Chapter 19 Chapter Thirteen Girl-2

This attitude is even more evident in the self-harm that is common at this age.Teenage girls may slash their thighs with razors, burn themselves with cigarettes, and skin themselves.Trying to escape a boring dance party I had to attend, a friend of mine when I was younger cut himself in the foot with an ax so badly that he had to stay in bed for six weeks.These sado-masochistic acts are both anticipation of the sexual experience and protest against it.Through these tests, a person can be strong enough to face all possible tribulations and alleviate the pain they cause, including the ordeal of the wedding night.When a girl puts a snail on her breast or swallows a bottle of aspirin or mutilates herself, she is challenging her future lover—"You can never punish me like I punished myself." More hateful." Such was the proud, sullen gesture with which she began her sexual adventure.

Although the girl is destined to be the passive prey of the man, she still insists on her right to liberty, even through pain and disgust.When she cuts or burns herself, she protests against the piercing of her virginity: she protests by annulment.She is a masochist because of the pain her actions bring herself, but she is above all a sadist: as an independent subject, she whips, despises and tortures the attached body, punished by the obedience she hates. flesh-- However, she didn't want to separate herself from it.Because no matter what, she is unwilling to completely give up the fate of the land.Her sadistic-masochistic insanity involved a fundamental insincerity: if she had resigned herself to the insanity, it would have meant that she had accepted, through resignation, the feminine fate that awaited her; It would not be so hateful to destroy one's own body.

Even her violent triggers spring from the depths of obedience.When a boy rebels against his father, against the world, his violence is effective.He provokes troubles and fights with his companions, using his fists to prove his subject status: he imposes himself on the world, he transcends the world.However, this does not mean that girls who have entered puberty can also prove and impose in this way. This is why her heart is full of resentment: she can neither hope to change the world nor to hope to transcend it; she knows, or at least believes, that she is bound—perhaps she may even wish to do so; she can only destroy .There is desperation in her anger.In a fit of rage, she throws cups, glass, and vases—not necessarily to conquer fate, but merely to protest symbolically.Girls rebel against future slavery because of present impotence.Her vain seizures, far from loosening her bonds, often only made them tighter.

Her acts of violence, either against herself or against the world around her, are always of a negative nature: they are spectacular but ineffective.The aggressive boy regards his slight injuries as trivial consequences of his active activity, and therefore neither pursues nor avoids them (unless an inferiority complex puts him in the girl's situation).The girl is constantly aware of her torture; she savors the violence and rebellion in her heart, without any interest in the outcome.Her abnormality stems from the fact that she is still bound to the world of her childhood, from which it is impossible or unwilling for her to escape entirely.She wanted to struggle in the cage, not want to get out of it.Her frame of mind is negative, reflective, symbolic.

Sometimes this abnormality can also become a serious problem.Quite a few young virgins have a burglary gallery.A kleptoma is a "sexual sublimation" of a very ambiguous nature.The willingness to break laws and transgress taboos, the high excitement of forbidden and adventurous activities—this challenge is undoubtedly the main factor in the woman thief, but it has a double character.To acquire what she has no right to acquire is to assert her independence arrogantly, to play a subject role before what is lost and the society that condemns this thief, to deny law and order.Yet this challenge also has a masochistic side.The thief was fascinated by the risk she was taking, by the abyss that would open to engulf her if she were caught.The danger of arrest brings an erotic charm to the act of burglary; under the accusing gaze, in the grasping hand, in the disgrace it all entails, she will feel utterly a object.

To acquire without being caught, to suffer for fear of becoming prey, are dangerous objects of adolescent female sexuality.All abnormal and criminal patterns of behavior of young girls have this same meaning.Some teenage girls write anonymous letters, while others take pleasure in teasing their partners: a 14-year-old girl tricked the whole village into believing that a house was haunted.They also enjoy secretly exercising their power, expressing their disobedience, and provoking society—like risking discovery!This last is such a factor in their pleasures that they often expose themselves, and sometimes even condemn themselves for mistakes and crimes which they have not committed.We may not be surprised to find that the refusal to become an object leads to the objectification of oneself: this mechanism of action applies to all people who are obsessed with negative thoughts.From a mere reaction the hysterical paralytic fears, longs for, and arouses the paralysis: as in the psychotic, the cure works only if it is not thought of.

