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去年年底的时候,BBC有一档很有趣的电视节目,讲的是乔治王时代(1714-1830)的英格兰家庭生活 ,主讲人是UCL的教授,阿曼达·维克利阿姨。
电视节目基于阿姨的新书Behind Closed Doors,算是畅销书了,影响蛮大。除了做电视节目之外,阿姨还在Radio4有广播节目,在推忒上也很活跃,一天不知道要转发多少条才开心。
讲座里引用到文献的时候,或者是档案馆里直接拿出来的土地调查清册、日记本,要么就是数据库里的文献,还是用ipad展示的,一看就是个很潮的人啊。
很推荐国内的出版社引一下这本书,如果和《帕斯顿信札》进行参照阅读,会有很有趣的体验。
这次的讲座其实就是电视节目的缩略版,但听现场跟看节目还是不一样的。
因为是凯伦阿姨主持的讲座,所以原本7镑钱一个人的门票可以省掉,想来就拿这个钱去吃个晚饭好了。
系里学生其实不太乐意花钱和牛人们一起吃饭,毕竟很贵,每次都是20镑的样子,而且如果方向不接近一般说不到几句话,算不得很有价值的投资。
但猫同学只是对阿姨这个人很有兴趣而已,很想了解研究做的那么八卦的阿姨会是怎样的一个人,而且一年出去这么搓几顿,也就当改善伙食了。
有时候我可能也是蛮pointless,觉得好玩的事情就会去做,完全背离平时守财奴的行为逻辑。
大概,只是怕后悔罢了。
因为昨天讲座开始的很晚,下午就先去了系里看书。
整个楼里都是呼啦呼啦的风声,今天外面又是7级大风,声音恐怖。
露西说6点半来和我碰头,没想到5点多就到了。
她从凯伦那里拿到了门票,说,大家都去pub了要不要一起啊。
不明所以,不过整个楼面也就剩下我一个人了,那就去咯。
关机之前,发现阿曼达阿姨刚刚发完最后一条推,还真是addict。
到了pub才知道,原来是一个叫罗瑟琳的姐姐今天最后一天上班,合同到期,明天就要回去格拉斯哥,大家晚上去pub告别。
于是,我就在这个姐姐离开谢村的最后一天,认识了她。
到了酒吧还是和熟悉的几个同学聊了一会儿,过了约莫一个半小时陪劳拉他们去学生会楼里的某个馆子吃饭,我第一次意识到里面的东西好便宜啊,一份巨大的鸡胸肉色拉居然只要2.5,感觉完全是大学餐厅的价格。
原来一直以为学校是没有餐厅的,这样看来非但有,性价比还很高呢~
8过,性价比再高也不如自己做饭好嘛~~最多偶尔来social下。
周五晚上很热闹,大家吃的很开心,我和露西都没有吃,因为约了讲座后面的那一顿,这一顿就省省先了。
到点去了报告厅,之前我都没有去过这个楼的里面,是个教堂。
凯伦阿姨长篇的致辞过后,阿曼达阿姨蹦蹦跳跳的走上了台。
果然presenter做久了,穿衣服就比较在意,打扮的很得体。
电视镜头真的是把人脸放大了好多,阿姨明明很小只,可是电视上看起来就是很强壮的体格啊……
整个讲座还是以她的书和电视节目的内容为蓝本,不过么,代换了一些个案,用的全部是我们郡附近的几个档案馆里的资料,拉近和听众之间的联系。
我的听觉记忆确实比视觉记忆要强啊,虽然电视只听过一遍,但有了重复的句子出现的时候,还是能感觉出来的。
坐定之后,我跟劳拉说,听众里女性比男性要多诶。
扫过N圈之后,发现这是个ethnic background非常没兴趣的讲座。
自己坐在里面,多少还是有点突兀呀。
这里先转一下阿姨布劳格上写的节目简介,省的打字了:
At Home With The Georgians
Post categories: bbc two, history
Amanda Vickery | 10:04 UK time, Wednesday, 1 December 2010
I wrote and presented At Home With The Georgians at the suggestion of Janice Hadlow, controller of BBC Two. She’d heard me give some public lectures on 18th Century private lives and read my new book about homes in Georgian England.
Janice reckoned the combination of characters, stories and interiors would make appealing TV. Or “sex, scandal and soft furnishings” as the trailer promises.
