乔安娜·比格斯简介

乔安娜·比格斯简介

[英] 乔安娜·比格斯(Joanna Biggs),毕业于牛津大学,曾任职于《伦敦书评》《哈泼斯杂志》,现为《耶鲁评论》副主编。英国女性主义评论家,文章见于《伦敦书评》《纽约客》《哈泼斯杂志》《卫报》《观察家报》《星期日泰晤士报》等,曾出版《一整天:英国工作的肖像》一书。参与创办了倡导女性主义的“银色出版”( Silver Press),为英美女性作家出版作品。

经典语录

Yet, without hope, what is to sustain life, but the fear of annihilation – the only thing of which I have ever felt a dread – I cannot bear to think of being no more – of losing myself – though existence is often but a painful consciousness of misery; nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust – ready to fly abroad the moment spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind – Aiming at tranquility, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul – almost rooted out what renders it estimable – Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid – soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch of disappointment. If she avoids sad feelings, all feeling goes. And she is starting to suspect that her feelings are what lend her work power. ‘By tickling minnows,’ as Virginia Woolf put it in a short essay about Wollstonecraft, Imlay ‘had hooked a dolphin’. ‘When tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human productions,’ he wrote after her death. ‘But when we consider the importance of the doctrines, and the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it will be read as long as the English language endures.’(Godwin) I had so many questions: could you be a feminist and be in love? Did the search for independence mean I would never be at home with anyone, anywhere? Was domesticity a trap? At first, I took my freedom as a seventeen-year-old might: hard and fast and negronied and wild. I was thirty-four and I wanted so much out of this new phase of my life: intense sexual attraction; soulmate- feeling love that would force my life into new shapes; work that felt joyous like play but meaningful like religion; friendships with women that were fusional and sisterly; talk with everyone and anyone about what was worth living for; books that felt like mountains to climb; attempts at writing fiction and poetry and memoir. I wanted to create a life I would be proud of, that I could stand behind. I didn’t want to be ten years down the wrong path before I discovered once more that it was wrong.
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