英語背誦范文精華精選推薦(3)
英語背誦范文精華精選推薦
英語背誦范文精華:A Perfect Wife
After thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that Victoria was endowedwith every charm except the thrilling touch of human frailty. Though her perfectiondiscouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the prideof a husband in her natural frigidity. For he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, tothe discredited ideal of chivalry. In his youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of thelong Victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures,of men. At the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biologicalfactsintosa miraculous power, Virginius Littlepage, the younger son of an old and affluentfamily, had married Victoria Brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made asatisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobaccosintoscigarettes. WhileVirginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had not stooped tofolly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring Victoria.She was not only modest, which was usual in the nineties, but she was beautiful, which isunusual in any decade.
In the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribed intellect to her;but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions createdby perfect features and noble expression. Everything about her had been smooth and definite,even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore a la Pompadour,was rolled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head.
A serious young man, ambitious to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secludedseat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness andprecision of Victoria's orderly mind. For in that earnest period the minds, as well as theemotions, of lovers were orderly. It was an age when eager young men flocked to church onSunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the Victorian poets in the middle of theweek. He could afford to smile now when he recalled the solemn Browning class in which he hadfirst lost his heart. How passionately he had admired Victoria's virginal features! How ferventlyhe had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet!
Incredible as it seemed to him now, he had fallen in love with her while she recited from themore ponderous passages in The Ring and the Book. He had fallen in love with her then,though he had never really enjoyed Browning, and it had been a relief to him when the Unseen,in company with its illustrious poet, had at last gone out of fashion. Yet, since he was disposedto admire all the qualities he did not possess, he had never ceased to respect the firmnesswith which Victoria continued to deal in other forms with the Absolute.
As the placid years passed, and she came to rely less upon her virginal features, it seemed tohim that the ripe opinions of her youth began to shrink and flatten as fruit does that has hungtoo long on the tree. She had never changed, he realized, since he had first known her; she hadbecome merely riper, softer, and sweeter in nature.
Her advantage restedswheresadvantage never fails to rest, in moral fervour. To be invariablyright was her single wifely failing. For his wife, he sighed, with the vague unrest of a husbandwhose infidelities are imaginary, was a genuinely good woman. She was as far removed frompretence as she was from the posturing virtues that flourish in the credulous world of thedrama. The pity of it was that even the least exacting husband should so often desiresomething more piquant than goodness.
英語背誦范文精華:Please Let Me Have a Little World
In all societies, male and female roles are regarded differently.
The mother role is universally carried out by women, which is biologically based. Roles defined by sex also characterize the economic sphere so that the tasks men perform are different from those women perform. This difference is not any outgrowth of the biological differences between men and women. A specific task may be associated with men in one society and with women in another. Milking herd animals, for example, may be women's task in some societies and a man's task in others.
Males and females are each associated with different kinds of behavior. These concepts of male and female behavior extended to how people walk, sit, talk and dress. In our society, as in all others, men walk and talk in certain ways and until recently dressed very differently from women. In some societies, different spatial areas are associated with males and females.
Women in many Middle Eastern societies are restricted to certain parts of the house and may only come into contact with the males who are members of their family. In such societies, the coffee house and the market are defined as male domains. In contrast, in some West African societies, women most often appear in the marketplace. Sometimes, men choose to carry out female rather than male roles.
In some cases, some men dress like women and perform female tasks. On the other hand, females who carry out male roles usually dress and act like men. Because of women's association with mothering and the home, women are associated with the domestic affairs and men are associated with the public affairs. In a number of New Guinea societies, men are associated with the men's house in which they eat and sleep while women are associated with their own dwelling houses.
In our own and other Western societies this division was true until the beginning of the 20th century. Politics, the courts, businesses, banks, and so forth were male areas, and so too were the social clubs where real business was carried out. At the beginning of the 20th century, women began to question the assignment of the male and female role. They formed social groups and began to demand the right to vote. They began to move into the business and professional worlds as well.
Men regarded the women pioneers in this movement as very manlike. Even today women in business, law or banking wear very tailored, conservative suits to work. As these changes occur in female roles in contemporary American society, men are increasingly taking on child care and domestic tasks.
英語背誦范文精華:Freedom in Dying
The process of dying imbues fewer and fewer choices available to us. Even in dying, however, we still have choices concerning how we handle what is happening to us. The following account deals with the dying of Jim Molock, a student and close friend of mine.
Jim is 25 years old. He is full of life, witty, bright, honest, and actively questioning. He had just graduated from college as a human service major, and seemed to have a bright future when his illness was discovered. About a year and a half and ago, Jim developed a lump on his forehead and underwent surgery to have it removed. At that time, his doctors believed that it was not a cancer .later, more tumors appeared and more surgery followed. Several months ago, Jim found out that the tumors had spread throughout his body and that even with treatment, he would have a short life. Since that time he has steadily grown weaker, and has been able to do less and less, yet he has shown remarkable courage in the way he has faced this loss and his dying. Some time ago, Jim came to California, and took part in a weekend seminar that I had with a review of this book. On this chapter, he commented that, “although we may not have choices concerning the losses we suffer in dying, we do retain the ability to choose our attitude toward our death. Jim has taught me a lot during these past few months, about this enduring capacity for choice. Even in extreme circumstances. Jim has made many critical choices since being told of his illness. He chose to continue taking a course of the university because he liked the contact with the people there. He worked hard as a but dog to support himself. He decided to undergo treatment even though he knew that it most likely would not result in his cure because he heard that it would reduce his pain. It did not. And Jim has suffered much agony during the past few months. He decided not to undergo chemical treatment, because he didn’t want to prolong his life if he couldn’t really live fully. He made a choice to accept god and his life, which gave him a full sense of peace. Before he became bedridden, he decided to go to Hawaii, and enjoy his time in luxury. Jim has always disliked hospitals, so he chose to remain at home in more personal surroundings, as long as he was able, he read widely, and continued to write in his diary about his thoughts and feelings on living and dying.
With his friends, he played his guitar, and sang songs that he had written. He maintained an active interest in life and in the things around him without denying the fact that he was dying. More than anyone I have known or heard about, Jim has taken care of unfinished business, he made it a point to gather his family and tell them his wishes. He made contact with all his friends and said everything he wanted to say to them, he clearly stated his desire for cremation, he wants to burn those shamans, and then have his ashes scattered over the sea, a wish that reflects his love of freedom and movement. Jim has very little freedom and movement now, for he can do little but lie in his bed wait for his death to come.
To this day, he has chosen to die with dignity, and although his body is getting weaker and weaker, his spirit is still very much alive. He retains his mental sharpness, his ability to say a lot in very few words and his sense of humor. He has allowed himself to grief over his losses, as he puts it, “I sure like to hang around to enjoy all those people that love me.” Realizing that this is impossible, Jim is saying goodbye to all those who are close to him. Throughout his suffering, Jim’s mother has been truly great. When she told me how remarkle Jim has been in complaining so rarely despite his constant pain. I reminded her that I never heard her complain during her month of caring for him. I have been continually amazed by her strength and courage. And I have admired her willingness to honor Jim’s wishes and accept his beliefs, even though at times, they have differed from her own... Jim has been showing me that his style of dying would be no different from his style of living. By his example and by his words, Jim has taught me how to evaluate my own life.
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