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第38期 美国女继承人如何成为美元公主

编辑:Alisa   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet
  
  • You know, many of us did a lot of binge watching during the thick of the pandemic. That includes economists like Mark Taylor, who's a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
  • 在疫情最严重的时候,我们中的许多人都看了很多电视剧。其中包括圣路易斯华盛顿大学教授马克·泰勒这样的经济学家。
  • I think I was watching "Downton Abbey." So that's the classic British drama set during the early 1900s. And Mark recalls this one scene between the Earl of Grantham and his American wife. They're talking about their daughter.
  • 我想我当时在看《唐顿庄园》。这是一部以20世纪初为背景的经典英国戏剧。马克回忆起格兰瑟姆伯爵和他的美国妻子之间的一幕。他们在谈论他们的女儿。
  • Do you think she would have been happy with a fortune hunter? She might have been. I was.
  • 你认为她会和一个寻宝者在一起感到高兴吗?她可能会。我就是。
  • There was a little rebuke pointing out that her fortune had actually saved Downton Abbey from ruin a couple of decades earlier when she married into the family.
  • 有人指责说,几十年前,当她嫁给唐顿庄园的家族时,她的财富实际上拯救了唐顿庄园免于毁灭。
  • The family in "Downton Abbey" is fictional. But for a few decades, beginning in the late 1800s, around a hundred real-life American women did marry British aristocrats.
  • 《唐顿庄园》中的家族是虚构的。但从19世纪末开始的几十年里,大约有100名现实生活中的美国女性嫁给了英国贵族。
  • These brides became known as dollar princesses. And their marriages were matches made in economic heaven. This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Wailin Wong.
  • 这些新娘被称为“美元公主”。他们的婚姻是经济天堂的良配。这里是THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY。我是Wailin Wong。
  • And I'm Darian Woods. It is Love Week on THE INDICATOR, our series about the economics of love and romance. There's one commodity that makes all the lovebirds sing.
  • 我是Darian Woods。这是THE INDICATOR的爱情周,我们的系列节目是关于爱情和浪漫的经济学。有一种商品让所有的情侣都为之倾倒。
  • Today on the show, we explain how rich American women ended up in the British aristocracy during the Gilded Age.
  • 今天在节目中,我们将解释镀金时代富有的美国女性如何成为英国贵族。
  • It is a trans-Atlantic historical saga that involves plummeting crop prices, crumbling mansions, calls for economic protectionism, and a baby Winston Churchill.
  • 这是一个跨大西洋的历史传奇,涉及农作物价格暴跌、豪宅摇摇欲坠、经济保护主义呼声和小温斯顿·丘吉尔。
  • The British aristocracy has always been a very exclusive club. It's this small group of men with titles - you know, your barons and your viscounts. And in the late 1800s, they were firmly established as the largest landowners in Britain.
  • 英国贵族一直是一个非常排外的俱乐部。这是一小群有头衔的人——男爵和子爵。在19世纪后期,他们稳固地成为英国最大的土地所有者。
  • They owned estates spanning tens of thousands of acres. Their income came from the labor of tenant farmers who grew crops on the land. But then, economist Mark Taylor says, the system got disrupted.
  • 他们拥有数万英亩的庄园。他们的收入来自在土地上种植庄稼的佃农的劳动。但经济学家马克·泰勒说,这个体系后来被破坏了。
  • The problem is that the aristocracy needed money. And it was all - it's all the fault of the Americans. What did we do? Well, there were several factors - economic factors.
  • 问题是贵族需要钱。而这全都是美国人的错。我们做了什么?有几个因素——经济因素。
  • The big economic factor was an influx of cheap agricultural products from the U.S. into Britain. American agriculture was booming.
  • 最大的经济因素是美国廉价农产品大量涌入英国。美国农业蓬勃发展。
  • The U.S. government had opened up a number of states, including prairie states like Oklahoma and Nebraska, to homesteaders.
  • 美国政府向自耕农开放了许多州,包括俄克拉荷马州和内布拉斯加州等草原州。
  • Farmers were using the recently invented steel plow to cultivate that tough prairie soil. They could then send their grain across the country by rail and then on to Britain via steamships.
  • 农民们使用新发明的钢犁耕种坚硬的草原土壤。然后他们可以通过铁路将粮食运往全国各地,再通过轮船运往英国。
  • All of this caused British crop prices to tank, and aristocratic families found themselves short of the money they needed for things like maintaining their big country homes.