The recognisably modern middle class home was taking shape in the 18th Century when Britannia ruled the waves and became the world’s leading manufacturing power.
The Gorgeous Georgians thought of themselves as ‘a polite and commercial people’, a nation of shop-keepers, consumers, and home-makers who loved to socialise and keep up with the Joneses.
Our towns and cities were rebuilt in the 18th Century according to the geometrical rules of classical Rome – all careful proportion, symmetry and clean lines. The Georgian townhouse is still the estate agent’s dream ticket.
But inside those immaculate terraces there was a riot of up to date consumer goods – flock wallpapers, chintz curtains, silver plate tableware, Axminster carpets, and Wedgwood vases.
The polite threw open their doors to visitors, inviting the world into their parlours to drink the new exotic hot drinks (tea, coffee, chocolate), to gossip, and to admire the shiny new fixtures and fittings. Home improvements and interior decoration were the craze of the age.
The Georgians had this revolutionary new obsession: good taste. It sounds so quaint and suburban today, something that Hyacinth Bucket or Margo Leadbettermight get steamed up about. But ‘taste’ was fresh as paint in the 18th Century.
For the first time, quite ordinary middling people saw their interiors as an expression of personality. Your character, your education, morals, even the state of your marriage could all be judged from look of your home. Would your front room stand up to scrutiny? Would your choices cut the mustard?
The whole subject is so visual and colourful it leant itself to TV. I spent the summer getting behind the scenes in National Trust and English Heritage mansions, as well as the store rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of London.
I loved finding hidden closets, back stairs and servants’ back kitchens and garrets (some of the best are at Erdigg in Wales).
But there is plenty of full-on design glamour too – like the brilliant yellow Chinoiserie of Claydon House (Bucks), the Neoclassical Bling of Syon House (Middlesex), the magical honey colours of Parham (Sussex), the old-fashioned romance of Townend (Cumbria) and the profusion of Chippendale furniture at Nostell Priory (Yorkshire).
But I’m not just interested in the interior lives of the rich. The Georgians came up with clever ideas for keeping up appearances on a middle income.
Slapping up wallpaper was one way to transform the look of a room for a fraction of the cost of textile hangings, wood panelling or stucco.
And if you were strapped for space, why not invest in some ingenious metamorphic furniture (multi-purpose tables, wardrobes that turned into beds) to get the most out of your bedsit?
Temple Newsam in Leeds has a choice collection – the drop-down bed that folds out of a chest is a wicked spring-loaded contraption that nearly crushed me.
Historians are all natural voyeurs itching to know what really went on behind closed doors. I have spent the last six years toiling in deeply unglamorous local record offices reading diaries, letters, accounts books, criminal records and business papers.
I use them to unlock the secrets of home sweet home and peel back the façade of Georgian elegance.
At Home With The Georgians is the story of men as well as women, master of the house as well as domestic goddess.
Only when he married and set up home did a frustrated boy become a fully fledged man. I used the plaintive diaries of half-baked bachelors Dudley Ryder and John Courtney to show how men yearned for domesticity.
They are so artless in their romantic failures and frailties – I found myself blushing for them. Ryder worried that he had bad breath but was too embarrassed to ask his mother. He even fretted that nerves would make him impotent on his wedding night.
The letters of Mary Martin reveal the Georgian ideal wife, loyal, bossy and frisky – a sexy battle-axe. But the papers of Ann Dormer and Gertrude Savile are painful to read – both were victims behind closed doors. They show that a rich man’s house could still be a prison.
Ann Dormer was married to a pathologically tyrannical husband, Robert Dormer of Rousham, in Oxfordshire, who censored her letters, watched her every move and even kicked in the nursery door on the hunt for her.
She enjoyed none of the prestige and power the mistress fully expected to enjoy indoors. So her marriage was a ‘yoke’, a ‘net’ and a ‘cage’. Rousham was never ‘her house’.
Gertrude Savile was a morbidly shy spinster clinging on in her brother’s house Rufford Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, dependent on him for “every gown, sute of ribbins, pair of gloves, every pin and needle”. Even the servants “treated [her] like a hanger on upon the family”.
Constantly made to feel her inferiority, Rufford had no warmth for her “home! Why do I call it home? I have no home”.
There were winners as well as losers at home.
It’s our attitude to house and home which defines the British as a people. Let foreigners keep their apartments, most Brits want their own front door and a patch of garden.
