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English translation: You (universal you)/any man should never have anything to do/any interaction with a diseased woman
11:44 Jan 3, 2023
English language (monolingual) [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature
English term or phrase:have nothing to do with a woman who is diseased
I am translating an Ellen La Motte book "The Backwash of War" about WWI atrocities witnessed by a nurse of a field hospital. I am interested in this part:
A woman nurse came down the ward. She was the only one, and she tried to cover him with the fallen bedding. Marius attempted to clutch her hand, to encircle her with his weak, delirious, amorous arms. She dodged swiftly, and directed an orderly to cover him with the fallen blankets. Marius laughed in glee, a fiendish, feeble, shrieking laugh. “HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH A WOMAN WHO IS DISEASED!” he shouted. “Never! Never! Never!”
I have put the phrase that interests me in capitals. Does he mean "I have nothing to do with a diseased woman" or "[He] who is diseased doesn't have anything to do with a woman"?
Explanation: The sentence has the form of an injuction, a general one, a maxim. Imagine the verb in the imperative. The man says to himself and to all men in general to never get involved with a a diseased woman (probably referring to the nurse as the 'diseased woman').
I think it's an ironic reference to military rules
08:42 Jan 4, 2023
The patient, for what ever reason, tries to embrace the nurse. When she rejects him, he quotes guidelines issued to soldiers to avoid STDs. This was pretty standard advice: "the only real way to avoid disease is to avoid diseased women entirely" (see discussion:https://digpodcast.org/2020/05/31/sex-soldiers-combatting-se...
It could just be his way of making an excuse for her 'rejection' — turning it round to make it sound as if he were the rejector, on the grounds that she was "unclean". I've (unbelievably!) heard things like this said, a guy who was given the brush-off couldn't accept that every woman wouldn't fancy him, so claimed she must be lesbian! Here, possibly, the implication might be "carrying an STD".
As they were in a hospital the metaphor about ill people emerges naturally, and what he means humorously is that she is not ill, to fly away from him. It’s an irony.
I expect he means that he wishes to have no contact with a woman who has a disease and he orders the nurse to consider the same.
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Answers
23 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +7
You (universal you)/any man should never have anything to do/any interaction with a diseased woman
Explanation: The sentence has the form of an injuction, a general one, a maxim. Imagine the verb in the imperative. The man says to himself and to all men in general to never get involved with a a diseased woman (probably referring to the nurse as the 'diseased woman').
FPC Native speaker of: Italian PRO pts in category: 4
Notes to answerer
Asker: Why would he refer to the nurse as a "diseased woman"?
peer agreement (net): +7