Lu Xun the author of the “New Year Sacrifice “is regarded as one of the modern China’s most prominent and influential writers. His work promoted radical change through criticism of old-fashioned cultural values and repressive social customs.
Lu Xun’s “The New Year Sacrifice” touches the topic of feudal oppression that women suffered in the dark societal reality of China after the establishment of the new republic in 1911.
XiangLin’s Wife is a typical traditional Chinese woman. She is hardworking, kind, and strong, but feudal standards and traditional gender discrimination oppress and destroy her with a series of tragedies. These tragedies come from the moral control of feudalism towards women and finally lead to XiangLin’s Wife’s death. As the narrator says
“…none had changed so much as she had. Her hair, streaked with grey five years before, was now completely white, making her appear much older than one around forty. Her sallow, dark tinged face that looked as if it had carved out of wood was fearfully wasted and had lost the grief-stricken expression it had borne before.” P.170
She fits strongly into the category of traditional women she works from the early morning until the late night not really talking to much. We can see that from reading this
“…she worked from morning till night as if she found resting irksome, and proved strong enough to do the work of a man.”p.155
While I was reading it, I was thinking that this is not right. How people can treat someone that bad. In fact only because as in this case she was a window. Mainly, how she was treated and different attitudes toward her. The narrator says
“ my uncle frowned at this, and my aunt knew that he disapproved of taking on a widow.” P175.
For me, it seems so surreal because how thing such as being a widow is the reason to be rejected from work. According to me, people that should be ashamed are those like uncle from the novel.
Secondly, the story shows that women were unimportant in Chinese society not even called by their real names but rather as the character from the book she was called but her husband’s name.
“ Everybody called her Xianglin’s Wife and no one asked her own name, but since she had been introduced by someone from Wei Village as a neighbour, her surname was presumably also Wei.” P.175
What shocked me the most is that after all, the feudalistic society disregard the mother-in-law to sell Xiang Lin Sao and force her to remarry. And yet the same feudalistic ethics criticizes her remarriage. That is so absurd for me.