An Englishman’s house is his castle after all. This series gets to the bottom of this very British obsession and recreates the interior lives, hopes and dreams of women and men.
Professor Amanda Vickery is the presenter of At Home With The Georgians and author of Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.
回到讲座,开题的部分是讨论家这个概念,从罗马时代开始,一直都是安全感和私人的代名词,当然,还有句老话是,private is political。
阿姨主要用的资料是单身汉和鳏夫/寡妇的书信,还有土地调查清册,因为这两个群体,一个是即将被强迫推入婚姻和家庭,存在幻想,另外一个刚刚被迫结束婚姻关系,充满怀念。
就英国的例子来说,比之欧洲其他的国家,英国人结婚的年龄要偏早(在乔治王时代),原因是,多数的英国家庭是所谓核心家庭,开始一段婚姻之后,成年人才有了自己的家,才真的进入了成年期,开始要负担家庭的责任。这和东欧南欧很多以扩展家庭为主(亚洲也主要是这种形态)的国家不同,婚姻因此有了独立、安定的意义,也是人真正成年的标志。
正是因为英国的家庭形态的特殊性,影响了所谓的国民性,也诞生了一批专门的形容英国人家庭关系的词汇,这部分阿姨没有细说,但从所谓核心家庭和扩展家庭的概念提出来看,确实是基于英格兰家庭的现实的。
几年前社会史课上昀哥带我们读《帕斯顿信札》的时候就有这种感觉,英国家庭的财产继承关系也好,法律体系也好,家庭中的两性关系和经济地位也好,都和家庭的形态有关。女主人的腰间挂着家里仓库的钥匙,光是这一点,就决定了女性的经济地位。由此,在女性获得普选权之前的几百年,她们其实已经进入了社会经济的运作并且发挥自己的影响力了。
在持家的过程中,男主外女主内也是英国的家庭分工的主要形态,有些单身汉拒绝结婚的原因是,他们还没找到说服自己的理由,让自己开始负责任,成为一家之主。而对女性来说,婚姻也对应着一些所谓“好妻子”的标准,当时有很多写实的画,主题就是模范和谐的家庭的情景,对应的当然还有不必做家务的情妇,看起来真是充满喜感。
对于单身汉来说,邋遢、不懂得照顾自己好像就是人之常情,18世纪的绘画里,如果主题是一群单身汉,多半是衣冠不整,过肥过瘦,没有一个打扮得体。
据说从12世纪到18世纪,伦敦一直就有一种职业,是专门帮单身汉洗衣服的,历史悠久。说到这里,阿姨抖了一个包袱,“除了sex之外,男人还有其他理由一直需要女人,并给她们钱。”
确切说阿姨一路都在抖包袱,笑料很多,8过很多是纯基于文本的,所以脱离细节之后,我也还原不出来了。
单身当然也是很可怜的一种状态,起码再乔治王的时代是这样的。单身总被看做是生活不稳定的体现,除了没有人洗衣服的单身汉,还有每天生活在对丈夫的思念里的寡妇,需要丈夫不停托梦才能摆脱忧伤,又或者是大半夜在阁楼里给孩子们洗衣服的鳏夫,都是可怜人的形象,或许也是要逼着这些人进入或者重新进入婚姻的原因。
至于对单身女性的评价就处在两极,似乎嫁不出去会被认为很可怜,起码生活少了很多意义和乐趣,但也有例外。
这里抖的包袱就是,没钱的单身女人就像老妈子,但有钱的单身富家女还是过的逍遥自在。
据说当时的富家女里有的坐拥几座煤矿和庄园,日子十分好过也十分闲适,于是会很喜欢投资茶壶,因为到了下午茶时间给人斟茶的时候,女子们能找到控制某个领域的良好感觉。独身富家女的社交也以下午茶为中心来展开,有种交通被命名为tea party traffic,主要的行为人就是这群有钱有闲的独身女性。
这些女性到了一定的年纪以后,除了有钱,也有足够的私人空间和自我。