Deep insincerity associates the normal girl with these neurotic types.Manias, convulsions, conspiracies, and abnormal behavior—we found that many of her neurotic symptoms were caused by the contradictions of desires and fears that I have carefully pointed out.For example, it is very common for her to run away from home.She may have gone away aimlessly, wandering to places far away from home for two or three days, and then came back by herself.Make no mistake, it wasn't a real runaway, a real severing of ties with her family.It's just a comedy of getting away, and if someone really wants to take her away, the girl's mood is often very disturbed: she wants to leave, but she doesn't want to leave.

Runaways are sometimes associated with prostitution fantasies.She fantasizes that she is a prostitute, and she plays this role somewhat timidly; she dresses up beautifully, leans on the window railing, and gives passers-by a glance.Sometimes, when she ran away from home, she played out the comedy so well that it was hard to tell which was real.Such behavior often expresses aversion to sexual desire, a sense of guilt: "Since I have this thought, this desire, I am no better than a whore, I am a whore!" she thought.Sometimes she tried to indulge herself: "Let's make it to the end, let's have a miserable end!" she said to herself.She wants to commit herself to the first one who comes, to prove to herself that sex doesn't matter.

Often, however, this attitude may also be an expression of hostility towards the mother, either because the girl is alienated by the strict self-disciplining father, or because of suspicion of the mother's own fickleness; .At any rate, this obsession, like the pregnancy phantasy I have mentioned which often follows, has a tangled confusion of rebellion and complicity.This confusion is the hallmark of insanity. It is noteworthy that in all these forms of behavior the maiden does not seek to transcend the natural and social order, neither to expand the range of possibilities nor to reassess values.She is content to express her rebellion within a world whose boundaries and laws remain unchanged.This attitude is often considered "evil," and it implies a fundamental cover-up: the recognition of the good in order to despise it, the establishment of the law in order to destroy it, the reverence of the sacred in order to further desecrate it.This attitude of the girl is mainly explained by the fact that she both denies and accepts the world and her destiny under the shadow of insincere anguish.

However, she is not only prepared to passively oppose the situation imposed on her, she also strives to compensate for it.If the future frightened her, the present dissatisfied her; she was hesitant to be a woman, disturbed by still being a child;She is busy, but doing nothing; and because of doing nothing, she has nothing and is nothing.She can only fill this "nothing" with posturing and deceit.She was often accused of being cunning, dishonest and a "liar".In reality, she was doomed to be secretive and a liar.At sixteen a woman is already going through painful ordeals: puberty, menstruation, sexual arousal, first desire, first sexual excitement, fear and loathing, and ambiguous experiences.She kept all this hidden in her heart and learned to keep her secret carefully.The mere fact of having to stash menstrual belts and conceal her medical condition was conditioned her to falter.In the story "The Old Man" written by Catherine Anna Porter, she talked about how around 1900, when girls in the southern United States were preparing to participate in the dance, in order to temporarily prevent menstruation, they drank the disgusting salt and lemon. formed mixture.They were terrified at the thought that young men might learn about their bodies from the look of their eyes, or the touch of their hands, or perhaps from a certain smell.When one feels a bloody menstrual band between one's legs, or more generally, when one is aware of the primordial misfortune of being a carnal being, to play an idol, a fairy, a trance Princess, that is not an easy task.Shyness is an instinctive refusal to recognize one's own physicality, which is not far from hypocrisy.

