the fall river axe murders解析

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2024年7月27日发(作者：)

The Fall River Axe Murders

Angela Carter, 1940-1992, British writer

故事梗概：一个女孩lizzie,母亲在她两岁的时候去世了，父亲给她找了后妈。他爸爸是吝啬

鬼，但是舍得给她花钱，但是也把财产百分之五十给了后妈。她的后妈是个贪吃鬼。她特别

喜欢养鸽子，因为鸽子会温柔的对待她。可是父亲的神经受不了鸽子的叫声，一天他把鸽子

用小短斧都杀了。继母知道后，想把这些鸽子做成馅饼。保姆说这是lizzie心爱的鸽子啊，

怎么能吃。lizzie回来后发现了惨状。在她的心里，是继母想吃鸽子，父亲把鸽子都杀了。

于是她拿起短斧，看了四十斧父亲，四十一斧继母。

词汇

viscera ['vɪs(ə)rə] 内脏

prickly heat 痱子

sycophant ['sɪkəfænt] 谄媚者；奉承者

scant [skænt] 不足的

unimpeachable 无可指摘的，无可怀疑的

emblematic [,ɛmblə'mætɪk] 象征的；可当标志的

prolegomena [,prolɛ'gɑmɪnə] 前言，绪论

forlorn hopes [fɚ'lɔrn] 敢死队，孤注一掷

dandruff ['dændrʌf] 头皮屑

redolent ['rɛdələnt] 芬芳的

matrimonial [,mætrɪ'monɪəl] 婚姻的

distorting mirror 哈哈镜

forget-me-not 勿忘我

burgle 'bɜːg(ə)l] 盗窃

bilk [bɪlk] 欺骗

crowbar ['krobɑr] 撬棍

scullery ['skʌləri] 碗碟洗涤处

somnambulist [səm'næmbjʊlɪst] 梦游者

culprit 犯人

the grand tour 英国大学生毕业前的大陆旅行，上流社会子弟作为毕业的最后一部分

orgy ['ɔːdʒɪ] 狂欢，放荡

forthwith [fɔːθ'wɪθ; -ð] 立即

wicker basket 柳条篮

parsimony ['pɑːsɪmənɪ] 吝啬，节俭

miser ['maɪzə] 守财奴，吝啬鬼

morose [mə'rəʊs] 郁闷的，孤僻的

grind the face of 压榨

spindle 纺锤

war surplus 军用剩余物资

foreclosure [fɔː'kləʊʒə] 取消抵押品赎回权

usury ['juːʒ(ə)rɪ] 高利贷

privy ['prɪvɪ] 私人的，不公开的，秘密参与的

（n）厕所，又利害关系的

foetus ['fiːtəs] 胎儿

eschew [ɪs'tʃuː; es-] 避免，避开，避远

avarice ['æv(ə)rɪs] 贪婪

molasses [mə'læsɪz] 糖蜜，糖浆

queasy ['kwiːzɪ] 呕吐的，不稳定的

limp adj.柔软的，无力的；软弱的

v.

跛行，一拐一拐地走；缓慢费力地前进

sewer 裁缝师，下水道，阴沟

deliriously [dɪ'lɪrɪəsli] 谵妄地；神志失常地；极其兴奋地

ruck up 变皱

effete 衰老的，疲惫的

abiding adj. 持久的，永久的；不变的

pent-up 被压抑的；幽闭的

deed 立契转让

scrupulosity [,skru:pju'lɔsiti] 慎重，疑虑

solicitously [sə'lisitəsli] 热心的，热切的

remorselessly 无悔意的，冷酷的

figment 虚构的事物，臆造的事物

fractious 易怒的，倔强的

auspicious ['ɔːspɪsɪz] 赞助；保护；预兆

indigent ['ɪndɪdʒ(ə)nt] 贫困的

circumspect 细心的，周到的；慎重的

wistful 渴望的，沉思的，默想的

play ducks and drakes with 挥霍，浪费

on the dot 准时

secrete [sɪ'kriːt] 藏匿，分泌

oblivious 忘记的

clairvoyant [kleə'vɒɪənt] 千里眼，有洞察力的人

文中例句

… a whalebone corset that took her viscera in a stern hand and squeezed them very tightly.

In a serge suit, one look at which would be enough to bring you out in prickly heat.