  • 所有这些都导致英国农作物价格暴跌,贵族家庭发现自己没有足够的钱来维持他们的大乡间别墅。
  • The landowners, including the aristocracy, found that their income fell. Their tenant farmers went bust. They couldn't pay their rent, and they were strapped for cash.
  • 包括贵族在内的地主发现他们的收入下降了。他们的佃农破产了。他们付不起房租,而且手头拮据。
  • One way that money traditionally flowed between these wealthy families was through marriage. The families of brides would pay a dowry - basically a pile of cash - to the groom's family.
  • 传统上,这些富裕家庭之间的资金流动方式之一是婚姻。新娘的家人会向新郎的家人支付嫁妆——基本上是一大笔现金。
  • Now, in rosier economic times, aristocratic men married daughters of fellow aristocratic families, or they would go a step down the social ladder to wealthy families who owned land but didn't have a noble title.
  • 现在,在经济形势好转的时候,贵族男子会娶其他贵族家庭的女儿,或者他们会在社会阶梯上往下走,娶拥有土地但没有贵族头衔的富裕家庭。
  • The problem was that all these landowning families were hurting for cash.
  • 问题是所有这些土地所有者家庭都缺钱。
  • What's the next best thing? Well, perhaps we could find a very rich American heiress who could inject some money into this system and help out these impecunious aristocracy towards the end of the 19th century. And that's exactly what happened.
  • 接下来最好的选择是什么?也许我们可以找到一位非常富有的美国女继承人,她可以向这个系统注入一些钱,并在19世纪末帮助这些身无分文的贵族。而这正是发生的事情。
  • So cash-strapped British aristocrats represented the demand side of the dollar-princess marriage equation. For the supply side, we have to cross the Atlantic to the U.S., where some families were emerging as the nouveau riche - new money.
  • 资金短缺的英国贵族代表了美元公主婚姻方程式的需求方。对于供应方,我们必须跨越大西洋来到美国,那里的一些家庭正在成为暴发户——新贵。
  • Whenever you ask me what they did, I'm like, railroads, horse breeding... Horses. You know, it's always the same - horses, railroads, minerals.
  • 每当你问我他们做什么时,我都会说,铁路、养马。总是一样——马、铁路、矿产。
  • Kristen Richardson is the author of a book called "The Season: A Social History Of The Debutante."
  • 克里斯汀·理查森(Kristen Richardson)是The Season: A Social History Of The Debutante一书的作者。
  • The debutante ball was the elaborate social custom through which wealthy parents brokered marriages between their children. Kristen says, for the daughters of these families, marriage was their only career path.
  • 国际元媛舞会是一种复杂的社交习俗,富裕的父母通过这种习俗为子女牵线搭桥。克里斯汀说,对于这些家庭的女儿来说,婚姻是她们唯一的职业道路。
  • We look at it now, and we think, wow, that's crazy. But there wasn't another option.
  • 现在看看,我们会想,哇,这太疯狂了。但当时没有其他选择。
  • If you didn't get married, you were either a drain on your family's resources by being at home, or you were ruined in some way. So it was about status, and status just protected you, basically.
  • 如果你不结婚,你要么因为待在家里而消耗家庭的资源,要么在某种程度上被毁掉。这关乎地位,而地位基本上只是保护你。
  • These new-money American families coveted status, but they couldn't get it. They were shunned by American high society, which was ruled by old-money families in New York.
  • 这些新贵美国家庭渴望地位,但他们得不到。他们被美国上流社会所排斥,而上流社会则被纽约的老钱家庭所统治。
  • One of these new-money families was the Jeromes. Mr. and Mrs. Jerome had three daughters who couldn't break into the social elite of the U.S. So Mrs. Jerome took her girls first to Paris, then to London.
  • 其中一个新贵家庭是杰罗姆家族。杰罗姆先生和夫人有三个女儿,她们无法进入美国的社会精英阶层。因此,杰罗姆夫人先带着女儿去了巴黎,然后去了伦敦。
  • They kind of sneaked into London society. Like, they came in through the side door with all their amazing, American, fresh manners and good looks. They were beautiful.
  • 她们偷偷潜入伦敦社交界。她们从侧门进来,带着令人惊叹的、美国式的、清新的举止和姣好的外表。她们很漂亮。
  • So they hit the scene. And Jennie - the middle daughter - at a regatta met the son of the Duke of Marlborough. The couple fell in love immediately, dancing a quadrille.
  • 于是她们就进入了社交圈。二女儿珍妮在一次赛艇会上遇到了马尔伯勒公爵的儿子。两人跳着四对方舞,一见钟情。