However, the overriding hypocrisy that punishes the adolescent girl is that she must pretend to be an object, a fascinating person, despite her awareness of herself as an impermanent, separate being, despite her awareness of her own flaws.Cosmetics, wigs, corsets, and "breast-enhancing" bras are all illusions.Even the faces themselves are illusions: impulsive expressions are feigned, passive exclamations are imitated.There is nothing more surprising than suddenly discovering that a very familiar girlish appearance assumes a feminine function.Its transcendence is set aside and imitates immanence; the eyes are no longer piercing, they are brooding; The body is no longer alive, it is waiting; every gesture, every smile, becomes desire.The girl is unsuspecting and at the mercy of others. She is now just a bouquet of flowers waiting to be given, a fruit waiting to be plucked. The man is encouraging these temptations because he needs to be seduced: then he annoys, blames.But he can only feel indifference and hostility towards the natural and simple girl.He felt that only the girls who laid these snares were attractive.Although she herself is waiting for the sacrifice, she is also lying down and waiting for the prey.Her passivity feeds an aggressiveness, and she turns weakness into a tool for power.Since she was not allowed to attack openly, she had to rely on stratagem and calculation.It was to her advantage to give it apparently freely: she was accused of perfidy and a traitor for it, and rightly so.In reality, however, she is being forced to supply the man with the myth of her submissiveness, because he insists on dominance, and her subordination can only be perverted from the start.Besides, her deceit was not entirely calculated.As we have seen, she initially goes through the stage of playing as a child and then of becoming herself, and it makes little sense in her situation to ask what her nature actually is, since she can only exist (be), cannot act (act).Her adolescent fantasies were more real to her potentialities than the well-founded facts of her everyday life, and in the absence of real activity her indulgences gave her a sense of arrogance.Like a child, she uses quarrels, tantrums, deceit, lies, and fantasies to make herself important.She has no real will, only changeable desires.Yet she considers her inconsistency to be decisive, absolute; while she cannot control the future, she gains eternity."I will always want everything," writes Marie Lineiro, which resonates in Antigone of the Anui: "I want it all, and now." It is found in the man who dreams of his own destiny: this dream transcends time and removes barriers, but anyone who really thinks about design feels a kind of limitation in measuring his own concrete power.A girl wants everything, because nothing depends on her.So she acts like an enfantterrible [child who likes to ask embarrassing questions].Thus, Hurda in Ibsen's The Architect expects Solness to give her a kingdom: not that she is going to conquer it.Let him build high and climb up, while she stands on the ground, oblivious to human fragility and unconcerned about the limits of her wild dreams.To someone who has not taken any risks, adults always seem contemptible and cautious.But girls, untested by reality, can boast of the most amazing virtues without fear of contradicting themselves. Yet her impermanence is also rooted in this lack of control.She dreams of being infinite, yet still being herself in a role to be admired, which in turn depends on the will of the stranger.There is a danger for her in this role in which she is equal to herself and must passively accept its existence.This is why she is sensitive and vain.Even a little criticism, a little ridicule, would make her totally suspicious.She does not gain her own worth through her own efforts, but through the vagaries of approval.This prestige, since it is not based on specific activities, seems quantifiable.Commodities fall in value when they become too common, so the girl is precious, extraordinary, distinguished, remarkable