Siri Hustvedt’s insatiable curiosity and deep immersion in many disciplines—literature， philosophy， history， anthropology， art criticism， political theory， psychiatry， neuroscience， embryology， and epigenetics—shine through each of the 20 essays in her latest book， Mothers， Fathers， and Others.

希莉·哈斯特维特对文学、哲学、历史、人类学、艺术评论、政治理论、精神病学、神经系统科学、胚胎学及表观遗传学等诸多领域有着永无止境的求知欲，并深耕其中，这一点在她的新书《母亲、父亲及他者：随笔集》所收录的20篇文章中显现无遗。

An amalgamation of memoir， cultural criticism， and feminist philosophy， Hustvedt’s collection opens with a deeply personal essay， “Tillie，” a tribute to her paternal grandmother， Matilda Underdahl Hustvedt， who was born in 1887 in Minnesota to Norwegian parents.

该书融合回忆录、文化批评与女性主义哲学，开篇之作“蒂莉”极具个人色彩，纪念作者的祖母玛蒂尔达·安德达尔·哈斯特维特——老人于1887年出生于明尼苏达州，父母是挪威移民。

What most interests Hustvedt—beyond making her grandmother come alive on the page—is the fact that Hustvedt’s father， in creating a text for his progeny1 called The Hustvedt Family， provides little information about his mother or his maternal line and focuses instead on his paternal ancestors. Hustvedt is concerned about this omission：

哈斯特维特真正关注的，不只是让其祖母的形象在纸上重现，而是探究为何父亲为后代留下了一份文字资料，称为“哈斯特维特家族史”，却仅仅着墨于父系祖先，对自己的母亲与母系亲属几乎只字不提。这种刻意的遗漏让她备感焦虑：

“Did the debt to her disappear into the forgotten land of the mother and mothers， the speechless realms of the womb where every human being begins and from which every human being is born， a territory Western culture has studiously repressed， suppressed， or avoided to a degree I have come to regard as spectacular？”

“祖母的贡献是否就此湮没于对母亲和母系祖先的遗忘之境，湮没于那孕育和分娩人类生命却始终缄默的子宫之中？整个西方文化对这一问题的刻意压抑、压制或回避，在我看来已经到了触目惊心的地步。”

Indeed， the central project of many of these essays is to examine the position of mothers—and more broadly， women. In “A Walk with My Mother，” Hustvedt paints a portrait of her mother， Ester Vegan Hustvedt， who was born in Norway in 1923， married an American， raised a family in Minnesota， and died in 2019. While she “in many ways fulfilled a fantasy about mothers propagated in postwar， mid-century America，” she was far more complex than the “angel in the house” stereotype allows.

本书多篇文章的核心议题正是在于审视母亲们的社会处境，进而将关注对象延伸至整个女性群体。在“与母亲同行”一文中，作者刻画了自己的母亲埃斯特·维根·哈斯特维特的形象：1923年出生于挪威，嫁给美国人后在明尼苏达养育子女，直到2019年去世。在哈斯特维特眼中，尽管母亲“多方面践行了战后1950年代美国广泛传播的母职幻想”，相较于英国诗人考文垂笔下的“家中天使”，母亲的复杂性绝非这一刻板形象所能定义。

Grounded in her mother’s and her own experiences of motherhood， as well as a broad historical and cultural perspective， Hustvedt writes：

哈斯特维特从自己与母亲的母职经历出发，以历史文化这一宏观视角作为切入点，这样写道：

“Motherhood has been and is drowned in so much sentimental nonsense with so many punitive rules for how to act and feel that it remains a cultural straitjacket， even today. The metaphor is highly conscious. The straitjacket used to restrain psychiatric patients is an apt image for what [Adrienne] Rich meant by keeping women under male institutional control. When the maternal becomes a static concept， a fantasy about sacrificial nurturing without limit， it serves as a moral weapon to punish mothers who are perceived as wild.”

“一直以来，母亲身份始终淹没于缺乏理性依据的胡言乱语，以及无数惩罚性教条，以便约束母亲的行为与感受，这一切构成一种文化约束衣，时至今日仍然存在。