当然,也不是所有进入婚姻的人都能得到幸福,阿姨还说到一些有点神经质的妻子们的书信,据说有个老婆对她老公爱慕到发狂,认为老公无所不能,能监视到她出门走的每一步,多走一步多滞留一下下都会被发现,觉得在家就跟被收监一样,老公当然也被神经质的老婆弄的很痛苦。
还有些是离婚案,老公老婆各自表述相去甚远,但据说那个时候都会比较偏帮老婆。
阿姨当然没有少引用伍尔夫和奥斯丁的东西,后来还顺便扯到了男性和女性之间不同的消费习惯之类,大家都很有共鸣。
有个笑点是,她说,不是真的只有女人在买东西这件事上花掉大把的时间,男人对于自己喜欢的东西也是会用掉无数时间的,差别只是东西不同。
讲座结束之后,就是签名活动,猫同学没有先买一本书给阿曼达阿姨签,现场的书又比amazon上贵了好多,作罢。
反正见过真人就好了啦~我还是等着书降到5胖子以下的时候好了。
等阿姨签售完毕之后,一行人就跑去馆子吃饭。
阿姨已经以迅雷不及掩耳盗铃之势把漂亮的高跟鞋换成了平底高邦靴子,真是有备而来的说~
逛到吃饭的地方之后,超热闹,Friday night到处人声鼎沸。
一路上都在和罗瑟琳聊天,在馆子里坐定后,就和她还有詹姆斯聊天。
大家八了很多事情,除了系里的事情,就是跟买东西有关的。
阿姨好能吃,好能说,好活泼,激情派啊。
她还超级nice的跟露西谈了很多露西的论文,露西好感动。
听詹姆斯说,kindle超好用,夸的天花乱坠,并将之与ipad和iphone做纵横比较。
查尔斯比较欢乐地对网购作出了一句评价:网购不是search,是research。
在说到在SNS网站上发状态和回复,或者是写推发消息的时候,貌似不少学者都有文字正确强迫症。
原来不止我一个人会去检查英文发言的拼写和语法啊……
说着说着就说到了受众的问题,譬如在给特定的人发短信的时候一定会注意拼写和语法,也算是社交礼仪的一部分了。
詹姆斯还说要写学术博客,这方面英国学者倒是落伍的比较多。
酒过N巡,大家吃吃喝喝的都很满足,那家东东也确实不错吃,意大利菜~
这种叉子往盘子里叉,把菜传来传去的吃法,倒是第一次碰到。
阿姨半路还拿出红色外壳的四凤(iphone4),把上面的东西翻出来给凯伦阿姨看,两个人笑的四仰八叉的。
有意思的是,我很少对讲座人或者特定的学者进行性别上的定位,但阿曼达阿姨确实让人觉得有非常强大的女性气质,不是妖冶,不是妩媚,不是柔弱,而是一种豪放的、特立独行的阴性气质。
学术圈确实是个男人的世界,见惯了有阳性气质的女性学者之后,阿曼达这种流露着阴性气质的学者,能算是一道风景了。
凯伦阿姨见我没什么机会插话跟阿曼达说话,临走前问我要不要去和阿曼达说几句。
也是个细心的阿姨啊,猫同学小感动。
自知和阿姨的研究没有什么交集,和露西的情况大不一样,所以我也确实没挤进讨论里说很多话,尽管随便扯谈在餐厅和酒吧的气氛里都不算是失礼的。
我跟阿姨说,很奇怪,虽然她谈的是英国的个案,但却让我这个文化背景很不同的人有很多共鸣,有些说法换个语境来看,譬如中国譬如意大利,或许也有能成立的部分。
阿姨说,很可惜,我希望自己真的了解中国的历史,但也很高兴,你告诉了我这些。
对于只做英国史,没有其他语言学习背景的学者来说,通常是不了解外面的世界的。
阿曼达很坦白也很真诚,这点猫同学还是很欣赏滴。
回来的路上大风大雨,和法语系一个老师还有露西聊着一路走回来,果然,这个老师认得提摩(我老板)啊,说他超级爱提问。
回来之后和露西又聊了一会儿,今天早晨发现两个回国的室友都回来了。
下周就开学了呢~~又要开始忙啦。
今天早晨上推逛的时候,看到阿姨还在忙着更新。
虽然昨天吃饭的时候,被系里老师们的用功吓到,很怀疑自己到底多大程度上真的愿意进入这个行当和这样的生活,过这些忙的没黑夜没白天的日子。
但看到阿姨这样幸福而欢乐地与自己的研究和兴趣融为一体,还是觉得,终究有些人在这个行当里找到了很美好的自我,真是幸运呢。





















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