究就有多耐心和细致。她花了近十年时间跟随三名孟买的夫妇：一对马尔瓦印度教徒，一对穆斯林，还有一对泰米尔婆罗门。跟凯瑟琳·博(Katherine Boo)和艾德里安·妮可·勒布朗(Adrian Nicole LeBlanc)的方式一样，弗洛克把自己从叙述中隐去，让我们进入她的写作对象的生活，亲眼见证那些几乎难以让人承受的亲密时刻。

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.

每一种成年的痛苦也以惊人的直率得以呈现——每一次流产，每一项愚蠢的投资，每一种在性方面的不安全感。这些夫妻把他们生活的全部交给了作者;我们可以翻阅他们的日记片段，他们和情人之间的短信，他们与伴侣充满愤恨的Gchat[谷歌的及时信息传输服务——译注]对话内容。因此，我们能了解关于这些夫妻的一切，至少看上去如此：他们喜欢如何给自己的食物放盐，如何给头发分缝，他们看色情作品的习惯和偏好，还有他们私密的童年创伤。

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.

除了窥视的乐趣(你能大饱眼福)之外，我们有一种走进每个人物的意识世界的感觉。我们个人生活中的很多事都感觉像是无可奈何的即兴表演，但弗洛克揭示了我们从小说、电视、家庭传承的智慧和宗教中获得的用来参考的脚本。这些夫妻在宝莱坞和詹姆斯·邦德(James Bond)电影、巴基斯坦肥皂剧、杰弗里·尤金尼德斯(Jeffrey Eugenides)和卡马拉·达斯(Kamala Das)的作品中找到了他们的故事与欲望的坐标。一名女性在为她的不忠进行辩护时告诉自己，克利须那神(Krishna)最喜爱的伴侣罗陀(Radha)是一名已婚妇女。另一个人在与一名来自不同宗教背景的男性相爱时，在阿兰达蒂·洛伊(Arundhati Roy)的《微物之神》(The God of Small Things)中找到了安慰，这本小说讲述了跨种姓的爱情故事。

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.

已经有一些书籍探索了印度冉冉升起的中产阶级的渴望，其中包括悉达多德·德布(Siddhartha Deb)精彩的《美丽与诅咒》(The Beautiful and the Damned)，以及时报记者索米尼·森古塔(Somini Sengupta)所著的《因果的终结》(The End of Karma)。让弗洛克的方式有所不同的是，她有兴趣和途径去进入那些面临特殊限制的已婚妇女的内心生活：离婚很难，并且会背上不好的名声，而根据《印度教少数民族与监护法》(Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act)，父亲被认为是任何五岁以上儿童的天然监护人。

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.

婚姻正在改变，因为女性正在发生改变——在这一点上，《中国剩女》和《心灵是波动的大海》达成了一致。如莱克所写的那样，我们所见到的是一个在崭新的全球叙述里的主人公。弗洛克把她的对象，尤其是那些女性称为“浪漫主义者和规则打破者”。“她们似乎对陈旧的中产道德感到厌倦。当既有的情爱规则不适应她们的生活，她们就制定新的规则。”她们也因此付出代价。