Lu Xun’s Requirement Not to Sleep Alone

Lu Xun’s Requirement Not to Sleep Alone is a recurring rule within his marriage to Su Xiangwan: Lu Xun presents separation at night as something he cannot tolerate, while Su Xiangwan must decide whether to treat that insistence as affection, manipulation, or both. The requirement is decisive because it converts an ordinary domestic arrangement into a visible measure of intimacy. His desire for her physical presence becomes a language through which he seeks reassurance and continued possession, even as the surrounding marriage remains marked by contracts, jealousy, unequal power, and earlier coercion.

Definition and Domestic Context

The requirement appears during a temporary loosening of the couple’s living arrangement. Lu Xun tells Su Xiangwan that her sister has been ill and that she may return to her old residence for several days so that she can accompany her grandfather and visit her sister more conveniently. The permission initially resembles consideration: he acknowledges her family obligations and allows her to leave the shared household. Yet he immediately attaches a condition to that freedom. He says that he will check on her frequently, will stay there only a few days, and cannot sleep by himself. The proposed separation is therefore never fully separate; even when Su Xiangwan is allowed to return home, Lu Xun keeps the marriage’s nightly intimacy as an obligation that must be restored.

The rule also belongs to a wider pattern in which domestic care and marital authority overlap. Su Xiangwan is described as weak enough to be offered Chinese medicine, while Lu Xun’s own health is discussed in the same household conversation. Elsewhere, when Su Xiangwan develops a fever and can barely summon strength, she asks Manager Wu to buy antipyretic medicine. These scenes place bodily vulnerability at the center of the relationship, but they do not distribute power evenly. Lu Xun’s need for company is voiced as a tender personal limitation; Su Xiangwan’s illness and exhaustion instead become circumstances around which others arrange care and supervision.

Repeated Appeals Against Separation

The requirement becomes more explicit after Su Xiangwan has been away for only a short time. During a meal, Lu Xun remains so attached to her that she has to feed him mouthful by mouthful, and his physical closeness leaves her trapped in his arms. He then whispers that he cannot sleep by himself. When she points out that he apparently slept alone the previous night, he laughs and treats her suspicion as the mischievous overthinking of a clever wife. The exchange gives the rule a playful surface, but the underlying demand remains clear: Lu Xun wants her presence to be acknowledged as necessary to his comfort.

He soon sharpens the appeal by declaring that he does not want to separate. Su Xiangwan’s response is not a simple acceptance. She says that she does not dare to play with him anymore, while he treats her question about the proper length of separation with apparent seriousness. She proposes a week because she has only just moved and wants more time with her grandfather; Lu Xun’s objection shows that the timetable is not merely logistical. His complaint is an attempt to shorten the distance she has chosen and to make the marriage’s emotional and physical continuity take precedence over her independent family time.

The repeated formulation also reveals how Lu Xun uses different registers to enforce the same result. He can sound authoritative when setting conditions, wounded when presenting himself as unable to sleep alone, or coquettish when calling Su Xiangwan his wife and asking her not to leave him. The text explicitly treats a man’s coquettishness as unusually powerful: Lu Xun’s softened manner briefly overcomes Su Xiangwan’s resistance. In that sense, the rule functions less like a formally announced prohibition than like a demand delivered through emotional pressure, affection, and the expectation that a wife will respond.

Marriage, Access, and Unequal Choice

The rule cannot be detached from the larger structure of Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan’s marriage. Su Xiangwan once offers to divorce him, refusing his property and alimony and proposing to convert the five hundred million in capital into shares and return it with interest. Her offer frames the relationship in terms of financial accounting and attempts to disentangle herself from its material obligations. Lu Xun rejects the implication that the marriage can be settled by repayment, responding with contempt for the idea that her value could be measured against the money involved. Against that background, his insistence that he cannot sleep alone carries a double force: it sounds like proof that he values her personally, yet it also resists her effort to define and exit the relationship on her own terms.