  • What does the quadrille look like, Wailin? I'm not exactly sure. I imagine it's, like, the electric slide of its time. OK, yeah.
  • 四对方舞是什么样子的,Wailin?我不太清楚。我猜它就像当时的电动滑梯。好吧,是的。
  • Kind of, like, a 19th-century version. I didn't go to a lot of regattas growing up. But, you know, it seemed to have worked. The couple got engaged, and then it was time for their fathers to haggle over the dowry - how much money would the Jeromes pay?
  • 有点像19世纪的版本。我小时候没怎么参加过赛艇会。但这似乎很成功。这对夫妇订婚了,然后他们的父亲开始讨价还价嫁妆——杰罗姆一家会付多少钱?
  • Kristen says negotiations got pretty tense. One issue was that Jennie's father wanted to give her a separate allowance that she would get to control. The Duke of Marlborough was aghast at this idea.
  • 克里斯汀说谈判变得相当紧张。一个问题是珍妮的父亲想给她一笔单独的零花钱,她可以自己决定。马尔伯勒公爵对这个想法感到震惊。
  • Yeah, he had grievances. But you know what else he had? A son with a gambling problem and a palace with 14 acres of roof that required constant maintenance.
  • 是的,他有不满。但你知道他还有什么吗?一个有赌博问题的儿子和一座需要不断维护的14英亩屋顶宫殿。
  • He needed the cash, and that meant he and his wife would have to marry off one of their sons to Jennie Jerome.
  • 他需要现金,这意味着他和妻子必须让他们的一个儿子娶珍妮·杰罗姆。
  • Eventually, they were worn down as their house was crumbling from disrepair and needing Jennie's money.
  • 最终,他们筋疲力尽,因为他们的房子因失修而摇摇欲坠,需要珍妮的钱。
  • Jennie's dowry would be worth around $7.5 million in today's money, according to economist Mark Taylor. And she got her allowance, too.
  • 根据经济学家马克·泰勒的说法,珍妮的嫁妆按今天的货币价值约为750万美元。她也得到了她的津贴。
  • The couple got married in 1874. They named their firstborn son Winston, and he grew up to be the prime minister of Britain. Yeah, he's that Winston Churchill.
  • 这对夫妇于1874年结婚。他们给长子取名为温斯顿,他长大后成为英国首相。是的,他就是那个温斯顿·丘吉尔。
  • Yeah. And his mother, Jennie Jerome is considered the first dollar princess. Kristen says the Jeromes were the pioneers.
  • 他的母亲珍妮·杰罗姆被认为是第一位美元公主。克里斯汀说杰罗姆一家是先驱者。
  • They prototyped a way to marry into the British aristocracy - the ultimate status symbol. After Jennie, dozens more American heiresses followed suit. That included the great-great-grandmother of Prince William, the heir to the British throne.
  • 她们开创了一种嫁入英国贵族的模式——这是终极地位的象征。继珍妮之后,数十名美国女继承人也纷纷效仿。其中包括英国王位继承人威廉王子的曾曾祖母。
  • Other American heiresses found husbands among European aristocratic families outside of Britain.
  • 其他美国女继承人在英国以外的欧洲贵族家庭中找到了丈夫。
  • All told, Kristen says some 500 American women married European aristocrats between Jennie's marriage and World War I. Their dowries were estimated at more than $4 billion in today's money.
  • 总的来说,克里斯汀说,从珍妮结婚到一战期间,大约有500名美国女性嫁给了欧洲贵族。按今天的货币价值计算,她们的嫁妆估计超过40亿美元。
  • It's a lot of money flowing from the U.S. to Europe. Kristen says some commentators in the U.S. saw these marriages as an unpatriotic transfer of wealth.
  • 从美国流向欧洲的资金数额很大。克里斯汀说,美国的一些评论员认为这些婚姻是一种不爱国的财富转移。
  • There was even talk of putting an export tariff on the brides so that their families would pay a tax on their daughters as they left the country.
  • 甚至有人说要对新娘征收出口关税,这样她们的家人在女儿离开美国时就要为她们纳税。
  • And there was this kind of idea circulating in the press at the time of, well, these girls are, like, a mineral deposit or something, and we should all benefit from it. Oh, how romantic. I know, it's very romantic.
  • 当时媒体上流传着这样的想法,这些女孩就像是矿藏,我们都应该从中受益。哦,多么浪漫。我知道,这非常浪漫。
  • The wave of trans-Atlantic marriages came to a halt with the outbreak of World War I, which upended life for people across socioeconomic classes.
  • 第一次世界大战爆发后,跨大西洋婚姻浪潮戛然而止,这场战争颠覆了各个社会经济阶层人们的生活。
  • The resulting cultural and economic changes meant that women could have jobs other than getting married. They didn't have to be mineral deposits anymore.
  • 由此产生的文化和经济变化意味着女性除了结婚之外还可以从事其他工作。她们不必再是矿藏了。