only when no one else is.Her companions are rivals as well as enemies; she degrades them and denies any relationship to her; she is jealous, she holds a grudge. Obviously, all these shortcomings can only come from the situation of adolescent girls.It is unfortunate to be in a position where one feels passive and dependent at an age of hope and ambition, an age when the desire to exist and to have a place in the world becomes strong.At this age of conquest, woman realizes that there is no question of conquest for her, that she must dissociate herself, that her future depends on the happiness and pleasure of men.She had developed new desires, not only sexual but also social, which remained unsatisfied.All her enthusiasm for action, physical and mental, was at once thwarted.Understandably, she had difficulty regaining her balance.Her moody temperament, her tears, her nervous crises are largely not the result of physical fragility, but evidence of a serious mental disorder. But it is also possible that the girl is actually accepting a situation from which she tries to get out of it in unreliable ways.In terms of her flaws, she is annoying, but in terms of her strengths, she is sometimes surprising.Both come from the same source.Her denial of the world, her restless expectations, her nothingness, can all be used by her as a springboard to reach the apex of solitude and freedom. As we have seen, the maiden is withdrawn, restless, the victim of serious conflict, but this complexity enriches her, her inner life develops a greater depth than that of her brothers; she pays more attention to her own Emotion, so it is more subtly variable; she has a greater capacity for psychic insight than the boys, who are only interested in the outside world. She was able to give weight to her rebellion against the world, and she was able to avoid the traps of being too serious and conformist.The lies deliberately fabricated by her partners will be ridiculed by her and seen through by her.She feels the ambiguity of her position every day: she can rise above futile protest and stand up to accepted optimism, antiquated values.The morality of hypocrisy and pleasure is called into question. This is the case with Maggie in The Mill on the Floss, in whom George Eliot embodies his youthful suspicion and brave resistance to Victorian England.The heroes—especially Maggie's brother Tom—stubbornly cling to accepted principles, congealing morals into formal conventions.But Maggie wanted them to have life, and she overturned them.She transcends the rigid male world and walks to the limit of loneliness, becoming a real free person. The adolescent girl has almost only passive use of this freedom.Yet her stillness produces a rare sensibility by which she can be faithful, thoughtful, understanding, and affectionate.Rosamund Lehman's heroes are distinguished by this meek generosity.In the novel Please Waltz, we see that although Olivia is timid and embarrassed, she is hardly squeamish, and she looks around the world she is about to step into with emotional curiosity. As she danced, she listened carefully to what one partner had to say, tried to answer them according to their wishes, became a respondent; Judith, the heroine of Vague Answers, is equally charming.She did not give up the joy of childhood: she likes to bathe naked in the creek next to her garden at night, she loves nature, books and life; She's not a narcissist; she's not deceitful, selfish, and doesn't seek to enhance her ego through men: her love is a gift.She gave her love to anyone who beat her, man or woman, Jennifer or Roddy.She gives without losing herself: she lives an independent student life with her own world and designs.However, what sets her apart from boys is her wait-and-see attitude, her tenderness and submissiveness.Still, she was subtly doomed to belong to the Other: the image of the Other was so good in her mind that she immediately fell in love with all the young men in the neighbourhood, with their houses, their Sisters, their world.Jennifer fascinated her