- 名言理解英国小说家乔治·艾略特在其作品《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》中有一
- 英国家乔治·艾略特在其作品《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》中有一句话，很多人都喜欢引用作为爱情名言。
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
最幸福的女人，像最幸福的民族一样，没有历史。
如何理解“have no history 没有历史”？这句话跟女人的幸福真的有关系吗？
- 非常赞同xx16000学友对自己问题的诠释：最幸福的女人，像最幸福的民族一样，默默无闻。这句名言引自George Eliot的名作The Mill on the Floss第六卷The Great Temptation，兹抄录三段如下，最后一句即名言所在——When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she was not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the first table that presented itself, and began to walk up and down her room, which was a large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid step, which showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of strong excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt to accompany mental absorption.Had anything remarkable happened?Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass voice,—but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious of having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the voice. Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for 【the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history】.事实上，乔治-艾略特的这句话，首见于法国大思想家Montesquieu（孟德斯鸠），原文是：Les peuples heureux n'ont pas d'histoire.（试译：幸福之人，史所不闻。按：换言之，有所闻者，难言幸福。）19世纪的苏格兰文豪Thomas Carlyle转译作Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books。艾略特之所以将中性的people换成women，是为其小说创作服务。幸福的女人都是相似的，不幸的女人却各有各的不幸。只有这各具特色的不幸，才有记载的必要。所以，艾略特用这句话旨在向读者表明Maggie这个小说刻画（即历史记载）的女性人物的悲剧色彩。