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You know, many of us did a lot of binge watching during the thick of the pandemic. That includes economists like Mark Taylor, who's a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

在疫情最严重的时候,我们中的许多人都看了很多电视剧。其中包括圣路易斯华盛顿大学教授马克·泰勒这样的经济学家。

I think I was watching "Downton Abbey." So that's the classic British drama set during the early 1900s. And Mark recalls this one scene between the Earl of Grantham and his American wife. They're talking about their daughter.

我想我当时在看《唐顿庄园》。这是一部以20世纪初为背景的经典英国戏剧。马克回忆起格兰瑟姆伯爵和他的美国妻子之间的一幕。他们在谈论他们的女儿。

Do you think she would have been happy with a fortune hunter? She might have been. I was.

你认为她会和一个寻宝者在一起感到高兴吗?她可能会。我就是。

There was a little rebuke pointing out that her fortune had actually saved Downton Abbey from ruin a couple of decades earlier when she married into the family.

有人指责说,几十年前,当她嫁给唐顿庄园的家族时,她的财富实际上拯救了唐顿庄园免于毁灭。

The family in "Downton Abbey" is fictional. But for a few decades, beginning in the late 1800s, around a hundred real-life American women did marry British aristocrats.

《唐顿庄园》中的家族是虚构的。但从19世纪末开始的几十年里,大约有100名现实生活中的美国女性嫁给了英国贵族。

These brides became known as dollar princesses. And their marriages were matches made in economic heaven. This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Wailin Wong.

这些新娘被称为“美元公主”。他们的婚姻是经济天堂的良配。这里是THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY。我是Wailin Wong

And I'm Darian Woods. It is Love Week on THE INDICATOR, our series about the economics of love and romance. There's one commodity that makes all the lovebirds sing.

我是Darian Woods。这是THE INDICATOR的爱情周,我们的系列节目是关于爱情和浪漫的经济学。有一种商品让所有的情侣都为之倾倒。

Today on the show, we explain how rich American women ended up in the British aristocracy during the Gilded Age.