This tension is intensified by the book’s treatment of coercion. When Su Xiangwan is found unconscious after being subjected to Lu Xun’s violence, Mo Beiyu condemns him as a man who tortured his woman and calls into question Lu Xun’s right to stand in the sunlight. Lu Xun’s requirement about sleeping alone belongs to the same contested marital field, even when presented humorously. A request for shared sleep may express longing, but within a relationship where access to a wife has previously been forced, the boundary between intimacy and entitlement cannot be assumed away. The rule therefore exposes the instability of the novel’s romantic language: tenderness and control occupy the same domestic gesture.

The surrounding kinship disputes further show why Su Xiangwan’s presence matters to Lu Xun as more than companionship. Lu Xun explains that Shen Yiyun is his cousin through adoption and that he arranged housing for her near the theater. Su Xiangwan reacts angrily to the lack of disclosure, recalling the earlier problem involving Song Yun’er. Later, she rejects the idea that a woman who is related only by name should be treated as harmless simply because she is called a relative. Her insistence redraws the boundary between kinship labels and romantic access. Lu Xun’s demand that his wife sleep beside him similarly marks the wife’s place as a privileged, exclusive position, while the disputes over Shen Yiyun and Song Yun’er show how quickly that position becomes insecure when other women enter the field of his attention.

Relational Meaning and Narrative Function

Within the romance structure, the requirement marks a movement from permission to separation toward renewed attachment. Lu Xun appears to grant Su Xiangwan space because of her sister’s illness and her obligations to her grandfather, but his inability to sleep alone immediately limits the emotional meaning of that space. He follows the concession with frequent visits, a short permitted duration, and a demand for continued nighttime connection. The pattern resembles a pursuit-and-withdrawal loop: Su Xiangwan asks for distance in order to attend to family and recover a measure of independence, while Lu Xun answers with intensified closeness and emotional testing.

The rule also makes care reciprocal in an unequal way. Su Xiangwan feeds Lu Xun when he does not eat properly, and he draws her into his arms while presenting himself as dependent on her. In another scene, Mo Beiyu feeds water to a feverish Su Xiangwan after she has been ill for two days and cannot sit up unaided. The contrast is revealing. Su Xiangwan’s care for Lu Xun is folded into his demand that she remain physically available; Mo Beiyu’s care responds to her bodily incapacity and immediate need. The book thus uses feeding, medicine, water, and sleep to stage competing models of intimacy: care can sustain a vulnerable person, but it can also be turned into a reason why the other person must remain close.

The requirement finally serves as a compact emblem of Lu Xun’s marital identity. When Su Xiangwan pulls off his shirt and calls him her husband, Lu Xun remains uncertain whether she truly recognizes him, despite the intimacy of the gesture. Her answer restores the marital label, but the uncertainty beneath it matters: the title of husband does not automatically guarantee emotional security. Lu Xun repeatedly seeks confirmation through proximity, jealousy, and tests of whether she will stay. His inability to sleep alone is therefore not simply a domestic quirk. It is the nightly form of a larger fear that the marriage’s name, possession, and affection might no longer be enough to keep Su Xiangwan beside him.

Significance

Lu Xun’s Requirement Not to Sleep Alone condenses the novel’s ambivalence toward possessive love. On one level, Lu Xun’s refusal to sleep alone is an appeal for reassurance, and Su Xiangwan’s softening shows the emotional effectiveness of his vulnerability. On another, the appeal makes her freedom conditional: she may return to her family, but his discomfort demands that the separation remain brief and that the marriage’s shared bed remain the central measure of loyalty. Because this intimacy follows scenes of financial bargaining, family suspicion, illness, forced access, and public condemnation, the rule cannot be read as innocent sweetness alone. It is a recurring negotiation in which longing, dependence, marital status, and control are made to speak through the same sentence: Lu Xun says he cannot sleep alone, and Su Xiangwan must decide what that need requires of her.