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After Girton College, the first Oxbridge college for women, opened its doors near Cambridge in 1873, they had, for the first time, somewhere that would educate them, liberate them, if they chose, from middle-class domesticity.
格顿学院，第一所牛津剑桥女子学院，在1873年于剑桥市附近创立，她们首次有了可以接受教育的地方，使她们能从中产阶级的家庭琐事中解脱出来。
But even as they drank in knowledge behind the red walls of Girton, some of those young women longed to get beyond the cloister.
但是正当她们在格顿学院的红墙后面醉心于知识时，其中一些年轻女性渴望着跨出这与世隔绝的象牙塔。
The old ways of women's useful work -- teaching, preaching, nursing -- were no longer enough, nor was just being an educated designer of the House Beautiful.
传统的女性工作--例如教书、传教、护工，已经满足不了她们，显然她们也不满足于仅仅成为一名受过教育的家庭妇女。
They were drawn instead, as Elizabeth Gaskell had been a generation earlier, to the ugliness everywhere in the Britain, feeling once more the strain of economic crisis.
英国各处的丑恶吸引了早一代的小说家伊丽莎白·盖斯凯尔，她们则接过了她的衣钵，再次去亲身体会经济危机带来的压力。
Some of them even decided to make that new home in the places most shocking to their parents' generation, in the slums of the industrial cities,
她们中的一些人甚至决定在令父辈们震惊的地方安家，那就是工业城市里的贫民窟，
to steep themselves in the dirt and anger of their poor abused sisters, to face up to harsh truths, the kind spelled out by the young George Bernard Shaw.
让她们自己切身体会肮脏与饱受贫穷折磨的姐妹的怒火，以直面年轻的萧伯纳笔下所揭露的残酷现实。
Your slaves are beyond caring for your cries.
你的奴隶们并不关心你的眼泪。
They breed like rabbits and their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness and murder.
他们不停地繁衍后代，而贫困带来了肮脏、丑陋、欺骗、疾病、低俗、酗酒和犯罪。
The bravest of this new generation could even face head-on the most unpalatable truths, like that link between breeding and destitution.
勇敢的新一代敢于直面残酷的现实，例如过度生育与贫困的关系。
Annie Besant was the kind of do-gooder clergyman's wife, unthinkable a generation earlier, and still unthinkable to the likes of the queen.
安妮·贝赞特是一位行善神父的妻子，无论是上一代还是她所处的这个时代都无法理解她。
Annie Besant had scandalised the country by publishing contraception advice for working people.
安妮·贝赞特公开建议工人阶层进行节育，此举震惊了整个国家。
Such impertinence would not go unpunished, however, and Annie found herself the victim of a court order.
此种鲁莽必须受到惩罚，安妮发现自己身陷官司。
She lost custody of her daughter to her former husband, an unforgiving time for women judged as unfit mothers. But nothing would stop her crusading.
她不得不将女儿的监护权交给前夫，被认为是不合格的母亲，这对女人来说太无情了。但一切都不会阻止她继续改革。
Searching round for a woman's cause, Annie found one in the teenage match girls who worked amidst phosphorus fumes for Bryant and May in East London.
安妮寻找着改革的目标，在伦敦东部布赖恩特与梅火柴工厂里，她找到了在磷烟中工作的女童工。
They were paid just between four and ten shillings a week, and if they had dirty feet or an untidy bench, they were fined, taking more money out of th eir already pathetic wages.
她们的周薪只有四到十先令，如果脚丫脏了或是工作台乱了，她们面对的罚款还要高出已经微薄的薪水。
Most horrifying of all, the girls ran the constant risk of contracting the hideously disfiguring "Phossy" Jaw, since Bryant and May persisted in the use of phosphorus, which other match companies had given up.
最为可怕的是，这群少女随时都有可能染上致人毁容的磷毒性颌骨坏死病，因为布赖恩特与梅火柴工厂坚持用磷，而其他火柴公司已不再使用。
At the same time, the company was paying huge dividends to its shareholders, a disproportionate number of whom, Annie enjoyed revealing, were the clergy.
与此同时，公司还给股东巨额分红，在股东中占了相当比例的成员是安妮乐于揭露的对象，神职人员。
Annie wrote an article about the plight of the match girls for her campaigning newspaper, The Link.
安妮为宣传自己言论的报纸《链接》，写了火柴女孩悲惨命运的专题。
And together with fellow socialist campaigner Herbert Burrows, she distributed copies of it at the gates of the factory.
与社会主义推行者赫伯特·巴罗斯一起，在厂门前散发这份报纸。
The owners of Bryant and May threatened the girls with instant dismissal if they didn't sign a document repudiating the article and the journalists.
布赖恩特与梅工厂的管事者逼迫女孩们签署抵制这篇报道和记者采访的协议，否则立即解雇。
But, instead of signing, the girls went en masse to Annie and Burrows with their story.
但是，女孩们不仅没有选择签署协议，还纷纷向安妮和巴罗斯倾诉她们的故事。
They told her: You had spoken up for us. We weren't going back on you.
她们告诉她：你为我们说了话。我们不会反对你的。
A strike committee was formed. Besant and Burrows promised to pay the wages of any girl dismissed for their action.
罢工协会成立了。任何女孩要是因此而被解雇，贝赞特和巴罗斯还答应会支付其损失的薪水。
George Bernard Shaw volunteered as the cashier of the strike fund.
萧伯纳还志愿做了罢工基金会的出纳。
1,400 girls came out. The company eventually settled and Annie Besant and the girls were triumphant.
1400名女孩不再去工厂上班。最终公司投降，安妮·贝赞特和姑娘们也取得了胜利。
She was hailed as the working girls' champion and was immediately sought after by all sorts of other women aggrieved at their treatment.
她被视为女性工人阶级的领袖，深受不公待遇折磨的女性爱戴她、追随她。
In 1888, Annie campaigned for election to the Tower Hamlets School Board in a dogcart festooned with red ribbons.
1888年，安妮乘坐红丝带装扮的马车，参与竞选了陶尔哈姆莱茨学校董事会成员一职。
She won, in a landslide victory, polling 15,000 votes. Even before they had the vote, women showed they could, and would, win local elections.
她以一万五千张选票取得了压倒性的胜利。甚至在投票前，妇女们已经展示出她们能够并终将赢得地区选举。