今天在节目中,我们将解释镀金时代富有的美国女性如何成为英国贵族。

It is a trans-Atlantic historical saga that involves plummeting crop prices, crumbling mansions, calls for economic protectionism, and a baby Winston Churchill.

这是一个跨大西洋的历史传奇,涉及农作物价格暴跌、豪宅摇摇欲坠、经济保护主义呼声和小温斯顿·丘吉尔。

The British aristocracy has always been a very exclusive club. It's this small group of men with titles - you know, your barons and your viscounts. And in the late 1800s, they were firmly established as the largest landowners in Britain.

英国贵族一直是一个非常排外的俱乐部。这是一小群有头衔的人——男爵和子爵。在19世纪后期,他们稳固地成为英国最大的土地所有者。

They owned estates spanning tens of thousands of acres. Their income came from the labor of tenant farmers who grew crops on the land. But then, economist Mark Taylor says, the system got disrupted.

他们拥有数万英亩的庄园。他们的收入来自在土地上种植庄稼的佃农的劳动。但经济学家马克·泰勒说,这个体系后来被破坏了。

The problem is that the aristocracy needed money. And it was all - it's all the fault of the Americans. What did we do? Well, there were several factors - economic factors.

问题是贵族需要钱。而这全都是美国人的错。我们做了什么?有几个因素——经济因素。

The big economic factor was an influx of cheap agricultural products from the U.S. into Britain. American agriculture was booming.

最大的经济因素是美国廉价农产品大量涌入英国。美国农业蓬勃发展。

The U.S. government had opened up a number of states, including prairie states like Oklahoma and Nebraska, to homesteaders.

美国政府向自耕农开放了许多州,包括俄克拉荷马州和内布拉斯加州等草原州。

Farmers were using the recently invented steel plow to cultivate that tough prairie soil. They could then send their grain across the country by rail and then on to Britain via steamships.

农民们使用新发明的钢犁耕种坚硬的草原土壤。然后他们可以通过铁路将粮食运往全国各地,再通过轮船运往英国。

All of this caused British crop prices to tank, and aristocratic families found themselves short of the money they needed for things like maintaining their big country homes.

所有这些都导致英国农作物价格暴跌,贵族家庭发现自己没有足够的钱来维持他们的大乡间别墅。

The landowners, including the aristocracy, found that their income fell. Their tenant farmers went bust. They couldn't pay their rent, and they were strapped for cash.

包括贵族在内的地主发现他们的收入下降了。他们的佃农破产了。他们付不起房租,而且手头拮据。

One way that money traditionally flowed between these wealthy families was through marriage. The families of brides would pay a dowry - basically a pile of cash - to the groom's family.

传统上,这些富裕家庭之间的资金流动方式之一是婚姻。新娘的家人会向新郎的家人支付嫁妆——基本上是一大笔现金。

Now, in rosier economic times, aristocratic men married daughters of fellow aristocratic families, or they would go a step down the social ladder to wealthy families who owned land but didn't have a noble title.

现在,在经济形势好转的时候,贵族男子会娶其他贵族家庭的女儿,或者他们会在社会阶梯上往下走,娶拥有土地但没有贵族头衔的富裕家庭。

The problem was that all these landowning families were hurting for cash.

问题是所有这些土地所有者家庭都缺钱。

What's the next best thing? Well, perhaps we could find a very rich American heiress who could inject some money into this system and help out these impecunious aristocracy towards the end of the 19th century. And that's exactly what happened.

接下来最好的选择是什么?也许我们可以找到一位非常富有的美国女继承人,她可以向这个系统注入一些钱,并在19世纪末帮助这些身无分文的贵族。而这正是发生的事情。

So cash-strapped British aristocrats represented the demand side of the dollar-princess marriage equation. For the supply side, we have to cross the Atlantic to the U.S., where some families were emerging as the nouveau riche - new money.

资金短缺的英国贵族代表了美元公主婚姻方程式的需求方。对于供应方,我们必须跨越大西洋来到美国,那里的一些家庭正在成为暴发户——新贵。

Whenever you ask me what they did, I'm like, railroads, horse breeding... Horses. You know, it's always the same - horses, railroads, minerals.