The Borden house stands by itself with a few scant feet of yard on either side.（换算：

1

Foot 英尺=12 Inches 英寸=0.3048 Metre 米/1 Yard 码=3 Feet 英尺=0.9114 Metre 米

）

Even though his presence in the doomed house is historically unimpeachable, the

colouring of this domestic apocalypse must be crude

The City Hall clock whirrs and sputters the prolegomena to the first stroke of six and

Bridget's alarm clock gives a sympathetic skip and click as the minute-hand stutters on

the hour.

Although Bridget left the door open a crack in forlorn hopes of coaxing a draught into the

room, all the spent heat of the previous day has packed itself tightly into her attic.

A dandruff of spent whitewash flakes from the ceiling where a fly drearily whines.

The house is thickly redolent of sleep, that sweetish, clinging smell.

Stillness on the staircase. Stillness pressing against the blinds. Stillness, mortal stillness in

the room below, where Master and Mistress share the matrimonial bed.

A dresser with another distorting mirror; no mirror in this house does not take your face

and twist it.

The Bordens' custom of locking all the doors, inside and outside, when the house was

burgled.

He had loaded her into a trap and set out for the farm they owned at Swansea to ensure

his tenant was not bilking him

But it would have taken a crowbar to penetrate adequately the safe

…then scrawled潦草的写，乱涂 an obscenity淫秽 or two on the parlour window with

the cake of soap that lived beside the scullery sink

Sometimes they thought the culprit might very well have been one of the mill-hands

fresh from saucy俏丽的，漂亮的，活泼的 Lancashire across the ocean

…for it was after the burglary he sent her on the grand tour.

The burglary awakened Old Borden to the evanescent nature of private property. He

thereafter undertook an orgy of investment.

He would forthwith invest his surplus in good brick and mortar实体, for who can make

away with an office block?

There were Bordens and Bordens and he was the son of a man who sold fresh fish in a

wicker basket from house to house to house.

Old Borden's parsimony was bred of poverty but learned to thrive best on property, for

thrift has a different meaning for the poor; they get no joy of it, it is stark necessity to

them.

Whoever heard of a penniless miser?

Morose and gaunt, this self-made man is one of few pleasures. His vocation is capital

accumulation.

What is his hobby?

Why, grinding the faces of the poor.

In the city of spindles, few made old bones

lot of coffins bought cheap as Civil War surplus!

Foreclosures and evictions逐出，赶出 are meat and drink to him.

He loves nothing better than a little usury

As soon as the daily newspapers are done with, he rips them up in geometric squares

and stores them in the cellar privy so that they all can wipe their arses with them.

His spine is like an iron rod, forged, not born, impossible to imagine that spine of Old

Borden's curled up in the womb in the big C of the foetus

she is satisfied to stick to simple gluttony and she eschews all overtones（泛音；暗示，

寓意；弦外之音） of the sensuality of indulgence.

but he knows his avarice is no offence because he never spends any money and she

knows she is not greedy because the grub（蛆，幼虫，食物） she shovels down gives her

dyspepsia消化不良.

But when she tackles a sticky brownie, oozing chocolate, then she feels a queasy sense

of having gone almost too far, that sin might be just around the corner if her stomach did

not immediately palpitate（发抖，悸动，跳动） like a guilty conscience.

Her flannel nightdress is cut on the same lines as his nightshirt except for the limp

flannel frill round the neck.

It is fit to make a sewer faint.

She threw back the top sheet and her window is wide open but there is no breeze,

outside, this morning, to shiver deliriously the screen.

The hem of her nightdress is rucked up above her knees because she is a restless sleeper.

Since she would always be known as "Lizzie", so her father reasoned, why burden her

with the effete and fancy prolongation of "Elizabeth"?

Now she is two-and-thirty and yet the memory of that mother she cannot remember

remains an abiding source of grief: "If mother had lived, everything would have been

different."

Emma, who lavished the pent-up treasures of a New England spinster's老姑娘，未婚女

人 heart upon the little thing?

She used to call her stepmother "mother", as duty bade, but, after a quarrel about

money after her father deeded half a slum property to her stepmother five years before,

Lizzie always, with cool scrupulosity, spoke of "Mrs Borden" when she was forced to

speak of her, and called her "Mrs Borden" to her face, too.

