A leading figure of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was highly acclaimed by the Chinese government after 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded, and Mao Zedong was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun’s writing. According to Lu Xun’s preface to Outcry, “Imagine an iron house: without windows or doors, utterly indestructible, and full of sound sleepers — all about to suffocate to death. Let them die in their sleep, and they will feel nothing. Is it right to cry out, to rouse the light sleepers among them, causing them inconsolable agony before they die?” (Lu, 2009, 19). Lu Xun named the book Outcry and utilized literature as a means of awakening sleeping Chinese. He argues in My Views of Chastity that the soul of Chinese people is degenerate by feudal moral standards, including chastity, (Lu, 1918, 115). Lu Xun’s literary mission as awakening Chinese people manifests itself in the portrayal of tragic character Xianglin’s wife.
Lu Xun reveals the male superiority concept by disclosing people’s disdain for Xianglin’s wife in Luzhen. The family first accepts Xianglin’s wife as a maid due to her prodigious capacity for work and everyone said that “she worked better than a man,” (Lu, 2009, 167). However, after knowing that Xianglin’s wife ran away from home, the uncle showed his dislike and the family judged her, without caring about Xianglin’s wife’s worries. The family only cared about other people’s opinions of them in Luzhen, because two other men and a woman forcibly took her away and they did not help. Due to the traditional Chinese feudal mindset, the people in Luzhen did not consider the mother-in-law’s kidnap of Xianglin’s wife as strange, as if the wife is her husband’s personal property and should be inferior. When Xianglin’s wife came back to the family after her second husband and little son were dead, the uncle warned the aunt that Xianglin’s wife could bring her bad luck and “she must not touch anything to do with the sacrifices, because the ancestors would not touch the food, if it was not ritually clean,” (Lu,172).
Related to Lu Xun’s “My View on Chastity”, jie means that a woman does not remarry or run off with a lover after her husband dies according to moralists, (Lu, 1918, 114). In this case, the traditional moral codes play a large role in people’s disdain for Xianglin’s wife in Luzhen, as she ran off and finally remarried. Lu Xun argued that chastity is not moral because morality should be something required of everyone and be within the reach of everyone, (Lu, 116). Lu Xun’s “New Year’s sacrifice” addresses the ridiculousness of lowering women’s status in family and society by disclosing Chinese feudal traditions in Luzhen.
Furtheremore, Lu Xun uncovers the fatality of traditional feudal mindset to Xianglin’s wife. The conversation between Mrs Liu and Xianglin’s wife signifies the discrimination between a woman to another woman, after Xianglin’s wife was sold to a man: “I don’t believe you…. You must have wanted it in the end,” said Mrs. Liu, (Lu, 175). Although women tend to be more sympathetic to women and stand together in modern perspective, Mrs. Lius’s prejudice and indifference to Xianglin’s wife’s suffering further underscores feudal ethics’ impacts on Chinese people. Mrs. Liu then suggested that Xianglin’s wife pay her dues, go to a temple and buy a threshold to stand in for her body, and then numerous people will stamp over it to punish her for the crime in this life in order to avoid suffering in the after life, (Lu, 175). Her metaphor of Xianglin’s wife’s remarriage as dues and her suggestions of avoiding suffering underline the superstition and rooted beliefs in the masses’ minds, which could hardly be aware of the structure of power.
Similar to Lu’s perceptions in “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?”, the fact that people in Luzhen were irritated by Xianglin’s wife’s repetitive grievances of losing her son exemplifies how the masses are spectators at a drama. As people in Luzhen remain the same to celebrate the New Year after the tragedy of Xianglin’s wife’s sudden death, these spectators immediately forget the enjoyment of the scene after walking away. Similar to Nora, Xianglin’s wife is simply a puppet of her husband, the mother-in-law, and the family. At the same time, her son is her puppet and the people in Luzhen and Xianglin’s wife are all the puppets of the traditional moral standards.
Lu Xun’s sharp and sarcastic words in “New Year’s sacrifice” aim to disclose the ridiculousness of traditional moral standards in China and then awaken sleeping Chinese. He calls for women as well as the broader masses’ emancipation from feudal ethics.
Author: Iris Guo
References:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun
- Chen, Janet, Peikai Cheng and Michael Lestz, editors. 2013. The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013.
- Lu Xun. 2017. Jottings under Lamplight. Translated and edited by Eileen Cheng and Kirk Denton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Lu Xun. 2009. The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China. Translated by Julia Lovell. New York: Penguin.