每当你问我他们做什么时,我都会说,铁路、养马。总是一样——马、铁路、矿产。

Kristen Richardson is the author of a book called "The Season: A Social History Of The Debutante."

克里斯汀·理查森(Kristen Richardson)是The Season: A Social History Of The Debutante一书的作者。

The debutante ball was the elaborate social custom through which wealthy parents brokered marriages between their children. Kristen says, for the daughters of these families, marriage was their only career path.

国际元媛舞会是一种复杂的社交习俗,富裕的父母通过这种习俗为子女牵线搭桥。克里斯汀说,对于这些家庭的女儿来说,婚姻是她们唯一的职业道路。

We look at it now, and we think, wow, that's crazy. But there wasn't another option.

现在看看,我们会想,哇,这太疯狂了。但当时没有其他选择。

If you didn't get married, you were either a drain on your family's resources by being at home, or you were ruined in some way. So it was about status, and status just protected you, basically.

如果你不结婚,你要么因为待在家里而消耗家庭的资源,要么在某种程度上被毁掉。这关乎地位,而地位基本上只是保护你。

These new-money American families coveted status, but they couldn't get it. They were shunned by American high society, which was ruled by old-money families in New York.

这些新贵美国家庭渴望地位,但他们得不到。他们被美国上流社会所排斥,而上流社会则被纽约的老钱家庭所统治。

One of these new-money families was the Jeromes. Mr. and Mrs. Jerome had three daughters who couldn't break into the social elite of the U.S. So Mrs. Jerome took her girls first to Paris, then to London.

其中一个新贵家庭是杰罗姆家族。杰罗姆先生和夫人有三个女儿,她们无法进入美国的社会精英阶层。因此,杰罗姆夫人先带着女儿去了巴黎,然后去了伦敦。

They kind of sneaked into London society. Like, they came in through the side door with all their amazing, American, fresh manners and good looks. They were beautiful.

她们偷偷潜入伦敦社交界。她们从侧门进来,带着令人惊叹的、美国式的、清新的举止和姣好的外表。她们很漂亮。

So they hit the scene. And Jennie - the middle daughter - at a regatta met the son of the Duke of Marlborough. The couple fell in love immediately, dancing a quadrille.

于是她们就进入了社交圈。二女儿珍妮在一次赛艇会上遇到了马尔伯勒公爵的儿子。两人跳着四对方舞,一见钟情。

What does the quadrille look like, Wailin? I'm not exactly sure. I imagine it's, like, the electric slide of its time. OK, yeah.

四对方舞是什么样子的,Wailin?我不太清楚。我猜它就像当时的电动滑梯。好吧,是的。

Kind of, like, a 19th-century version. I didn't go to a lot of regattas growing up. But, you know, it seemed to have worked. The couple got engaged, and then it was time for their fathers to haggle over the dowry - how much money would the Jeromes pay?

有点像19世纪的版本。我小时候没怎么参加过赛艇会。但这似乎很成功。这对夫妇订婚了,然后他们的父亲开始讨价还价嫁妆——杰罗姆一家会付多少钱?

Kristen says negotiations got pretty tense. One issue was that Jennie's father wanted to give her a separate allowance that she would get to control. The Duke of Marlborough was aghast at this idea.

克里斯汀说谈判变得相当紧张。一个问题是珍妮的父亲想给她一笔单独的零花钱,她可以自己决定。马尔伯勒公爵对这个想法感到震惊。

Yeah, he had grievances. But you know what else he had? A son with a gambling problem and a palace with 14 acres of roof that required constant maintenance.

是的,他有不满。但你知道他还有什么吗?一个有赌博问题的儿子和一座需要不断维护的14英亩屋顶宫殿。

He needed the cash, and that meant he and his wife would have to marry off one of their sons to Jennie Jerome.

他需要现金,这意味着他和妻子必须让他们的一个儿子娶珍妮·杰罗姆。

Eventually, they were worn down as their house was crumbling from disrepair and needing Jennie's money.