It must have been something you have eaten. What was yesterday's supper?" solicitously

queried kind Miss Russell.

"There have been threats," Lizzie pursued remorselessly, keeping her eyes on her

nervous fingertips. "So many people, you understand, dislike father."

Miss Russell knew, she just knew, this dark man was a figment of Lizzie's imagination.

Oh, Lizzie, it is the dreadful summer, the heat, the intolerable heat that's put us all out of

sorts, makes us fractious and nervous

The Fruit and Flower Mission, under whose auspices she visits the indigent old in

hospital with gifts;

Of this journey she retained only the most circumspect of souvenirs, that madonna, that

Mona Lisa, reproductions of objects of art consecrated by a universal approval of taste.

Wistfully: "When I was in Florence. .

can have anything she wants, play ducks and drakes with her father's silver dollars if it so

pleases her.

He pays all her dressmakers'（裁缝） bills on the dot and how she loves to dress up fine!

It secretes mystery

…oblivious of忘记，不注意 that camera in whose direction she obscurely 费解的smiles,

so that it would not surprise you to learn that she is blind.

she sees herself with blind, clairvoyant eyes, as though she were another person.

美文欣赏

If we have largely forgotten the physical discomforts of the itching, oppressive garments

of the past and the corrosive effects of perpetual physical discomfort on the nerves, then

we have mercifully forgotten, too, the smells of the past, the domestic odours --

ill-washed flesh; infrequently changed underwear; chamber-pots; slop-pails; inadequately

plumbed privies; rotting food; unattended teeth; and the streets are no fresher than indoors,

the omnipresent acridity of horse piss and dung, drains, sudden stench of old death from

butchers' shops, the amniotic horror of the fishmonger.

You would drench your handkerchief with cologne and press it to your nose. You would

splash yourself with parma violet so that the reek of fleshly decay you always carried

with you was overlaid by that of the embalming parlour. You would abhor the air you

breathed.

Here is a carpet splashed with vigorous flowers, even if the carpet is of the cheap and

cheerful variety; there are mauve淡紫色, ochre赭色 and harsh cerise樱桃色 flowers

on the wallpaper, even though the wallpaper was old when the Bordens arrived in the

house.

（对于吝啬鬼的描写）When he was an undertaker, no! -- it was not true he cut the feet

off corpses to fit into a job lot of coffins bought cheap as Civil War surplus! That was a

rumour put about by his enemies! With the profits from his coffins, he bought up a

tenement or two and made fresh profit off the living. He bought shares in the mills. Then

he invested in a bank or two, so that now he makes a profit on money itself, which is the

purest form of profit of all. Foreclosures and evictions are meat and drink to him. He

loves nothing better than a little usury. He is halfway on the road to his first million. At

night, to save the kerosene, he sits in lampless dark. He waters the pear trees with his

urine; waste not, want not. As soon as the daily newspapers are done with, he rips them

up in geometric squares and stores them in the cellar privy so that they all can wipe their

arses with them. He mourns the loss of the good organic waste that flushes down the

WC. He would like to charge the very cockroaches in the kitchen rent. And yet he has not

grown fat on all this; the pure flame of his passion has melted off his flesh, his skin sticks

to his bones out of sheer parsimony. Perhaps it is from his first profession that he has

acquired his bearing, for he walks with the stately dignity of a hearse.

he wears a gold ring, not a wedding ring but a high-school ring, a singular trinket for a

fabulously misanthropic miser. His youngest daughter gave it to him when she left school

and asked him to wear it, always, and so he always does, and will wear it to the grave to

which she is going to send him later in the morning of this combustible day.

He is a miser, while she is a glutton, a solitary eater

Her light, dry, reddish hair, crackling with static, slipping loose from the night-time plait,

crisps and stutters over the square pillow at which she clutches as she sprawls on her

stomach, having rested her cheek on the starched pillowcase for coolness' sake at some

earlier hour.

Her bare feet twitch a little, like those of a dog dreaming of rabbits.

If she came back with a bag full of memories stamped "Never to be Forgotten", she put

the bag away under the bed on which she had dreamed of the world before she set out

to see it and on which, at home again, she continued to dream, the dream having been

transformed not into lived experience but into memory, which is only another kind of

dreaming.

2016年6月10日星期五

本文标签： 鸽子父亲后妈毕业费力