Set shortly after China’s 1911 Revolution, this story by Lu Xun follows the tragic life of a widowed servant who is kidnapped by her in-laws and sold into a new marriage against her will. When widowed for a second time, she begins to show signs of mental instability and is considered “bad luck”. Ostracized and living in fear of punishment in the afterlife, she donates the last of her savings to a temple and dies alone of cold and starvation as fireworks herald in the Chinese New Year. Themes include tradition, patriarchy, superstition, greed, peasant women as a commodity, alienation, fear, indifference.