not because she was a friend but because she was other.And she fascinates Rowdy and his cousins ​​because she is willing to mold herself for them, according to their wishes; she is the embodiment of patience, generosity, acceptance, and resignation. Tessa in Margaret Kennedy's "The Eternal Nymph" is quite different, she is natural and tender and loyal, but also charming when she expresses affection to the one she loves.She refuses to make any concessions: women's finery, cosmetics, pretense, hypocrisy, feigned elegance, discretion, and submissiveness resent her.She longs to be loved, but doesn't want to hide behind a façade. She obeyed Louis's whims, but never servilely.She was considerate of him, consistent with him when excited, but if they quarreled, touching would not win her over.Florence, who is vain and arrogant, can be conquered by kisses, but Tessa has created a miracle and can remain free in love, which makes her neither hostile nor proud of love.Her natural simplicity had all the appeal of affectation; in pleasing, she never hurt and demeaned herself, never took the position of an object.She was surrounded by artists who were focused on creating music, and she didn't feel the existence of this greedy demon in her heart.She loves, understands and helps them with all her heart.She does this effortlessly, with affectionate and natural generosity, so that even as she selflessly helps others, she remains completely independent.Because of this sheer authenticity, she is spared the usual adolescent conflicts. She is able to bear the rigors of the world without being detached within herself.She has the harmony of a carefree child and that of a wise woman.Sensitive and generous girls are receptive and enthusiastic, so they can easily become women who are capable of great love. When she can't find love, she can find a poetic realm.Unable to act, she observes, she feels, she records. A color, a smile, will resonate deeply in her heart.Her fate lay outside of her, scattered in the built city, on the faces of the men who had stamped their lives.She savors with gusto, but in a more detached and freer way than a young man.Although unable to integrate with the human world and barely fit in there, she can observe it as objectively as a child.She is not only interested in grasping things, but also in finding their meaning.She captures their characteristic contours, their unexpected changes.She rarely feels boldly creative, and usually lacks the skill of self-expression.But in her conversations, in her letters, literary essays and drawings, she displays a unique sensitivity.The girl is passionately thrown into action because she has not been deprived of her transcendence.The fact that she is nothing and nothing only intensifies her impulses.She is empty and infinite, so she wants everything (All) from the depths of her nothingness.That is why she has a special love for nature: she adores it more than adolescent boys.Nature is unconquered, inhuman, embodying the totality of existence in all too obvious ways.The adolescent girl has not yet learned to use any part of the world: So it was all her kingdom.In possessing it, she proudly possessed herself.Colette often depicted this girlish orgy, for example in "Cidor": I love dawn and want to walk down the sand to the river with my empty basket, where strawberries and currants grow. At 3:30, everything is dark blue, damp and hazy, and I can wander into the fog until it hides my ears and sensitive nostrils...and then I will feel my worth and a kind of The state of being blessed, feeling at one with the first breeze, the first bird singing, and the first rising sun... I would want to go home, but only when I was full, walked through the woods, and had a drink After the water flowing from the clear spring. Mary Webb also tells us of the ecstasy felt by a girl in a country she knew so well: When the atmosphere at home became too dire and Amber's nerves were on edge, she would sneak out of the house and go north to the forest... In her opinion, Dormer lived by the