Love Agreement

The Love Agreement is a pact between Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan whose meaning remains disputed: Lu Xun treats it as serious, while Su Xiangwan says it was a joke. The narrative never supplies its clauses. Its importance lies in the disagreement over what their relationship promises, set against the financial bargain and mistrust that shape their marriage.

Reference and Dispute

During a reconciliation, Lu Xun asks Su Xiangwan whether she remembers the Love Agreement they made before their quarrel. She dismisses it as a joke, reasoning that a relationship that had barely begun was already close to breaking apart. Rather than explain its terms, Lu Xun insists that he is serious. The scene establishes the agreement not through a written text or a list of obligations, but through competing interpretations: he invokes a commitment, while she refuses to treat that commitment as reliable.

The Future Lu Xun Promises

Lu Xun answers her skepticism with assurances about what he intends to do next. He says he has planned a European honeymoon, will arrange his work in advance, and is willing to hold a wedding whenever she wants. He also invites her to raise objections. These offers give his claim of seriousness a future-facing shape, but they do not reveal what the Love Agreement itself contains. The distinction matters: the honeymoon and wedding are promises made in the conversation, not stated clauses of the pact.

Su Xiangwan responds with a bitter smile and doubts that Lu Xun could simply let her go. Her reaction keeps the promise of a shared future from resolving the scene. Lu Xun presents the agreement as evidence of commitment; she hears those assurances through the unequal, transactional circumstances of their marriage, in which she believes he bought her for five hundred million yuan.

Money and the Limits of the Pact

In a later confrontation, Su Xiangwan asks for a divorce and says she will take none of Lu Xun’s property or alimony. She proposes converting the original five hundred million yuan into shares and returning it with interest. The exchange does not establish that these financial terms belonged to the Love Agreement, but it shows how readily the marriage is discussed in the language of capital, repayment, and value. Lu Xun’s mocking response intensifies the imbalance between his insistence on emotional commitment and their arguments over money.

Narrative Significance

The Love Agreement functions as a contested promise rather than a fully defined rule. Its name suggests mutual commitment, but the available scene gives the reader no terms by which to measure either partner’s obligations. Instead, its force comes from the contrast between Lu Xun’s confident appeal to seriousness and Su Xiangwan’s skepticism, sharpened by the marriage’s financial origins. The pact therefore marks a question left open in the exchange: whether an asserted agreement can offer emotional security when the people invoking it do not share the same understanding of what it means.