Su Xiangcheng and Lu Xun’s marriage and romantic relationship

Su Xiangcheng and Lu Xun’s marriage and romantic relationship is the central intimate arrangement through which the novel examines the unstable boundary between marital status, emotional security, and personal autonomy. Their relationship is publicly treated as a marriage even when Lu Xun denies or conceals it, while private scenes reveal a bond governed by longing, possessiveness, fear, and repeated attempts to turn control into care. The marriage therefore functions not as a settled endpoint but as a continually renegotiated state: Su Xiangcheng insists on the authority of being Lu Xun’s wife, while Lu Xun alternates between guarding that status, testing her attachment, and trying to keep her physically close.

Marriage as Status and Shelter

Su Xiangcheng’s confidence rests first on the marital name itself. When Su Qing Wen warns that she cannot defeat Song Yun’er, Su Xiangcheng answers that she is Mrs. Lu, treating the title as both emotional assurance and social protection. Later, at the Hospital, she introduces herself to the doctor as Mr. Lu’s wife, only for Lu Xun to deny that she is his wife when the nurse points out that another woman had occupied that position shortly before. The contrast exposes the precariousness of their marriage: Su Xiangcheng experiences the name as an established fact, while Lu Xun’s public behavior keeps its recognition conditional.

Their domestic arrangements likewise combine intimacy with supervision. Lu Xun permits Su Xiangcheng to return temporarily to the Su Clan’s ancestral home because her sister has been ill and because the move will allow her to accompany her grandfather and visit her sister more easily. His permission is immediately qualified by the promise that he will check on her frequently and by his insistence that he cannot sleep alone. Su Xiangcheng presents the move to her grandfather as an ordinary period of marital awkwardness, insisting that she and Lu Xun have no serious problem, even as the need to explain the separation shows that their private negotiations remain visible to the family.

Pursuit, Distance, and Everyday Intimacy

The relationship repeatedly follows a pursuit-and-withdrawal pattern. Lu Xun is reluctant to let Su Xiangcheng remain away from him, and when he drives her back to the old residence, he calls the act of sending her home a reluctant one and hopes that the next day, the weekend, will bring her obediently back. His tenderness is inseparable from expectation: the invitation to return is also a demand that marital life resume on his terms.

Physical affection supplies a language when direct reassurance fails. Lu Xun tells Su Xiangcheng that he has missed her, approaches her lips without immediately deepening the kiss, and leaves her waiting anxiously. In another intimate exchange, he asks what their relationship is, and she removes his shirt while identifying him as her husband. The gesture converts a potentially uncertain test of recognition into a declaration of marital identity. Yet Lu Xun remains unsure whether she truly knows who he is, suggesting that even their most playful intimacy contains anxiety about memory, loyalty, and the authenticity of her attachment.

The same closeness appears in softer forms. When Su Xiangcheng is frightened, Lu Xun brings her hot milk, holds her, and assures her that he has been there all along. His care is bodily and immediate rather than explanatory: warmth, embrace, and continued presence answer fear before its cause is fully discussed. The relationship thus oscillates between flirtation and caretaking, with domestic gestures becoming evidence that the marriage is more than a formal arrangement.

Rival Attachments and Kinship Boundaries

Lu Xun’s relationship with Su Xiangcheng is continually unsettled by other women and by kinship labels that obscure or expose desire. Shen Yiyun is described as the child adopted by Lu Xun’s uncle and therefore his cousin, yet Lu Xun emphasizes that she is not related to him by blood. Su Xiangcheng objects that this situation resembles the earlier trouble involving Song Yun’er, while Lu Xun promises to correct his mistakes. The scene makes family terminology a source of ambiguity: “cousin” can establish a legitimate household connection, but the absence of blood relation leaves room for suspicion.

Lu Xun’s conflict with Chu Fei makes the threat more explicit. Chu Fei says that he once desired a woman who wore the clothing of a close relative without actually being related to him, and he tells Lu Xun that Su Xiangcheng is an eyesore because Chu Fei likes her. He claims that he will not force her and prefers the prolonged process of pursuit. Lu Xun therefore faces not simply a rival but a rival who treats desire as a contest of patience, making Su Xiangcheng’s autonomy and marital allegiance the terrain of confrontation.

The marriage also carries the residue of Song Yun’er’s earlier bond with Lu Xun. Song Yun’er pleads with him while admitting that she is not like him and that he could not casually marry or accommodate a woman without anger. She describes herself as abandoned and punished, while Lu Xun responds with cold mockery. Her presence clarifies the emotional history against which Su Xiangcheng’s marriage is measured: Lu Xun’s past attachment has become a wound, a source of blame, and a warning about what happens when affection is mixed with resentment and public humiliation.

Illness, Fear, and Protective Control

Illness repeatedly reorganizes the marriage by turning care into urgency and vulnerability into a reason for protection. Lu Yanche’s hospitalization sends Lu Xun and Su Xiangcheng toward the Hospital together, while Lu Yanche’s warning that Su Xiangcheng may be so weak that a fever could last for three days and three nights provokes a violent physical reaction in Lu Xun. He becomes pale and experiences sudden pain at the possibility that she may be in danger. The warning is later realized when Su Xiangcheng, burning with fever and losing consciousness, faints before she can press the elevator button. Her collapse transforms Lu Xun’s possessive concern into an emergency centered on her physical survival.

Lu Xun’s own history complicates his responses to danger. He recalls being kidnapped at twelve, drugged by his kidnappers, and nearly losing his life; the experience left him resistant to medication. He narrates the memory with an unwavering gaze, as though speaking about someone else, indicating that the old pain has been distanced without being erased. Su Xiangcheng’s illness and vulnerability therefore meet a man whose protective behavior is rooted in an earlier experience of helplessness. His impulse is to keep danger away from her, but the same impulse can become restriction and surveillance.

The danger surrounding Lu Yanche also tests the protective roles within the marriage. Lu Xun is injured while intervening in the crisis, with blood still running from the corner of his mouth, yet he immediately embraces Su Xiangcheng and assures her that she is safe. She notices his injury and asks about him, but his priority remains that she has not been harmed. Later, when he says that his mind is elsewhere and asks whether she is still angry, he admits that he would rather let her resent him than bring her into unknown danger. The statement reveals the marriage’s governing paradox: he understands that concealment and exclusion hurt her, but he treats her anger as preferable to her exposure to risk.

Change and Narrative Significance

The relationship’s development is marked by an incomplete movement from formal possession toward mutual emotional acknowledgment. Lu Xun continues to use rules of proximity, frequent checking, and expectations of obedience, while Su Xiangcheng increasingly answers those demands with her own claims: she returns to her family home when necessary, insists on the title of wife, challenges his explanations, and demands that hidden matters be disclosed. Their conflicts are therefore not merely obstacles to romance; they are negotiations over who may define marriage and who may decide what protection requires.

Their intimacy survives because both characters repeatedly translate fear into attachment. Su Xiangcheng’s frightened appeals draw Lu Xun into physical comfort, while Lu Xun’s longing and reluctance to release her reveal dependence beneath his authority. The result is neither a purely secure marriage nor a simple arrangement of coercion. It is a relationship in which desire, care, secrecy, illness, rivalry, and family identity continually alter the meaning of being husband and wife. The marriage remains emotionally consequential precisely because its status is never allowed to become psychologically simple: every return home, denial before outsiders, kiss, warning, and act of protection asks whether legal or social recognition can finally become trust.