law, and the forest Live according to impulse.Gradually she becomes aware of the beauty of nature, and then of the beauty that is unique to her.She began to notice similarities between the two.For her, nature is not a collection of beautiful things, but a harmony, a solemn and simple poem...the beauty expressed there, the light that shines there, does not come from flowers or stars.A tremor, mysterious and exciting, as if with that light through the... rustling forest... So, she set foot on this green world for an important religious ceremony. One quiet morning in early June...she finally came to the forest to the north, and was immediately embraced by beauty.In talking to nature, there is actually a certain contest for her, as if there is a mood that says: "I won't let you go unless you bless me"... She leaned against a wild pear tree, and through inner listening, she felt the turbulent waves of life, which reminded her of the roar of the sea.At this time, a breeze blew and shook the treetops full of flowers, and she aroused that feeling again, she seemed to hear the strange voice of the leaves... Every petal, every leaf seemed to be savoring A memory of the depths from which it came.Every bowed flower seems to be full of echoes of its fragility and overly solemn... a wisp of fragrance blows from the top of the mountain and wafts among the branches.The branch that is tangible and knows that death is also tangible, when the invisible and eternal fragrance passes by.Trembling... because of it, this place is not just a collection of trees, but as vast as the starry sky... because it possesses itself, forever in a repressed, eternal life force.It is this that attracts Amber and makes her walk into this mysterious place of nature with great curiosity.It was this that made her suddenly feel a kind of ecstasy... This is what attracted Amber to go into this spiritual place of nature with breathless breath, and made her stay in the rare ecstasy for a long time. Many different women, such as Emily Bronte and Ana de Noaille, experienced this passion in their youth—and retained it throughout their lives. The passages above show what a wonderful refuge the adolescent girl finds in fields and woods, where mother, law, custom and convention reign, and she longs to escape these aspects of her past, to be sovereign subject.However, as a member of society, she can only step into adult life if she becomes a woman.She paid the price for her own liberation by giving in.But among plants and animals, she is a human being, freed from both the bondage of the family and the bondage of the male—a subject, a free being.In the mysterious place of the forest, she found the reflection of her lonely soul, and in the endless plain, she found the concrete image of her transcendence.She herself is this vast and boundless territory, the apex of this lofty cloud.She can walk down these paths into unknown futures, and she will.When she sits on the top of the mountain, she is the master of all the riches of the world, which are spread at her feet for her to acquire.In the rushing water, in the sparkling waves, she had a premonition of joy, tears and ecstasy that she had not yet experienced.The ripples in the pond, the dappled sunlight, made her vaguely hopeful about her inner adventures. Fragrances and colors speak a mysterious language, but one word speaks especially loudly: this is life.Survival is not just the abstract fate recorded in the city file, but also the future full of sensuality.Possession of a body is no longer a taint of shame; in the desire the girl denies before her mother, she can recognize the life that rises in the trees; she is no longer unhappy, she proudly proclaims herself and the leaves , the flowers are related by blood; she smashes the crown, knowing that one day a live prey will stuff her hands.Second.Flesh is no longer a stain: it signifies pleasure and beauty.In unity with the earth and sky, the Maiden is the ethereal fragrance, the ray of life that animates and stirs all things; she is also every branch of the plant; she is rooted in the soil and infinite consciousness. Organism, she is spirit and life; her being is as imperious and triumphant as the earth. She still sometimes supernaturally pursues a more distant and more splendid reality, and is prone to indulge in mysterious ecstasy. In the Age of Faith, many young women look to God to fill the void in their hearts.Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Ávila, who were apparently consecrated to the priesthood in their early lives; Jean Duc was also a maiden.In other ages the highest aim was humanity, and mystical impulses flowed into explicit social design.Yet it was also the early yearning for the Absolute that ignited the flames that ignited the lives of women such as Madame Roland and Rosa Luxemburg.In times of resignation and disillusionment, maidens sometimes summon their greatest courage from the depths of confrontation.She may enter the realm of poetry, or she may display heroism.One way of combating the fact that she cannot fit into society is that she has to broaden her horizons. The abundance and force of nature in some women, when circumstances are favourable, have enabled them in manhood to continue the passionate projects of adolescence.However, these are exceptions.It was not for nothing that George Eliot and Margaret Kennedy let their heroines, Maggie and Tessa, die young.The Bronte sisters experienced a harsh fate.The maiden is moving because her resistance to the world is alone.But the world is too powerful, and if she insists on fighting, it will be destroyed. Belle de Juren's irony and wit captivated Europe.Yet she frightened away all suitors: her refusal to make any concessions punished her with years of dismal celibacy, so much so that she declared the word "viergeetmartyre" [virgin and martyr] superfluous of.This kind of stubbornness is not common.Most teenage girls find this struggle often too unfair and finally give in.Diderot wrote to Sophie Walland: "You will all die at fifteen." If the struggle, as it often happens, is a symbolic revolt, then failure is certain .Girls demand a lot in their dreams, they are full of hope, but they are passive, so they can only win the sympathetic smiles of adults.They expected her to become submissive.Sure enough, we found out two years later that the once eccentric, unruly child had calmed down and was fully prepared to accept her fate as a woman.Colette foreshadows this fate for Vanca, and it is the same for the heroines of Mauriac's earlier novels.The crisis of adolescence is a "labor pain" comparable to what Dr. Raja calls the "labor pains" of mourning.The girl slowly buried her childhood, buried the independent and domineering person she had been before, and stepped obediently into adult life. Of course it is impossible to make a clear classification based on age alone.Some women remain infantile all their lives; the behavior I describe is sometimes carried over to a very high age.Nevertheless, in general, there are important differences between an immature girl of fifteen and a "big girl".The latter is preparing to accept reality, her activities are hardly imaginary anymore, and her divisions are not as severe as before.Marie Bashkirchev wrote when she was about 18: "As a child, the older I got, the more inattentive I became. Now very little troubles me, whereas before everything troubled me. " Irene Reviliot said: To be accepted by men, one has to think and act like them, otherwise they will treat you like a monster and solitude will be your lot.As for me, I now suffer from loneliness and need not only a group of people around me, but also with them... I want to live now, not to exist, to wait, to dream, to talk to myself, silently, stupidly. She continued: I became very ambitious because of being flattered, courted, and whatnot.It wasn't the quivering, wonder-joy a fifteen-year-old felt, but the cold, human rage of taking revenge on life and climbing the ladder.I flirt, play love every time... I increase my knowledge, learn sang-froid [calmness], and get used to seeing the details.I lost a warm heart. It's like a rebirth... I left my childhood behind in two months. These confessions of a 19-year-old girl are exactly the same: Ah, in former times, what a conflict there was between ideas that seemed alien to the present age and the demands of the age!Now I seem to feel some kind of peace.Each new wild idea I conceived, instead of causing a painful commotion, endless destruction and rebuilding, was a wonderful adaptation of what was already in my head...   