Analysis of The New Year\'s Sacrifice PDF

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Analysis of The New Year’s Sacrifice by Lu Xun

The New Year’s Sacrifice (1924) is a short story written by Lu Xun, a famous writer of modern Chinese literature. This story is about a tragic woman experiencing continuous tough situations and in the end, dies of poverty. However, this is not just a sad story. Lu Xun uses this female character to show the strictness and narrow-mindedness of the traditional Chinese ideals that need to be changed and adapted to develop a better Chinese society. To show this more profound meaning of the story by creating a tragic female character, Lu Xun uses the character’s name to show her low presence in society and also includes a specific pattern to portray that she has no freedom.

The protagonist of the story, the tragic woman, is called Xianglin’s Wife. ‘Xianglin’ is the patriarchal name of her husband and that is the only way she is identified as throughout the story even though there is a prospect that her surname is Wei. As the quotation shows, her identity is described as ‘Everybody called her Xiang Lin’s Wife and no one asked her own name, but since she had been introduced by someone from Wei Village as a neighbor, her surname was presumably also Wei.’1 Her name is not precisely known. This naming shows that her existence in the society is portrayed very low in status and her life is only notable by

1

Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, trans., Lu Xun Selected Works Volume One (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1980), 175.

placing her in other people’s lives such as first husband’s wife, Lu household’s maid, and second husband’s wife. Lu Xun straightforwardly illustrates the woman with an unknown name so that the reader can easily understand that she has a deficient status in this society even without further in detail.

In The New Year’s Sacrifice, there is a subtle pattern that shows how much Xianglin’s Wife has no freedom, trapped in the society’s idealism. ‘So you’re back?’2 The quotation said by Xianglin clearly shows that their acquaintance is not the first time, showing a pattern of repetition.3 This repetitive pattern is also shown in other places. For instance, Xianglin’s Wife talks about Amao’s death (her son) repetitively, to the villagers. She even scares the children by talking about her son, ‘”Ah, if my Amao were alive he’d be just that size…”’4 She talks about Amao’s death too much that, ‘In the end, everybody knew what she was like. If a child were present they would ask with a spurious smile, “If your Amao were alive, Xianglin’s Wife, wouldn’t he be just that size?”’ 5 By repeating the story too often, the villager’s view towards Xianglin’s Wife changed from sympathy to disgust, not accepted by

2

Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, trans., Lu Xun Selected Works Volume One, 170. Jeremy Tambling, Madmen and Other Survivors, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, (2007): 82, https://muse.jhu.edu/. Accessed on February 24, 2019. 4 Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, trans., Lu Xun Selected Works Volume One, 184. 5 Ibid. 3

the community.

Another repetitive pattern is that she had two husbands. She did not want to marry another person but was forced by her first husband’s mother-in-law to obtain finance for her another son’s marriage. However, widow remarriage was not generally accepted by Chinese society.6 Xianglin’s wife’s image worsened because of this repetitive marriage. Furthermore, due to her second husband’s and her son’s death, she became a widow again and appeared to work as a maid at Lu’s family. Such is another repetitive pattern. Being a widow once again is not a positive status at Lu Xun’s time of Chinese society and now she has no stabilized future financially. As these examples show, the repetitive pattern shows how much her life is confined, has no freedom, and leads to further direction downside because the tragedy repeats again and again. By continuously and repetitively showing Xianglin’s Wife’s tragedy through various events, we can see how villagers treat her in those each tragic event. All of those villager’s treatments clearly show no compassion for her situations, which is how Lu Xun reveals the flawed ideals, absurdity, and prejudice that is shown by Chinese society.

6

Irene Eber, “Lu Xun’s Fiction” The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Asian Studies, 2014, 3.

In conclusion, Lu Xun successfully utilized the character’s name to be unknown to show the readers Xianglin’s Wife’s low status clearly. All the characters in The New Year’s Sacrifice called her name by Xianglin’s Wife, which shows that she was portrayed as not even a person to be identified as by her own name even though there should have been many opportunities for other characters to ask her real name. Moreover, this story contains a few repetitive patterns to show that no matter how much Xianglin’s wife tried to be happy and tried to escape from what she did not want to do, tragic moments came back endlessly until she died of poverty. This repetitive pattern gives a message that women cannot escape from society’s absurdity and prejudice unless people realize society’s flaws and seek to make it better.

Bibliography Eber, Irene. “Lu Xun’s Fiction.” The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Asian Studies, 2014. Tambling, Jeremy. Madmen and Other Survivors. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, (2007). https://muse.jhu.edu/. Accessed on February 24, 2019. Xianyi, Yang and Gladys Yang, trans. Lu Xun Selected Works Volume One. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1980....