最终,他们筋疲力尽,因为他们的房子因失修而摇摇欲坠,需要珍妮的钱。

Jennie's dowry would be worth around $7.5 million in today's money, according to economist Mark Taylor. And she got her allowance, too.

根据经济学家马克·泰勒的说法,珍妮的嫁妆按今天的货币价值约为750万美元。她也得到了她的津贴。

The couple got married in 1874. They named their firstborn son Winston, and he grew up to be the prime minister of Britain. Yeah, he's that Winston Churchill.

这对夫妇于1874年结婚。他们给长子取名为温斯顿,他长大后成为英国首相。是的,他就是那个温斯顿·丘吉尔。

Yeah. And his mother, Jennie Jerome is considered the first dollar princess. Kristen says the Jeromes were the pioneers.

他的母亲珍妮·杰罗姆被认为是第一位美元公主。克里斯汀说杰罗姆一家是先驱者。

They prototyped a way to marry into the British aristocracy - the ultimate status symbol. After Jennie, dozens more American heiresses followed suit. That included the great-great-grandmother of Prince William, the heir to the British throne.

她们开创了一种嫁入英国贵族的模式——这是终极地位的象征。继珍妮之后,数十名美国女继承人也纷纷效仿。其中包括英国王位继承人威廉王子的曾曾祖母。

Other American heiresses found husbands among European aristocratic families outside of Britain.

其他美国女继承人在英国以外的欧洲贵族家庭中找到了丈夫。

All told, Kristen says some 500 American women married European aristocrats between Jennie's marriage and World War I. Their dowries were estimated at more than $4 billion in today's money.

总的来说,克里斯汀说,从珍妮结婚到一战期间,大约有500名美国女性嫁给了欧洲贵族。按今天的货币价值计算,她们的嫁妆估计超过40亿美元。

It's a lot of money flowing from the U.S. to Europe. Kristen says some commentators in the U.S. saw these marriages as an unpatriotic transfer of wealth.

从美国流向欧洲的资金数额很大。克里斯汀说,美国的一些评论员认为这些婚姻是一种不爱国的财富转移。

There was even talk of putting an export tariff on the brides so that their families would pay a tax on their daughters as they left the country.

甚至有人说要对新娘征收出口关税,这样她们的家人在女儿离开美国时就要为她们纳税。

And there was this kind of idea circulating in the press at the time of, well, these girls are, like, a mineral deposit or something, and we should all benefit from it. Oh, how romantic. I know, it's very romantic.

当时媒体上流传着这样的想法,这些女孩就像是矿藏,我们都应该从中受益。哦,多么浪漫。我知道,这非常浪漫。

The wave of trans-Atlantic marriages came to a halt with the outbreak of World War I, which upended life for people across socioeconomic classes.

第一次世界大战爆发后,跨大西洋婚姻浪潮戛然而止,这场战争颠覆了各个社会经济阶层人们的生活。

The resulting cultural and economic changes meant that women could have jobs other than getting married. They didn't have to be mineral deposits anymore.

由此产生的文化和经济变化意味着女性除了结婚之外还可以从事其他工作。她们不必再是矿藏了。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
commodity [kə'mɔditi]

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n. 商品,日用品

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impecunious [.impi'kju:niəs]

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adj. 没有钱的,身无分文的,贫穷的

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crumbling

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v. 破碎;崩溃(crumble的ing形式) adj.

 
aristocracy [.æris'tɔkrəsi]

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n. 贵族,贵族阶级

 
rebuke [ri'bju:k]

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v. 斥责,指责,阻止 n. 指责,谴责,非难

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fortune ['fɔ:tʃən]

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n. 财产,命运,运气

 
fault [fɔ:lt]

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n. 缺点,过失,故障,毛病,过错,[地]断层

 
drain [drein]

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n. 下水道,排水沟,消耗
v. 耗尽,排出,

 
romantic [rə'mæntik]

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adj. 浪漫的
n. 浪漫的人

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prime [praim]

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adj. 最初的,首要的,最好的,典型的
n.

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