Lu Xun Forces Su Xiangwan to Have Sex

Lu Xun Forces Su Xiangwan to Have Sex marks one of the darkest expressions of the marriage between Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun. What begins with Lu Xun’s jealousy after Su Xiangwan spends time with an old lover turns into an assault in which her exhaustion, intoxication, refusal, and pain are treated as obstacles to his will. The episode is decisive because it strips away the language of romantic possession and reveals its bodily consequence: Lu Xun’s claim to be her husband does not erase her lack of consent.

Jealousy and the Immediate Trigger

Lu Xun approaches Su Xiangwan after she has been drinking and has been speaking warmly with a former lover. His manner is deliberately confrontational. He accuses her of having energy for an old flame but becoming depressed when faced with him, turning her tiredness into supposed evidence of emotional betrayal. Su Xiangwan is too weak and sleepy to engage with the quarrel, yet Lu Xun refuses to accept her withdrawal as an end to the exchange. His anger is therefore not simply a passing disagreement: it converts intimacy into a test of loyalty in which her attention must continually be demonstrated to him.

The scene places physical vulnerability beside marital authority. Su Xiangwan has been drinking, wants to sleep, and is unable to muster the strength even to resist effectively. Lu Xun, by contrast, controls the movement of the encounter and treats her condition as permission rather than as a reason to stop. The imbalance is made unmistakable when he forcibly bites and kisses her, then continues after she says she does not want to do it. Her words are present, but they have no power within the relationship’s immediate hierarchy.

Coercion, Pain, and Loss of Agency

The assault proceeds through a series of unmistakable refusals rather than through mutual hesitation. After Lu Xun forcibly takes her lips, Su Xiangwan tells him that she does not want to continue; when he instructs her to lie back and let him proceed, she answers no again. The narration then makes the consequence of that refusal explicit: pain overwhelms her before she can do anything further, while alcohol and exhaustion leave her mind unable to command her body. Her tears continue, but she cannot speak, and she experiences herself as a doll left at a man’s mercy throughout the night. The image is significant because it removes any illusion that the scene is merely an argument between spouses. Her physical presence remains, yet her agency has been systematically displaced by Lu Xun’s force.

Trauma, Memory, and Bodily Aftermath

The violence does not end when Lu Xun briefly leaves to smoke. Su Xiangwan wakes from a nightmare and finds him staring at her with bloodlust in his scarlet eyes, a gaze described as more frightening than the dream itself. The scene thus binds sleep, memory, and immediate danger together: even unconsciousness offers no secure refuge, because waking returns her to the man whose presence has become the source of terror. Lu Xun then shifts the confrontation toward reproduction, asking whether she is unable to bear a child or simply unwilling to bear one for him. His question treats her body as something that should satisfy his claim upon the marriage, while her answer—that he is not worthy of receiving a child from her—asserts a fragment of resistance within a situation otherwise governed by his power. His ferocious response makes the reproductive demand an extension of the assault rather than a separate marital dispute, linking sexual coercion to an attempt to control her future as well as her body.

The Scene’s Wider Pattern

The episode is not isolated from the larger pattern of control surrounding Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan. Elsewhere, Lu Xun’s possessiveness is expressed through surveillance, suspicion, and demands for emotional exclusivity: he objects to Su Xiangwan’s contact with other men, interprets kinship and friendship through the lens of sexual rivalry, and expects the title of husband to settle disputes in his favor. When Su Xiangwan is intoxicated and disoriented, however, that possessiveness becomes physical domination. The distinction matters because the scene does not present coercion as an accidental loss of temper detached from the marriage; it shows how a hierarchy already established in language and conduct can become violence when Lu Xun decides that his desire outranks her refusal.

Contexts of Vulnerability and Control

The assault’s significance is sharpened by the surrounding pattern of bodily vulnerability in the narrative. Su Xiangwan later becomes so feverish and weak that she collapses at an elevator before she can press the button, while Lu Xun’s response to her condition repeatedly moves between alarm, possessiveness, and control. Hua Shuo, after seeing the marks left on her sensitive skin, tells Lu Xun that traces will last longer than they do on other people and urges him to restrain himself. Lu Xun answers that there will not be a next time, but the promise is framed as a private assurance after the harm has already occurred, not as an acknowledgment of Su Xiangwan’s refusal or an invitation to her judgment. The contrast exposes the limits of the protective role he claims: the same man who can hold her while she cries that she is frightened and reassure her that he has been there all along is also capable of making his presence the immediate source of fear. His care therefore does not cancel the violence; it forms part of the unstable cycle in which domination, injury, reassurance, and renewed dependence occupy the same marriage.

