The aspect of New Year’s Sacrifice that I am focusing on is the patriarchal nature and stigma of mental health in Chinese culture. As we can tell from the story, the main character does not even have a name; she is only known as Xianglin’s wife. The only job that she could get after her husband died was as a maid in another household. She did all the cooking and cleaning and never complained but just worked diligently. In ancient Chinese culture, women only had the role of being a wife and mother so once the mother-in-law found Xianglin’s wife another suitor, she was carried off against her will to be married to him. She had no other use than to be a wife but since her husband died so young, she had the opportunity  to be given to another family. No matter how much she struggled, they still forced her to marry the other man. Once she settled in, she had a baby boy whom she loved very much but unfortunately, both her new husband and her son died. All of these tragedies really took a toll on her and she could not be content with life anymore. Although she was such a great worker the first time she came to the Lu’s house, her body and mind had deteriorated from all of the stresses she suffered through and could not work as well as before. The Lu’s, even after hearing her story, could not empathize with her and became annoyed that she was doing so poorly and called her “unclean” and unfit to do anything with the ancestral sacrifices. After a while everyone in the village started mocking her instead of feeling for her. Mental health was and still sort of is considered non-existent in Chinese culture. Xianglin’s wife probably developed depression from dealing with the things that she had to but people just regarded her as crazy. Traditional Chinese culture would consider symptoms of depression as being lazy and sad and moping around rather than an actual condition that people don’t have control over.