Possessive Love and Jealousy

Possessive Love and Jealousy functions as one of the novel’s central emotional and political structures. Affection repeatedly appears alongside surveillance, rivalry, accusation, and demands for exclusive loyalty. Lu Xun’s marriage to Su Xiangwan is shaped by this tension: his care can be tender and attentive, yet it is also expressed through suspicion and attempts to control the people and situations surrounding her. The result is a relationship in which love is never merely private. It is continually measured against property, family status, bodily vulnerability, and the threat posed by another claimant.

Jealousy Within Marriage

Lu Xun’s jealousy is most visible when Su Xiangwan gives attention to something other than him. After discovering that she is secretly reading a popular comic, he asks why she has not shown the same fascination with her husband’s frequent appearances in Empire news. His complaint turns media attention into a test of marital devotion: the issue is not the comic itself, but the possibility that her interest might be directed away from him. When she apologizes, he responds by offering to have Gordon gather similar material and send it to her mailbox, transforming a quarrel into an act of managed accommodation while still preserving his authority over the terms of her access.

The same pattern appears when Lu Xun explains Shen Yiyun’s presence in Cloud City. He identifies Shen Yiyun as the adopted daughter of his uncle and therefore his cousin, adding that she came to perform and that he arranged accommodation near the theater. The explanation answers the practical question of their association, but it does not erase Su Xiangwan’s grievance that he should have told her directly. She compares the situation with Song Yuner’s earlier involvement in their marriage, showing that jealousy is intensified by recurrence: each new woman is interpreted through the unresolved memory of the previous threat. Lu Xun promises that, in the future, he will correct his mistakes, making transparency itself part of the marital negotiation.

Possession, Injury, and Resistance

The marriage also exposes the darker boundary between possessiveness and coercion. When Lu Xun apologizes for what happened on a night that left Su Xiangwan physically hurt, she rejects the emotional framing of his apology. She describes herself as a pet bought and played with at home, accusing him of treating her as an object whose value and purpose he could determine. Her language links sexual access to ownership and suggests that his desire for a child may have turned care into abuse. The force of the scene lies in her refusal to accept the label of cherished wife when her experience has been one of use and control.

This conflict is sharpened by the economic foundation of their marriage. Su Xiangwan proposes divorce, refuses his property and alimony, and offers to convert the five hundred million in capital he provided into shares, returning both the investment and its interest. She attempts to separate emotional freedom from financial dependence by treating the marriage’s capital as an account that can be settled. Lu Xun answers by degrading the very basis of that calculation, asking whether she considers herself worth five hundred million merely because he slept with her several times. His response converts the contract’s monetary language into a sexual insult, revealing how quickly economic protection can become a claim of ownership.

Jealousy therefore produces a cycle of pursuit and withdrawal. Lu Xun follows Su Xiangwan closely, notices when she is angry, and feels heartache when she has only recently recovered from illness. Even while caring for her, he interprets her reactions as evidence of attachment and seeks reassurance that he remains the central figure in her emotional world. Su Xiangwan, by contrast, answers his concern with sarcasm, silence, or an open demand for explanation. Her resistance does not end the bond; it forces the bond to expose its terms. The relationship survives through repeated testing, but every reconciliation carries the memory of the control that made reconciliation necessary.

Rival Claims and the Politics of Kinship

Possessive attachment extends beyond direct marital suspicion into the unstable territory of family names and substitute kinship. Lu Xun becomes alarmed when Chu Fei enters Cloud City and openly presents himself as a rival for Su Xiangwan’s affection. Chu Fei explains that he has previously desired a woman who appeared to be a close relative but was not related to him by blood, and he admits that Su Xiangwan is especially important to him. His stated preference for pursuing rather than forcing her gives the rivalry a calculated, prolonged quality: desire becomes a contest of patience, while Lu Xun reads the threat through the language of possession. The conflict is not only romantic but political, because Chu Fei’s arrival places pressure on Lu Xun’s position and turns Su Xiangwan’s personal allegiance into a test of competing male power.

Lu Xun therefore asks Su Xiangwan which side she would choose if he and Chu Fei could no longer stand together. The question transforms jealousy into an ultimatum, demanding that she rank a husband against the brother-like figure connected to her cousin. Su Xiangwan refuses to accept the premise that Lu Xun should regulate that relationship, insisting that Chu Fei is her cousin’s elder brother and therefore her own elder brother in the family vocabulary being used around them. The exchange reveals how kinship terms can both conceal and intensify desire. Adopted, cousin-like, and brother-like relationships are treated as social categories rather than secure biological boundaries, allowing characters to invoke family as protection while simultaneously fearing that the same intimacy may become erotic competition.

Shen Yiyun produces a parallel disturbance because Lu Xun describes her as his uncle’s adopted daughter and cousin even though she is not related to him by blood. Su Xiangwan objects that such a woman remains an adopted relative, yet Lu Xun has embraced her while she still has no boyfriend. Her jealousy is therefore directed less at a confirmed affair than at the intimacy made possible by ambiguous status. Later, when Lu Xun’s mother asks her to understand that Shen Yiyun is a cousin, Su Xiangwan answers that a relative connected only by name is still a man and a woman. She extends the argument to her own relationship with Chu Fei, exposing the inconsistency of treating one non-blood relationship as harmless while treating another as dangerous. Her position challenges the authority of family labels to settle questions of loyalty, attraction, and marital boundaries.

