譯/田思怡 The dress — a floor-length blue-on-white petal print with little round buttons up the bodice and a tight collar — is tiny, tailored for a woman 4 feet 9 inches tall. The wearer was Charlotte Brontë, and her demure day dress, just about big enough for a 12-year-old girl, was the plain wrapping that encased an enormous talent, a bubbling blend of ambition, passion and literary genius.
這件洋裝─藍白花瓣印花的及地長裙，緊身上衣的小圓釦一直扣到領口，還有緊衣領─是為4呎9吋高的女人剪裁的小衣服。穿它的人是夏綠蒂．勃朗特，而她端莊的日常洋裝，大小約適合12歲的女孩，是包住一位大才女，一個集野心、熱情和文學天才於一身的沸騰混合體的尋常外衣。
Like a disembodied spirit, the dress stands at the entrance to "Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will," which runs Friday through Jan. 2 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Timed to the 200th anniversary of Brontë's birth, the exhibition offers a compact, sensitively arranged and surprisingly comprehensive tour of the life and work of one of the Victorian era's most beloved writers, an object of fascination from the moment that "Jane Eyre" was published under the pen name Currer Bell in 1847.
就像脫離肉體的精神，這件洋裝站在「夏綠蒂．勃朗特：獨立的意志」特展的入口，特展9月9日到明年1月2日在紐約摩根文學博物館展出。這項展覽選在勃朗特誕辰200周年推出，對維多利亞時代最受愛戴作家的生活與工作提供了一個精巧、感性陳列、且完整的出奇的巡禮。打從1847年「簡．愛」以筆名庫瑞爾．貝爾出版起，勃朗特就一直令人著迷。
The exhibition's subtitle comes from the pivotal chapter in "Jane Eyre" in which the heroine, although deeply in love with Rochester, the master of the house where she is a governess, spurns his proposal that she live with him, in effect, as his mistress. He entreats her to stop struggling like a "wild frantic bird." She replies: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."
特展的副題取自於「簡．愛」的關鍵章節，在這一章中，女主角雖然深愛著她擔任家庭教師的那戶人家的主人羅切斯特，拒絕了他要她與他同居，實際上是當他情婦的請求。他懇求她別再像一隻「狂野的鳥」般掙扎。她回答：「我不是鳥；沒有網子能誘捕我。我是擁有獨立自主意志的自由人，我現在用這個意志來離開你。」
The passage — one of the sizzlers that made "Jane Eyre" an eyebrow-raiser in its time — may be read in the novel's bound manuscript, on view for the first time in the United States, and opened to the relevant page. Christine Nelson, a Morgan curator, secured the loan from the British Library and, to complement the Morgan's deep holdings of Brontë manuscripts, books and drawings, arranged to borrow other items from the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.
這個段落─當時讓「簡．愛」令人刮目相看的發燒段落之一─現在可以在小說的活頁手稿中讀到，手稿首次在美國展出，翻到有這個段落的那一頁。摩根的策展人克莉絲汀．尼爾森向大英圖書館借到這本手稿。儘管摩根本身在勃朗特的手稿、書籍和繪畫方面館藏極豐，尼爾森還是向倫敦國家肖像畫廊和約克郡哈沃斯的勃朗特故居博物館另外借來了一些展品，以充實內容。
The exhibition, tracing a fluid, chronological circle, begins by establishing the location. For nearly all her life, Brontë lived in a modest parsonage in Haworth, northwest of the urban and industrial Bradford and Leeds, perched on the edge of a wild moor.
這項展覽循著一個流動的、按年代順序的環形場地，從建立地點開始。勃朗特幾乎一輩子都住在哈沃斯一間簡樸的牧師公館，坐落在曠野的邊緣，而哈沃斯這城鎮則位於都會和工業城市布拉福和里茲的西北方。
In the hands of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, whose enormously popular biography "The Life of Charlotte Brontë" appeared in 1857, two years after its subject's death at the age of 38, the village, the house and its inhabitants took on a gothic character that haunted the public imagination. High on a windswept hill, wrapped in darkness and incessant rain, lived a family of creative geniuses, with three little Wednesday Addamses — Charlotte, Emily and Anne — afloat in a literary fantasy world.
小說家伊莉莎白．蓋斯凱爾極受歡迎的傳記「夏綠蒂．勃朗特的一生」1857年問世，也就是傳記主角38歲去世的兩年後，在她筆下的村莊、房子、住在房子裡的人，呈現哥德式特色，牽縈著大眾的想像。在寒風颯颯的山坡高處，包覆在昏暗的天色和綿綿不斷的雨中，住著一家創作天才，三個小「阿達一族」─夏綠蒂、艾蜜莉和安妮，飄浮在文學的幻想世界中。
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文/田思怡
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一家能出一位作家已很了不起，勃朗特一家出了三位女作家。勃朗特三姊妹（the Bronte Sisters）夏綠蒂（Charlotte）、艾蜜莉（Emily）和安妮（Anne）各自有經典名著傳世，夏綠蒂的「簡．愛」（Jane Eyre）；艾蜜莉的「咆哮山莊」（Wuthering Heights ）；安妮的「荒野莊園的房客」（The Tenant of Wildfell Hall）。
就像張愛玲有經典語錄，夏綠蒂．勃朗特的「簡．愛」也有發燒語錄（sizzlers），例如文中提到的"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."而「獨立自主的意志」正是夏綠蒂一生的追求。
三姊妹成長的城鎮哈沃斯（Haworth）對她們的作品影響甚鉅，很難想像這個位在曠野邊的城鎮當年竟是汙染嚴重的工業城，居民平均壽命24歲，夏綠蒂38歲去世，兩個妹妹艾蜜莉和安妮死時更只有30歲和29歲。
這次特展以哥德風（gothic character）呈現哈沃斯，哥德式小說（Gothic fiction）結合恐怖、死亡和羅曼史，文中提到在寒風颯颯的山坡高處，包覆在昏暗的天色和綿綿不斷的雨中，就是典型的哥德式場景。
