It seems to me there are two aspects to women.There is the demure and the dauntless.
据我看来女人有两种类型，即矜持端庄型和勇敢无畏型。
Men have loved to dwell, in fiction at least, on the demure maiden whose inevitable reply is: Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir! The demure maiden, the demure spouse, the demure mother -this is still the ideal. A few maidens, mistresses and mothers are demure. A few pretend to be. But the vast majority are not. And they don't pretend to be. We don't expect a girl skilfully driving her car to be demure, we expect her to be dauntless. What good would demure and maidenly Members of Parliament be, inevitably responding: Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir! -Though of course there are masculine members of that kidney. -And a demure telephone girl? Or even a demure stenographer? Demureness, to be sure, is outwardly becoming, it is an outward mark of femininity, like bobbed hair. But it goes with inward dauntlessness. The girl who has got to make her way in life has got to be dauntless, and if she has a pretty, demure manner with it, then luck girl. She kills two birds with two stones.
男人爱恋温驯的女孩子，至少在小说中是如此，因为她总爱回答：噢，是的，亲爱的先生，如果你愿意！矜持端庄的女孩子、妻子、母亲——这依然是理想中的女性。有些女孩子、家庭主妇和母亲是矜持端庄的，有些是故作如此，但大部分都不是，她们也不假装是。我们希望一个女孩子熟练驾驶汽车时不要太矜持端庄，而应是大胆无畏的。如果议会的议员是个温驯淑女，并总是回答：“噢，是的，亲爱的先生，如果你愿意！”——当然尽管也有那种性格的男议员。——如果接线女孩是温驯娴静的，或甚至速记员是温驯娴静的，那会有什么好处呢？温柔谦卑当然在外表上很吸引人，它是女性气质的外部特征，就如同女人剪的短发一样。但外表的矜持端庄与内心的勇敢无畏却是并存的。为生计所打拼的女孩子不得不勇敢无畏，如果她举止又温驯娴淑，那她就是个幸运的女孩。她两方面都很成功。
With the two kinds of femininity go two kinds of confidence: There are the women who are cocksure, and the women who are hensure. A really up-to-date woman is a cocksure woman. She doesn't have a doubt nor a qualm. She is the modern type. Whereas the old-fashioned demure woman was sure as a hen is sure, that is, without knowing anything about it. She went quietly and busily clucking around, laying the eggs and mothering the chickens in a kind of anxious dream that still was full of sureness. But not mental sureness. Her sureness was a physical condition, very soothing, but a condition out of which she could easily be startled or frightened.
It is quite amusing to see the two kinds of sureness in chickens. The cockerel is, naturally, cocksure. He crows because he is certain it is day. Then the hen peeps out from under her wing. He marches to the door of the henhouse and pokes out his head assertively: Ah ha! daylight, of course, just as I said! -and he majestically steps down the chicken ladder towards terra firma, knowing that the hens will step cautiously after him, drawn by his confidence. So after him, cautiously, step the hens. He crows again: Ha-ha! here we are! -It is indisputable, and the hens accept it entirely. He marches towards the house. From the house a person ought to appear, scattering corn. Why does the person not appear? The cock will see to it. He is cocksure. He gives a loud crow in the doorway, and the person appears. The hens are suitably impressed but immediately devote all their henny consciousness to the scattered corn, pecking absorbedly, while the cock runs and fusses, cocksure that he is responsible for it all.
So the day goes on. The cock finds a tit-bit, and loudly calls the hens. They scuffle up in henny surety, and gobble the tit-bit. But when they find a juicy morsel for themselves, they devour it in silence, hensure. Unless, of course, there are little chicks, when they most anxiously call the brood. But in her own dim surety, the hen is really much surer than the cock, in a different way. She marches off to lay her egg, she secures obstinately the nest she wants, she lays her egg at last, then steps forth again with prancing confidence, and gives that most assured of all sounds, the hensure cackle of a bird who has laid her egg. The cock, who is never so sure about anything as the hen is about the egg she has laid, immediately starts to cackle like the female of his species. He is pining to be hensure, for hensure is so much surer than cocksure.
Nevertheless, cocksure is boss. When the chicken-hawk appears in the sky, loud are the cockerel's calls of alarm. Then the hens scuffle under the verandah, the cock ruffles his feathers on guard. The hens are numb with fear, they say: Alas, there is no health in us! How wonderful to be a cock so bold! -And they huddle, numbed. But their very numbness is hensurety.
Just as the cock can cackle, however, as if he had laid the egg, so can the hen bird crow. She can more or less assume his cocksureness. And yet she is never so easy, cocksure, as she used to be when she was hensure. Cocksure, she is cocksure, but uneasy. Hensure, she trembles, but is easy.