Kinship Language and the Reassertion of Marital Possession

The episode’s coercive logic is reinforced by the unstable language of kinship that surrounds Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan. Lu Xun treats the title of husband as a claim of authority, while other relationships are repeatedly examined for whether they conceal or authorize desire. When Lu Xun explains that Shen Yiyun is the child adopted by his uncle and therefore his cousin, the clarification reveals a family structure based partly on naming rather than blood. Su Xiangwan responds with suspicion because Lu Xun has previously failed to explain women close to him, and Lu Xun promises that, as her husband, he will correct such mistakes in the future. The exchange appears conciliatory, but it also shows how marital status becomes a mechanism for regulating information, jealousy, and access to other people. His later argument with Shen Hui is even more direct: he dismisses a relative without blood ties as, in practical terms, a man and a woman, refusing to let the word cousin automatically neutralize the possibility of attraction. In this context, his insistence that Su Xiangwan is his wife does not create mutual security. It becomes part of a possessive vocabulary in which titles are used to define boundaries for her while leaving his own conduct subject to his desire.

Narrative Function and Thematic Significance

The episode also gains force from the way the surrounding narrative places different forms of coercion beside different forms of supposed protection. Lu Xun’s own history includes a kidnapping at the age of twelve, during which kidnappers forced him to consume various medicines and left him nearly dead; the memory has made him resistant to drugs, but it has not made him resistant to reproducing domination in intimate life. The parallel is not a claim that his childhood suffering excuses his conduct. Instead, it shows how bodily danger can be remembered as a wound while being inflicted anew on someone else. Su Xiangwan’s experience is likewise connected to an older family trauma: she remembers that her mother, diagnosed with a terminal illness, walked onto a balcony after seeing a drawing of herself holding her parents’ hands, an act the family tried to conceal from her. These memories give the marriage a deeper atmosphere of fear, abandonment, and failed protection, yet the immediate assault remains Lu Xun’s choice and Su Xiangwan’s injury. Against that darkness, later gestures of care become morally unstable. He brings her hot milk and holds her when she says she is frightened, promising that he has been there all along; she can also become so physically unwell that she collapses before reaching an elevator button. Such scenes make dependence visible without transforming possession into tenderness. Even Su Xiangwan’s later drunken declaration that Lu Xun is her husband cannot retroactively consent to the earlier violence: the words belong to a different moment, while the assault is defined by her explicit refusals, her incapacitation, and the pain that follows. The event therefore functions as a central test of the marriage’s governing premise. A relationship may contain affection, legal status, familiarity, and moments of reassurance, but none of those categories can convert force into mutuality or make a husband entitled to a wife’s body.

Narrative Function and Thematic Significance

The episode also gains force from the way the surrounding narrative places different forms of coercion beside different forms of supposed protection. Lu Xun’s own history includes a kidnapping at the age of twelve, during which kidnappers forced him to consume various medicines and left him nearly dead; the memory made him resistant to drugs, but it did not prevent him from reproducing domination in intimate life. The parallel does not excuse his conduct. Instead, it shows how bodily danger can remain a remembered wound while being inflicted anew on someone else. Su Xiangwan’s experience is likewise connected to an older family trauma: she remembers that her mother, diagnosed with a terminal illness, walked onto a balcony after seeing a drawing of herself holding her parents’ hands, an act the family had tried to conceal from her. These memories deepen the atmosphere of fear, abandonment, and failed protection, yet the immediate assault remains Lu Xun’s choice and Su Xiangwan’s injury.

Against that darkness, later gestures of care become morally unstable rather than redemptive. Lu Xun brings Su Xiangwan hot milk and holds her when she says she is frightened, reassuring her that he has been there all along; elsewhere, she becomes so physically unwell that she collapses before reaching an elevator button. Such scenes make dependence visible without transforming possession into tenderness. Hua Shuo’s warning that marks on Su Xiangwan’s sensitive skin may last longer than usual, followed by Lu Xun’s promise that there will not be a next time, likewise addresses the aftermath without acknowledging the authority of her refusal. Even Su Xiangwan’s later drunken declaration that Lu Xun is her husband cannot retroactively consent to the earlier violence: those words belong to another moment, while the assault is defined by her explicit refusals, her incapacitation, and the pain that follows. The event therefore tests the marriage’s governing premise. Affection, legal status, familiarity, and reassurance may coexist with a relationship, but none can convert force into mutuality or make a husband entitled to his wife’s body.