The Red Room

学校: Johns Hopkins University 分类：Class of 2019

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My name is Brontë, and if you ask me, I’ll tell you my favorite book is Jane Eyre. This may or may not be a coincidence. Throughout my life, I’ve read this book a total of three times, although it would be untrue to claim that the same person read it each time, as I believe I’ve been drastically different people at each reading.

我叫Brontë，如果你问我，我会告诉你我最喜欢的书是《简·爱》。这可能是也可能不是一个巧合。直到现在，我一共读了这本书三遍，虽然说每次读这本书的人都是同一个人（我）是有些不可思议的，但我相信每次读的时候，我都是完全一个不同的人。

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The first time I read it, I was in fourth grade. I’d been raised on a diet largely composed of poetry and dreams, nurtured by parents whose literary tendencies allowed me to read just about anything. My brother and I had spent most of our childhood wandering around the woods, creating fantasy worlds akin to those that we read about.

我第一次读这本书是在四年级的时候。我成长的事物主要来源于诗歌和梦想，父母的文学倾向让我可以阅读任何东西。我和我哥哥童年的大部分时间都是在我们阅读的书籍所创造出的奇幻世界和森林里遨游。

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My family has books where other families have religion, as well as books where other families have furniture. Our coffee and tea mugs often perch haphazardly on shifting geological structures of multicolored novels. Most of their spines are broken, and my mother’s lacy annotations usually peep out from the yellowed pages. In our family, books are both carelessly treated, a place to stack a dirty dish in the absence of a table, and simultaneously worshiped. Each line is parsed, with cursive handwriting pointing out the important bits. Reading in my house is like having a conversation. In my parent’s books, I can pick up where they left off twenty-five years ago, writing my own replies to decades-old thoughts in the margins.

在我的家庭，书就如同其他家庭拥有宗教信仰或其他家庭有家具一样。我们的咖啡杯和茶杯经常随意地放在彩色小说的上面。大部分书的书脊都是断了的。我母亲的批注通常从发黄的书页里露出来。书籍在我家既是和脏的碟子一起丢弃在地上，被随意对待。同时，书也受到崇拜。每一行的文字都被解析，通过笔记指出核心部分。在我家读书就像聊天一样。我可以在我父母的书中，从25年前他们留下的地方继续，在页边空白处写下我自己对几十年前的想法的回复。

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At first reading, Jane Eyre had everything a romantic eight-year-old could desire. The subtext was over my head, but I was completely entranced by the red room. The horror of it all piqued my curiosity: how would Jane survive the night?

初读《简·爱》时，简·爱就拥有了一个八岁孩子所能渴望的一切浪漫。潜台词已经超出了我的理解范围，但我完全被红房子迷住了。这一切的恐怖激起了我的好奇心:简怎样才能熬过这一夜?

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I read Jane Eyre the second time, in secret, the summer after eighth grade. On “brain rest” for a concussion, I had missed the last two months of school and reading was forbidden, so I hid in my closet, or sat outside in the sweltering DC heat where I knew no one would follow me. I hid the book under my bed for nighttime forays when I couldn’t sleep due to an almost constant migraine. I was well into my fourth month post injury, with no real signs of progress. Reading made the pain almost indescribably worse, yet I couldn’t resist. I felt as though I was Jane in the red room. Escape was beginning to look unlikely. It was lonely and boring and nearly unbearable. I couldn’t understand how Jane was capable of moving on. That summer, it seemed unthinkable that either Jane or I could carry on with our lives after experiencing the horror of the red room.

八年级后的那个夏天，我第二次偷偷地读了《简·爱》。因为一次脑震荡，我错过了最后两个月的学校生活，我的阅读也被禁止了，所以我只能躲在我的壁橱里，或者坐在外面，从而确保没有人会跟着我。由于我经常偏头痛且无法入睡，我把这本书藏在床下准备着晚上来个“突袭”。 我受伤已经四个月了，没有任何进步的迹象。阅读使我的疼痛更加难以形容，然而我却无法抗拒。我觉得自己好像是红房子里的简。逃跑开始显得不太可能了。孤独和无聊，让我几乎无法忍受。我不明白简怎么能继续生活下去。让我无法相信的是，在那个夏天，我和简一同经历了红房子的恐怖之后还能继续生活。

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The most recent time I read Jane Eyre, I was working at a center that provides temporary housing for homeless women and preschool education for their children. There, I observed many kinds of metaphorical red rooms. As I became closer to the teachers and mothers, they began to share pieces of the children’s stories with me. These young children had suffered in ways that were foreign to me, a fifteen year old, who had thought herself so mature. For example, a four year old boy, who grew to feel like my own child, came to school with increasing numbers of bruises and a black eye.

我最近一次读《简·爱》是我在一个为无家可归的妇女提供临时住所和为她们的孩子提供学前教育的中心工作的时候。在那里，我观察到许多有着暗喻红色房间。当我与老师和妈妈们越来越亲近时，他们开始和我分享孩子们的故事。这些年幼的孩子们所遭受的痛苦，对我这个自以为很成熟的十五岁的孩子来说，是陌生的。例如，一个四岁的男孩，他长得就像我自己的孩子，带着许多瘀伤和一只黑眼睛来上学。

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The thing that became most remarkable wasn’t how these children had suffered, but that they kept on living, learning, and developing. Everyone has a red room, and I’m sure I will experience many more as I mature. But, as Jane says, “I am no bird: and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

最值得注意的不是这些孩子如何受苦，而是他们如何生活、学习和成长。每个人都有一个红色的房间，我相信随着我的成熟，我会经历更多。但是，正如简所说，“我不是鸟，也没有网把我缠住，我是一个自由的人，有独立的意志。”

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