The same possessive structure appears in the treatment of other women and male allies. Lu Xun is provoked by Su Xiangwan’s attention to a popular comic and by her apparent interest in performances connected with Shen Yiyun, while Su Xiangwan is angered when he spends time with women whose connection to him can be explained but was not disclosed. Even a minor injury becomes part of this emotional economy: after noticing the red mark on his neck, Su Xiangwan recognizes that her anger may have gone too far and asks whether it hurts. Care briefly interrupts accusation, but it does not dissolve the underlying contest over who may approach, protect, or claim either partner. Their attachment moves through injury, explanation, apology, and renewed testing rather than through stable trust.

Coercion, Rescue, and the Limits of Possession

The novel places possessive intimacy beside forms of control that cannot be softened into ordinary romantic jealousy. When Lin Yanche threatens that Jin Zhengnan will never leave the Hospital if Su Qingrou steps outside Lin Yanche's manor, he turns her movement and her friendship into leverage. His accusation that she has been unfaithful, coupled with his contemptuous reference to her supposed loyalty, makes the household a site of confinement rather than mutual security. Su Qingrou's distress is not simply a lover's quarrel: the threat against Jin Zhengnan gives Lin Yanche power over both her body and the person she is trying to protect.

The consequences become visible when Su Xiangwan finds Su Qingrou weeping, marked by deep and shallow kiss marks, while a photograph shows Lin Yanche passionately embracing Song Yuner at precisely the same time. The image creates a brutal contrast between the violence imposed on Su Qingrou and the betrayal represented by Lin Yanche's conduct elsewhere. Possessiveness here is not evidence of exclusive love; it is a system in which one person demands access and obedience while reserving emotional or sexual freedom for himself.

Lu Xun's own conduct is judged through this darker standard after Su Xiangwan is found unconscious by the roadside. Mo Beiyu condemns the man who tortured his woman into such a state and asks what qualifications a rapist has to stand in the sunlight. Liu Xi's remark that she and Mo Beiyu had acted out of good intentions frames the rescue as an intervention against an abusive claim of ownership. The confrontation between Mo Beiyu and Lu Xun makes the central ethical distinction unmistakable: protection can arise from concern for a vulnerable person, whereas possession treats the vulnerable person as an object whose pain is subordinate to the holder's desire.

Yet the narrative does not remove tenderness from Lu Xun's possessiveness. He follows Su Xiangwan, calls her a fool while worrying that she has only recently recovered, and feels heartache at the prospect of her standing in the cold. He also admits that he likes seeing her lose her temper, turning her anger into a sign of emotional closeness. These gestures complicate rather than cancel the coercive pattern. His care is genuine within the scene, but it remains entangled with the expectation that he may monitor, interpret, and manage her reactions. Possessive love consequently appears as an unstable mixture of solicitude and entitlement: the same attachment that notices illness and pain also seeks exclusive access to the beloved's attention, choices, and body.

Emotional Accounting and Narrative Significance

Possessive love is also expressed through the novel’s language of exchange, debt, and repayment. Song Yuner describes herself as having received her due retribution after being abandoned, while Lu Xun’s response treats her suffering as insufficient compensation for the damage he believes she caused. Her appeal to his former protection collapses into a confrontation over who has paid, who remains indebted, and who has the right to punish. The same logic appears in Su Xiangwan’s attempt to settle the five-hundred-million marriage financially: she offers shares and interest so that leaving Lu Xun will not look like an act of taking. Emotional separation is thus translated into an economic calculation, but the calculation cannot produce freedom because Lu Xun answers it with contempt for the idea that intimacy can be assigned a price. The novel repeatedly shows affection passing through property, capital, marriage status, and bodily access, making love resemble an investment whose returns are demanded through loyalty.

This structure explains why possessiveness extends even to the claim that Su Xiangwan is a wife. When Lu Xun tests whether she knows who he is, she pulls off his shirt and identifies their relationship through the title of husband. The gesture offers reassurance, but it also reveals how marital naming functions as emotional security: the title establishes a claim that desire alone cannot guarantee. Against this claim stand the rival designations of cousin, adopted relative, brother, friend, and fiancé, each capable of sheltering intimacy or provoking suspicion. The novel’s recurring jealousy therefore does not arise only from infidelity; it grows from unstable classifications that leave affection vulnerable to reinterpretation. A person may be protected as family, pursued as a romantic object, or controlled as a spouse, and the boundary between these positions is repeatedly tested.

The pattern is especially consequential for the women. Su Xiangwan’s fever and physical weakness make the stakes of marital control literal, while Su Qingrou’s confinement and visible injuries expose the danger of treating a woman’s body as proof of another person’s authority. Su Qingrou’s proposed engagement to Jin Zhengnan is presented partly as a matter for the two companies, showing that her romantic future is also entangled with family strategy and corporate interests. Her reliance on a brother’s protection does not erase the vulnerability created by Lin Yanche’s power; it instead demonstrates how women are forced to navigate among marital status, family alliances, financial arrangements, and bodily safety. Su Xiangwan’s sarcasm and demands for explanation provide a more active form of resistance, yet even her resistance must operate within a marriage whose capital, public identity, and emotional rules are controlled by Lu Xun.

As a result, Possessive Love and Jealousy is not merely a description of Lu Xun’s temperament or Su Xiangwan’s insecurity. It is a recurring narrative mechanism that converts every sign of intimacy into a question of access and every rival relationship into a test of allegiance. Tenderness may lead to care after illness, apology after injury, or pleasure in a spouse’s temper; the same bond may lead to surveillance, ultimatums, threats, or coercion. By placing these forms side by side, the novel makes possession legible as both an emotional promise and a danger. Love becomes most unstable precisely when it insists on proving that it owns the person it claims to protect.