Professions-for-Women+Metaphor

About the metaphor we have three parts: definition, categories, and the types of the metaphor.

1. First, let’s take a look at the definition of metaphor: Metaphor, perhaps the most important and most frequently used figure of speech, points out resemblance(类比) but with no acknowledging words.

 It is a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of anther.

 It is an implied comparison between two (or more unlike things); achieved by

identifying one with the other.

2. There are two categories of metaphor:

The visible and the invisible.

In visible metaphors both the tenor and the vehicle manifest

themselves in the context.

Such as “to be” is the typical acknowledging word.

Invisible Metaphor

In invisible metaphors either the tenor and the vehicle does not manifest itself directly and completely, but reveals itself indirectly by certain verbs or in which the tenor does not manifest itself directly, but is presented by the vehicle so as to let some room for the readers’ imagination.

Now let’s take a look at the examples:

1） Macbeth: Out, out, brief candle!/Life is but a walking shadow, a poor

player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/And then is heard no more.（熄灭了吧，熄灭了吧，短促的烛光！人生不过是一个行走的影子，一个在舞台上指手划脚的拙劣的伶人，登场片刻，就在无声无臭中悄然退下）（《麦克白》五幕五场） 本体是life，喻体是a walking shadow和a poor player。这些形象的喻体不仅表达了麦克白一生失去理想，失去生活意义的痛苦，还深刻总结了他一生痛苦的人生哲学，是一个苦难灵魂最后发出的绝望的悲鸣。

2） Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be

chewed and digested…(INVISIBLE)

-----Francis Bacon

Now let’s see more examples:

1) Habit is a cable; everyday we weave a thread and soon we cannot break it.

(Habit is compared to a visible cable that is gradually formed and in no time you will find it hard to break it.)

2) Spare moments are the gold dust of time. (Spare moments are as precious as

visible gold dust.)

3) He is an all-purpose basket. (He is a many-sided person.)

4)

His bark is worse than his bite.(He is bad-tempered but not so dangerous. )

5) The river had eaten away the banks.(The river had washed away the banks.)

3. The metaphor are divided into four types: they are Sustained metaphor Extended metaphor Dead metaphor and Mixed metaphor

4. Metaphor in the taxt

1) killing the Angel in the House

Meaning：这里用The Angel in the House暗喻作者在写作生涯中，由于根深蒂固的社会舆论观念（即认为身为女子就必须像个女人，你要有强烈的同情心，你必须魅力十足，必须绝对的慷慨大方，必须擅长处理家庭生活中的各种困难，也必须要有奉献精神），作者在事业上遇到了巨大的阻碍。

The writer use “The Angel in the House” tries to tell readers that because of the deep-rooted convention what thinks being a woman, she should be intensively sympathetic, immensely charming, utterly unselfish, excelled in the difficult arts of family life, and sacrificed herself daily, she meets the biggest obstacle.

2) And while I was writing this review.., do battle with a certain phantom.

(para.3 line3)

The word \"phantom\" is well chosen. The literary meaning of \"phantom\" is something that seems to appear to the sight but has no physical existence, a specter （鬼怪，精灵）. The word is used metaphorically, meaning a vision, something feared or dreaded, something that exists only in the mind, an illusion, any mental image or representation. Both meanings suit the context here. In the text, the phantom appears to the sight in the

form of an angel, and also it is a mental representation of the stereotyped Victorian woman.

3) Had I not killed her she would have killed me. (para.3 line 28)

If I had not killed her she would have killed me.

Remember that the phantom and the angel are used metaphorically, applied to a stereotyped Victorian woman, or rather, the traditional role of a Victorian woman and the traditional values about such a stereotype. So by killing the angel, the author means getting rid of these Victorian attitudes completely. If she had not done so, these conventional ideas would have destroyed her. It is a life-and-death struggle.

4) Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo.., flung it at her.(para.3 line34)

Paraphrase: Thus, whenever I felt the influence of the Victorian attitudes on my writing, I fought back with all my power.

Note that this sentence is part of her extended metaphor of killing the Angel in the House.

5) He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living--so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings round, darts, dashes and sudden discoveries of that very shy and

illusive spirit, the imagination.(para.5 line12)

In this sentences the underline words and phrases metaphorically, indicating that a modernist novelist has to search new and experimental ways of expressing himself and to discover his imagination, which is a shy and illusive spirit.

6) The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. (para.5 line 20)

Here the tenor is the image of a fisherman, and the vehicle: the author’s description of her professional experiences

7) The line raced through the girl's fingers. Her imagination had rushed away.

(para.5 line26)

In these sentences the author goes on with her metaphor of the fisherman. The fisherman (a \"fisherwoman\dark places where the largest fish would be. But suddenly, the line slipped through her fingers because it had hit upon something hard. As a result there was an explosion, foam (from the disturbed water) and confusion. Her fishing was interrupted, and she was roused from her dreams. The process of fishing is compared to the process of creative writing. That means the writer's imagination freely explored and examined the depths of the unconscious being, where hidden thoughts, feelings and impulses were to be found. Then suddenly the writer's imagination came across a big obstacle, and she was roused from her artist's state of unconsciousness.

8) You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. (para.7 )

Explanation: \"A room of one's own\" is the third metaphor Woolf uses in this piece. A room is a space, not only space for living, but also space for creative activity. Here a room is compared to freedom, while the house is compared to the whole society.

9) But this freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared.(para.7 )

Here Woolf is continuing with her metaphor of a room of one's own. She is saying that when women are able to pay the rent or earn five hundred pounds a year, they have won financial independence to a certain extent. She thinks that this freedom is only a beginning, and that women still have a long way to go. For when the old ideas, attitudes and values have been done away with, a void is left. And that void has to be filled with new ideas, attitudes and values.