Secret Marriage

Secret Marriage is the concealed marital arrangement between Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun, and it functions as both protection and pressure. The arrangement separates the couple’s private commitment from the public world of celebrity, family, and business, but that separation never remains emotionally neutral. Lu Xun treats the marriage as an established bond and increasingly seeks to make it secure through possession and public implication, while Su Xiangwan repeatedly questions whether a relationship hidden from the world can provide the recognition and safety that marriage is supposed to promise.

Definition and Initial Boundary

Secret Marriage is first presented as a condition accepted by Su Xiangwan and imposed, in practice, by Lu Xun’s control over the relationship’s terms. When Su Xiangwan asks whether they are still at the stage of a clandestine marriage and whether a wedding would mean announcing their union to the world, the question exposes the arrangement’s central contradiction: the couple may be married in private, yet their social identity remains unresolved. Lu Xun responds that the hidden marriage was only what she had said, not what he had said, refusing to treat secrecy as a mutually permanent promise. His answer turns concealment into a disputed boundary rather than a settled agreement.

The marriage therefore carries different meanings for its two participants. For Su Xiangwan, secrecy can feel like a lack of status and a sign that the relationship has not fully entered the public sphere. For Lu Xun, the private bond is already real enough to justify his expectations of loyalty and obedience, even when he has not granted her the reassurance of open recognition. The arrangement gives him the privileges of a husband while leaving her vulnerable to uncertainty about how others are permitted to interpret their relationship.

Public Ambiguity and Rival Claims

The concealed marriage exists within a social world where relationships are read through money, celebrity, and visible association. Lu Xun’s encounter with Luo Jingjing makes him aware of the familiar connection between an entertainment celebrity and a financial backer. Although such arrangements are treated as ordinary in the entertainment circle, seeing a man identified as Su Xiangye in that context makes him feel sorry for Su Xiangwan. The scene links Secret Marriage to the moral scrutiny surrounding the entertainment industry: when a relationship lacks a clear public name, outsiders can replace the absent name with assumptions about sponsorship, impropriety, or transactional intimacy.

This ambiguity becomes sharper when Song Yuner discusses Lu Xun’s secret marriage in Su Xiangwan’s presence. Su Xiangwan directly objects that Song Yuner should not be discussing her husband with him as though the wife were absent, especially when their relationship has not reached the level at which men can be discussed between them. Her intervention is not merely jealousy; it is an attempt to assert the marital position that secrecy has made difficult to display. Song Yuner’s sudden silence and departure show how quickly the hidden marriage can become a weapon in social interaction: the wife must reveal enough to establish a boundary, but not necessarily enough to end the concealment altogether.

A similar pressure appears when Song Yuner complains that Lu Xun is giving attention to matters involving Su Xiangnan rather than dealing with her concerns. Her accusation treats his priorities as evidence of an intimate rival arrangement, while Lu Xun’s exhausted effort to end the call cannot immediately correct the misunderstanding. Because the marriage and its surrounding relationships are not publicly clarified, every unexplained connection becomes available for suspicion. Secret Marriage thus creates a field in which outsiders compete to define Lu Xun’s loyalties, while Su Xiangwan bears the emotional cost of the uncertainty.

Lu Xun’s Possessive Interpretation

Lu Xun’s conduct shows that he does not regard secrecy as permission for emotional distance. Although Su Xiangwan proposes divorce more than once, he refuses to let her go and interprets her wish to escape as evidence that he has not treated her well enough. His response is to continue treating her well rather than accepting separation. This pattern makes Secret Marriage part of a pursuit-and-retention structure: her repeated resistance does not dissolve the bond in his mind, but instead intensifies his determination to keep the relationship intact.

His language about formalizing the union is similarly possessive. He frames an early wedding as a way to prevent Su Xiangwan, whom he describes in indulgent terms, from provoking another man. The proposed public marriage is therefore not presented solely as mutual celebration or emotional recognition. It is also a preemptive claim, designed to mark her as his before another man can approach her. The hidden marriage becomes the incomplete stage before a more visible form of possession, and the movement toward publicity is driven as much by jealousy as by tenderness.

Yet Lu Xun’s certainty does not eliminate his insecurity. When Su Xiangwan calls him her husband while flirting with him, he remains unsure whether she actually knows who he is, since many men around her could be called handsome or husband. That uncertainty reveals the unstable emotional core beneath his authority. He wants the title to signify exclusive recognition, but he also fears that the title may be interchangeable. Secret Marriage consequently gives Lu Xun a legal or intimate claim without fully satisfying his need to feel uniquely chosen.

Kinship, Desire, and Social Labels

The concept is complicated further by the way the narrative distinguishes blood relatives, adopted relatives, and romantic partners. Lu Xun explains that Shen Yiyun is the child his uncle adopted and therefore his cousin, and that he arranged for her to stay near the theater when she came to Cloud City to perform. The explanation is intended to clarify an apparently intimate connection, but it also shows how easily family labels can generate suspicion when the people involved are not related by blood.

Su Xiangwan later challenges the protective force of that label, arguing that a relative connected only by name is still a man and a woman, and that she has no blood-related cousin either. Her objection exposes the limits of kinship terminology as reassurance. In this world, “cousin,” “wife,” and other relational names do not simply describe bonds; they regulate what kinds of closeness are considered acceptable and what kinds remain suspect. Secret Marriage occupies the most precarious position among them because its marital claim is intimate but deliberately withheld from public confirmation.

The contrast with Chu Fei is even more direct. Chu Fei says that a woman had once worn the clothes of a close relative without ultimately being related to him, and he adds that he liked her greatly. He then tells Lu Xun that he enjoys the process of pursuit and would not force a woman or hurry to obtain her. His remarks treat kinship-like appearances as inadequate barriers against desire, while positioning Su Xiangwan as an object of pursuit. Lu Xun’s marriage gives him a claim that Chu Fei does not possess, but because that claim remains secret, Lu Xun must defend it against a rival who refuses to recognize the boundary.

Emotional Function and Narrative Significance

Secret Marriage gives the romance its recurring rhythm of concealment, exposure, conflict, and attempted reassurance. Su Xiangwan can want Lu Xun intensely and still feel exhausted by him; the same relationship that makes her want to stay can make her want to leave. Lu Xun, meanwhile, experiences ordinary routine differently after meeting her: work that once felt tedious becomes something to finish quickly so he can return to her. His attachment is therefore genuine within the evidence, but it is expressed through refusal to release her, warnings, and plans to secure her publicly.

The arrangement also makes public reputation part of the marriage’s emotional structure. The entertainment circle normalizes relationships shaped by financial power, the wedding shop turns a colored-diamond wedding dress into an object of fantasy and competition, and Song Yuner’s interventions repeatedly test who has the right to speak about Lu Xun. Against that background, a wedding would not merely change the couple’s private status. It would determine which interpretation of their intimacy the surrounding society must accept.

Secret Marriage is consequently neither a simple romantic secret nor a temporary plot device. It is the condition that lets Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan act as husband and wife while denying them the stabilizing public language of marriage. It protects their bond from immediate scrutiny, yet produces scrutiny wherever the bond becomes visible. The concept crystallizes the book’s tension between love and freedom, private commitment and public legitimacy, and affectionate devotion and possessive control.