You can think of Helen sailing off the cliff into the lake,

你们可以想到海伦离开崖边驶向湖中
which was seen as empowering, in her car.

这被视为一种赋权在她的车里
It did not take long for readers of this novel to abandon that,

很快该书的读者就放弃了这个
because of the predominance of the themes that I'm going

因为我接下来要讲的主题的支配地位
to talk about next, and that's the question of: how can

这就提出了一个问题
you be a coherent person in this world?

在这个世界你如何做一个有一致性的人
What does that look like?

那看着像什么
Ruth is very troubled by this quality.

露丝对这个性质非常困扰
It comes though in tiny ways, like on 78, with other characters.

尽管是小的方面比如在78页跟其他角色
Lucille, we are told, is caught cheating, by her teacher,

书里说露西尔因为作弊被老师抓住
on a test:

在一次考试中
Lucille was much too indifferent to school ever to be

露西尔对学校漠不关心以至于对作弊