Now I am moving imperceptibly from abstraction to practical life without a break. A teenage girl finally accepts her femininity, unless she's particularly ugly.Moreover, she is often fortunate enough to enjoy, without cost, the joys and triumphs that life offers, before she is quite at ease with it.She is not yet bound by any obligation, she has no responsibilities, she is free, yet does not think the present moment is empty or deceitful, because it is only a stage.Dressing up and coquettishness still seemed to be just a game, her dreams of the future belied the futility of the future.Virginia Woolf, in The Waves, recorded the thoughts of the young and squeamish Genie in a college talk: I feel like I'm glowing in the dark.I was wearing long street stockings and my legs rubbed smoothly against each other.The gemstone necklace hangs on my forehead, chilling me a bit... I'm dressed up and ready... My hair is blown into a wave and my lips are bright red.I am now ready to go upstairs to join the men and women--my peers.I walked past them, letting them watch, as they let me watch... In this fragrance, in this light, I began to unfurl, like a grass with curly leaves unfurls... I Countless strange thoughts welled up in my heart.我时而调皮，时而快活，时而倦怠，时而忧郁。我有根，却在流动。所有金光闪闪的人们都在那样地流动，我对这样一个人说：“来吧……”他靠得比较近，他朝我走来。这是我这一生所经历的最令人激动的时刻。我的心在剧烈跳动，翻腾不息……我们坐在一起，我穿着缎子衣服，他穿着黑白相间的衣服，这不是很愉快吗？我的同辈们现在可能在看着我。而我，也在死死盯着你们，男男女女们。我是你们中的一员。这是我的世界……门开了，它继续开着。于是我想，下次门开时，我的整个生活都会发生变低……门开了。哦，来吧，我对浑身闪着金光的这样一个人说。 “来吧，”于是，他朝我走来。 但是，当女孩子成熟时，母亲的权威使她感到更沉重的压抑。如果她在家里做家务，她会讨厌只做帮手，因为她很想把自己的成果献给她自己的家，她自己的孩子。她常觉得在同母亲进行不愉快的竞争，要是有了新出生的小弟弟或小妹妹，她尤其感到烦恼。她认为，母亲已经有过自己的黄金时代，现在该轮到她去生孩子、去管家了。如果她在外面工作，她会讨厌回家后仍被只当成家庭的一员，而不是被当成一个独立的人。 她不像以前那么浪漫了，开始更多地考虑婚姻而不是爱情。她不再用动人的光环为她未来的丈夫增辉：她需要的是在世界上有真正的地位，需要的是踏上她的女人生活。在刚才提到的那本书中，弗吉尼亚·沃尔芙是这样描写一个富有的农村少女的痴想的： 快到炎热的中午，当蜜蜂围着蜀葵嗡嗡叫的时候，我的情人就要回来了。他将站在雪松树下。我每问必答。我会把想好的话告诉他。我将会有孩子，有系围裙的女仆和拿草耙的男工。还会有一个厨房，小羊恙生病时，他们把它送到那儿的窝里去暖和，那里还有挂着的火腿和亮闪闪的洋葱。我会像母亲那样，系着蓝色的围裙，不声不响地把食橱锁上。 在玛丽·韦伯的《可爱的贝恩》中，可怜的普鲁也有类似的梦想； 永不结婚可真是件可怕的事。所有的女孩子都会结婚的……要是女孩子们结婚，她们会有一间小屋，也许还会有一盏在她们大夫回家时才点亮的灯，或者只是蜡烛也无所谓，因为反正她们可以把它放在窗台上，而他会想：“我的妻子在呢，她把蜡烛点亮了！” 后来有一天，贝吉勒夫人用灯芯草为她们做了一个小床，再有一天，里面躺了个，小娃娃，好庄严，好肃穆，洗礼仪式的邀请信发出去了，邻居们都来了，像蜜蜂围着蜂后似的围着孩子的母亲。当事情不顺利时，我常会对自己说：“没关系，普鲁·萨恩！总有一天你会成为你自己小窝里的女王的。” 对于大多数成熟的女孩子来说，不论她们在辛勤劳动还是在过着百无聊赖的生活，不论被禁闭在家还是有某种自由，找丈夫——或至少有个固定的情人，是一件越来越紧迫的事。 这种关切常常破坏女性问的友谊。“最要好的朋友”失去了昔日的光荣地位。少女把她的伙伴们看成对手，而不是盟友。我认识一个这样的少女，她聪明，有天赋，在诗和散文中把自己描绘成一个“神情恍惚的公主”；她真诚地宣称，她对童年伙伴不再有任何感情：如果她们又笨又丑，她会讨厌；如果很迷人，她会害怕。对男人的急切渴望，往往会涉及阴谋诡计和蒙受耻辱，使少女变得心胸狭窄、自私和无情。如果迷人王子姗姗来迟，那么则会加剧她的厌倦和酸楚的心情。 少女的性格行为是她处境的产物：如果处境改变，青春期女孩子的面貌也会随之改变。 今天，她自己掌握着自己的未来，而不是委托给男人，这正在逐渐变得可能。如果她专心于学习、运动、职业训练，或某种社会政治活动，就不会整天想着男人，对自己的感情或对性冲突的关注，也会小得多。然而，在把自我实现为一个独立的个人方面，她仍会面临比年轻男人更多的困难。如我指明的，家庭和社会习俗都不会赞成她在这方面作出努力。 而且，她即使选择了独立，也仍会在自己的生活中给男人和爱情腾出一块地方。她很可能是在担心，如果完全献身于某项事业，她会错过自己的女人命运。这种感觉往往不会被承认，但它确实存在。它削减了已明确树立的目标，对它加以限制。在任何情况下，职业女性都希望能把职业成功和纯属女性的成就协调起来。这不仅意味着她必须花许多时间打扮自己，更严重的是，它还意味着她的主要兴趣是不一致的。男学者在按部就班地工作的同时，还以思想的自由驰聘为快，因此产生最佳的灵感。然而女人的遐想方向却完全不同：她要考虑个人的容貌，考虑男人和爱情；她将只给学习和职业留下最低限度的时间和精力，于是在这些领域里，任何事情都是不必要的，多余的。这并不是一个智能弱、思想无法集中的问题，而宁可说是两种不一致的兴趣很难协调的问题。这样便形成了恶性循环，人们常惊讶地发现，女人一旦找到了丈夫，便能多么轻易地放弃音乐、学习和她的职业。在她的计划中，她明显涉及到自己的地方实在是太少了，以至实现计划也不会给她带来多少利益。一切都在联合起来抑制她的个人野心，巨大的社会压力仍在强迫她通过婚姻谋求社会地位和合法庇护。当然，她也不想靠自己的努力，去创造她在世界的地位，或者即使想，也是胆怯的。只要社会上还没有完全实现经济平等，只要社会习俗还在批准女人以妻子或主妇身份从某些男人的特权那里获益，那么，她不劳而获的梦想就会存在下去，就会阻碍她取得自己的成就。 但是，不论少女以何种方式进入成年期，她的见习阶段都还没有结束。无论是缓慢的渐进，还是突变，她都必须经历性发动阶段。有些少女在回避这个问题。如果她们童年时经历过不愉快的性事件，如果错误的教育逐渐加深了她们对性行为的恐惧，她们就可能把童年对男性的厌恶保留下来。有时，环境也可能违背某些女人的意愿，迫使她们延长处女生活。但通常，少女或迟或早都会实现自己的性命运。如何应付它，显然基本上取决于她过去的经历。 无论如何，这是一种新的体验，它是在无法预料的情况下出现在她面前的，而她要独立地对它作出反应。现在，我们必须来认识这个新阶段。