Pursuit and Possession in Love

Pursuit and Possession in Love is a central relationship dynamic in the novel, where intimacy is repeatedly tested through pursuit, resistance, rivalry, and claims of belonging. It appears most sharply in the contrast between Chu Fei’s patient pursuit of Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun’s immediate demand for closeness, while kinship labels and marital status complicate the boundaries between legitimate attachment, forbidden desire, and control.

Desire as a Chase

Chu Fei describes pursuit as more important than possession itself. In his confrontation with Lu Xun, he rejects the idea that he intends to force Su Xiangwan or rush toward an immediate result; instead, he says that he prefers the process of chasing her and wants it to last as long as possible. This makes desire a sustained contest rather than a single act of acquisition. The value of the relationship lies in delay, resistance, and the tension created by an unattained objective.

His confidence is also openly competitive. Chu Fei treats Lu Xun as an obstacle and an eyesore because he is deeply attracted to Su Xiangwan, comparing the situation to an earlier case in which a woman appeared to be a close relative but was not related to him by blood. The comparison exposes the instability of kinship as a boundary: clothing, names, and family-like roles can suggest restraint, yet desire may reinterpret those signs as obstacles rather than prohibitions. Chu Fei therefore places romantic pursuit against the authority of family language and insists that Su Xiangwan should not reject him merely because she calls him her brother.

Resistance, Rivalry, and Legitimacy

Lu Xun answers Chu Fei’s confidence with a moral and emotional counterargument. He claims that Chu Fei’s feelings alone should have led Su Xiangwan to reject him from the beginning, turning desire itself into evidence against its legitimacy. The disagreement is not simply about which man will win; it concerns whether love is validated by persistence or invalidated by the relationship that the pursuer crosses. Chu Fei regards rejection as part of the chase, whereas Lu Xun regards the boundary as decisive.

The conflict is intensified by the novel’s repeated distinction between blood relatives and relatives connected only by adoption or name. Shen Yi Yun is identified as the child adopted by Lu Xun’s uncle and therefore Lu Xun’s cousin, while later discussion emphasizes that she is not related to him by blood. Su Xiangwan challenges the ease with which such a designation can regulate intimacy, arguing that a non-blood relative remains a man or woman beneath the title. The argument reveals how kinship terms can function as both social rules and narrative disguises, concealing or regulating attraction without eliminating it.

Marriage as Possession and Recognition

Against Chu Fei’s open-ended chase, Lu Xun seeks the security of recognized marital belonging. When Su Xiangwan is drunk and playful, she pulls off his shirt and identifies him as her husband. Lu Xun remains uncertain whether she actually knows who he is, because the surrounding men are also described as powerful and handsome enough to be called husbands. The scene therefore turns the marital title into a test of recognition: possession is not secure merely because a legal or social role exists; it must also be consciously acknowledged by the person being claimed.

Lu Xun’s attachment is expressed through physical contact. While injured and covered with wounds, he resents his inability to carry Su Xiangwan or even hold her hand as he normally would. He asks her to come into his embrace and treats the inability to hold her as a form of loss. His insistence is willful, but it is also framed as the disruption of an established intimacy: he is accustomed to holding her and listening to her voice. When he repeats that he does not want the apple she is slicing but wants her in his arms, the immediate object of desire shifts from ordinary domestic care to the person herself. Su Xiangwan eventually sets down the apple and fruit knife and approaches him, converting his demand into an act of renewed closeness.

Attachment and Boundary Failure

The book presents pursuit and possession as a cycle rather than as separate states. Chu Fei turns refusal into fuel for continued pursuit, while Lu Xun experiences distance as deprivation and seeks to restore contact through a direct claim on his wife’s presence. One pattern values the prolonged interval before possession; the other fears the interval because separation feels like loss. Both depend on the other person’s response, so neither form of desire is entirely self-contained.

Kinship intensifies this cycle by giving desire a vocabulary of restraint and transgression. Su Xiangwan’s relation to Chu Fei is treated through brotherly language, yet Chu Fei argues from the absence of blood ties and refuses to let the label settle the matter. Lu Xun’s marriage to Su Xiangwan provides a stronger claim, but the scene in which he asks whether she recognizes him as her husband shows that even marriage requires emotional confirmation. The novel thus distinguishes social legitimacy from felt security without separating them: titles can authorize possession, while affection must repeatedly make that possession meaningful.

Narrative Significance

As a concept, Pursuit and Possession in Love organizes several of the novel’s central contrasts: freedom against control, refusal against persistence, kinship against desire, and legal marriage against emotional recognition. Chu Fei’s pursuit exposes the danger of treating another person’s resistance as merely a stage in a chase. Lu Xun’s embrace, by contrast, presents possession as a need for reassurance and continuity, but its urgency also reveals how easily care can become a demand.

The recurring pattern gives romantic conflict its forward motion. Every boundary creates a new pursuit, every pursuit provokes a new defense, and every claim of relationship must be tested by recognition. The concept therefore does not describe a simple victory in which one lover obtains the beloved. It describes the unstable process through which desire seeks permission, certainty, and physical nearness while repeatedly confronting the other person’s right to refuse, redefine, or withhold intimacy.