母鸡也能喔喔叫的，就如同公鸡也能咯咯叫着像他生了蛋一样。母鸡可以多多少少地装出公鸡的自信。但她表现出公鸡般自信时，却不如温驯谦卑时感到自在。她的确很自信，但不自在。在她瑟瑟发抖时表现出温驯谦卑时，却感觉很舒服。
It seems to me just the same in the vast human farmyard. Only nowadays all the cocks are cackling and pretending to lay eggs, and all the hens are crowing and pretending to call the sun out of bed. If women today are cocksure, men are hensure. Men are timid, tremulous, rather soft and submissive, easy in their very henlike tremulousness. They only want to be spoken to gently. So the women step forth with a good loud cock-a-doodle-do!
我认为在广阔的人类这个农院里，情况亦然。只是如今所有的公鸡都咯咯叫，假装会下蛋，所有母鸡都喔喔啼，假装叫太阳起床。如果说现在的女人自信外露，那男人则温柔顺从。男人胆小发抖，非常温驯，并如母鸡一样瑟瑟发抖时才感到自在。他需要别人轻轻地对他讲话才行。那么女人就会走上前，喔喔地大声啼叫起来。
The tragedy about cocksure women is that they are more cocky, in their assurance, than the cock himself. They never realize that when the cock gives his loud crow in the morning, he listens acutely afterwards, to hear if some other wretch of a cock dare crow defiance, challenge. To the cock, there is always defiance, challenge, danger and death on the clear air; or the possibility thereof.
可悲的是，自信外露的女人在自信时比公鸡本身表现更趾高气扬。她们从未意识到，当公鸡清晨高声啼叫时，他接着是要敏锐地聆听，听听有没有其他讨厌的公鸡胆敢对抗着啼叫来挑衅。对于公鸡，洁净的空气中总是存在着或有可能存在着对抗、挑战、危险和死亡。
But alas, when the hen crows, she listens for no defiance or challenge. When she says cock-a-doodle-do! then it is unanswerable. The cock listens for an answer, alert. But the hen knows she is unanswerable. Cock-a-doodle-do! and there it is, take it or leave it!
哎呀，但当母鸡喔喔叫时，她没有倾听有无对抗还是挑战。当她喔喔啼叫时，是无责任心的。公鸡警惕地倾听一种回应，但母鸡知道她是无责任心的，喔喔喔！我叫就叫了，听不听随便你们！
And it is this that makes the cocksureness of women so dangerous, so devastating. It is really out of scheme, it is not in relation to the rest of things. So we have the tragedy of cocksure women. They find, so often, that instead of having laid an egg, they have laid a vote, or an empty ink-bottle, or some other absolutely unhatchable object, which means nothing to them.
It is the tragedy of the modern woman. She becomes cocksure, she puts all her passion and energy and years of her life into some effort or assertion, without ever listening for the denial which she ought to take into count. She is cocksure, but she is a hen all the time. Frightened of her own henny self, she rushes to mad lengths about votes, or welfare, or sports, or business: she is marvellous, out-manning the man. But alas, it is all fundamentally disconnected. It is all an attitude, and one day the attitude will become a weird cramp, a pain, and then it will collapse. And when it has collapsed, and she looks at the eggs she has laid, votes, or miles of typewriting, years of business efficiency -suddenly, because she is a hen and not a cock, all she has done will turn into pure nothingness to her. Suddenly it all falls out of relation to her basic henny self, and she realizes she has lost her life.
这就是现代女人的悲剧。她如公鸡一般自信，她把她所有的热情、精力和时间投入到某项事业或追求中，而不倾听那些她理应考虑的反对意见。她如公鸡一般自信，但她始终只是一只母鸡。她因为惧怕自己如母鸡一样的身份，就很极端地拼命投入选举、福利事业、体育事业或商业当中去：她相当出色，胜过男人。哎呀，但情况完全乱了套。它完全是一种人生观，某天这种观念将不可思议地成为一种束缚，一种痛苦，然后这种观点会倒塌。当这种观点倒塌时，她瞅瞅她产下的蛋，即选票、或长长的打字稿，多年的公司绩效——突然间，因为她是一只母鸡，而不是公鸡，她所做的一切对她来说都将毫无意义。瞬间这一切与她如母鸡一样的本性毫无关系，她意识到她已失去了自己的生活。
The lovely henny surety, the hensureness which is the real bliss of every female, has been denied her: she had never had it. Having lived her life with such utmost strenuousness and cocksureness, she has missed her life altogether. Nothingness!
那可爱的母鸡般的自信，即作为每个女人的真正幸福的温驯谦卑已抛弃了她：她从来就没有拥有过。尽管她用最大的努力和公鸡般的自信生活，却完全错过了自己真正的生活。一切毫无价值！
现代女人不幸福是因为她们逆自然规律而行事。作者通过详细的描写，得出男人和女人的本质和职责不同，因而相互不可替换的观点。不管大家是否同意这样的观点，但劳伦斯生动有趣的写作手法、缜密高超的说理技巧却是值得回味的。
