Are there really no muddled people like this in real life? Among the relatives of this author, there are exactly such people — the moment they are overcome by anger, they forget everything, speak words that should never be spoken, and do foolish things that should never be done.
So when Kang Yiniang, with her honeyed tongue, got through her string of goading, Wang Shi — going through her middle years and already prone to confusion — lost her head entirely. In her view, wasn’t it just like dropping a bit of croton seed? Besides, she never believed she would be found out — every person who commits a wrong thinks exactly this.
And Kang Yiniang herself was harboring sinister intentions all along, operating on the principle of: even if the matter comes to light, I can shake myself clear and let Wang Shi take the fall.
As for Sheng Hong — he was not indifferent to his stepmother’s life; he did carry some affection for her, as is natural between parent and child. He was simply more devoted to his own career and reputation. His inclination would have been to first suppress the matter, then resolve it behind closed doors. And as Wang Shi also calculated — given the Wang family connection and the interests of his children, how harshly could Sheng Hong really punish his wife?
Not to mention Kang Yiniang — if the Wang family refused to hand her over, Sheng Hong would not dare make a scene, and might not even be able to reach her at all.
In summary: Sheng Hong was not unwilling to punish Wang Shi, but his manner and degree of punishment was clearly never going to satisfy Minglan. She had understood this from the very beginning — which is why she made her arrangements in advance, deliberately escalating the situation, intent on securing justice.
One more thing I will add.
I say again: ancient China was not a society governed by the rule of law. Please do not idealize the ancient legal system.
Even if a wife had poisoned her husband’s mother to death, and the son-husband afterward did not report it, that would typically amount to “failing to investigate” — at worst “shielding a criminal,” at most “disloyal and unfilial.” As long as he did not participate in the poisoning himself, execution would be out of the question; confiscation of the household, equally unlikely. But demotion was possible, or the loss of one’s examination qualifications — in more serious cases, criminal charges.
As for Minglan setting up her own informal tribunal — to those readers who criticize even this element, I find I have nothing left to say.
Have you seen Raise the Red Lantern? This film was adapted from the well-known novella Wives and Concubines. That was already the era of the Republic of China — so tell me, how did the Yiniang who had an affair outside die? She was a concubine of free status, without a bond of sale — on what grounds did that household have the right to kill her?
From ancient times onward, clan power was an extraordinarily formidable force. In some isolated or remote regions, the ancestral hall of the clan could directly adjudicate certain offenses — such as acts of defiance toward one’s elders, or adultery. Drowning in a pig cage, private punishment — for the most part, the authorities implicitly acknowledged the existence of such practices to a certain extent.
The ancient order of priority was sentiment, reason, then law — all three considered together; law came last. This did not mean law was least important, but rather that law was the final resort when all else had failed. The ancient view was: if at all possible, do not go before a court; especially in family matters — once it went to court, it became a scandal.
Of course, Minglan’s informal tribunal was still unlawful — she knew that perfectly well. Yet it was the only path she could choose. She needed to seize the initiative with speed that left no time for reaction, so she could hold her ground against the Kang family, the Wang family, and her own hesitating father.
Minglan knew it was wrong. But what of it — if it could bring justice to Grandmother?
The above is the thinking behind my writing of this plot. All commentary is welcome, but please do not return to arguments such as “filial piety was the foremost rule of the ancient world, so Wang Shi could not possibly have done this” or “plotting against one’s mother-in-law was such a heinous crime that Wang Shi couldn’t possibly have been so reckless.” I have already explained: whether in historical records, in classical fiction, or in oral tradition passed down through generations, cases of descendants plotting against their elders have always existed.
Everyone knows that rebellion is a crime punishable by the extermination of one’s entire clan — yet have ambitious men throughout every dynasty been in short supply? Everyone knows that taking a second wife while the first still lives is a grave transgression — yet across thousands of years, men who abandoned their first wives never ceased to come, one after another. Plotting against a mother-in-law is just as unpardonable as murdering a husband — and yet women bold enough to do so have hardly been few.
No matter that all of them eventually suffered punishment — the point is that they did it.
In the world of the martial arts, is there anything more sacred than one’s own master and school? And yet unworthy disciples abound throughout its history.
Take Wuhua and Nangong Ling — raised with love since childhood, given the most orthodox upbringing — yet they poisoned their master and adoptive father with Tianyi Sacred Water without the slightest apparent difficulty. In truth, the Fourteenth Young Master of Tianfeng had simply grown tired of living — it was hardly a killing at all. As for that old monk of Shaolin and the Chief of the Beggar’s Sect — they were cursed with the worst luck imaginable: they accepted an invitation to a duel in good faith, entered the contest with open and honorable intent, everything above board, life and death to be decided by skill — only to be ambushed by hidden means, and decades later found themselves being made to pay by the very children they had raised. Wuhua and Nangong Ling spoke endlessly of avenging their father’s death, but in truth, I suspect their ambition to dominate the martial world was the real motive.
Then there is Zhang Zhaozhong, who betrayed his teacher and destroyed his school; Huodu, who abandoned his master Jin Lun at the moment of crisis; and the disciples of the venerable Wuchan — all save Cheng Lingsu. Look across the whole of The Smiling Proud Wanderer and The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils — it is a carnival of demons and monsters.
Every socially accepted moral code has its traitors — there is nothing surprising in that.
Where profit lies, human nature follows. Does any of this make these stories implausible? Especially from Wang Shi’s muddled perspective — to her, it was no more than tossing in a handful of croton seeds.
For a novel worth its name, plot construction must simultaneously fall within what is plausible and exceed what is expected — that balance is extraordinarily difficult to strike.
郭靖 — even if every experience that led him there was inevitable, the fact that he happened to meet the only daughter of Huang Laoxie, that Huang Rong happened to fall desperately in love with him, that he happened to encounter Hong Qigong, that throughout his life he encountered one miraculous opportunity after another — Master Jin wrote all of this and it flowed naturally. If I had written it, people would long since have accused me of gifting the protagonist unending divine windfalls. The same applies to Wei Xiaobao, Zhang Wuji, and others.
And consider Ying Gu — a Noble Consort of the palace, who had an affair. By our understanding, even if she had not been expelled from the palace after discovery, she should at least have been cast into the cold palace. Yet somehow the Emperor permitted her to give birth to a child sired by another man within the palace walls. Prince Duan refused to save this product of his own cuckolding, and Ying Gu spent decades nursing her resentment against him — as though she, having put a green hat on the Emperor’s head without consequence, was entirely in the right. By the moral logic of the domestic and agrarian world, would not such a woman be called shameless?
Real life has always been full of strange and particular people — the fortunate, the muddle-headed, the impulsive, the honest and kind, the selfish and hypocritical. So why could Wang Shi not have put croton seed in her mother-in-law’s food without a single thought for the grandchild?
Foolish, credulous, unfilial — she was neither the first, nor would she be the last.
……
On the subject of this section of the story, let me say one more word.
Ancient China was never a law-governed society — and frankly, it is debatable whether it is entirely so even now. Some readers have said that Sheng Hong absolutely must have punished severely and handled this properly — otherwise terrible consequences would follow. All of this rests on one assumption: that the matter of the old woman’s poisoning gets out into the open.
If it never gets out — then it can be buried.
In Dream of the Red Chamber, Xue Pan beat that young Feng to death — and Feng came from a household of middling wealth with property and connections; they even filed a complaint. So what came of it?
Some readers have even speculated that this whole incident was an elaborate scheme by the old white flower to lure Minglan away, then do harm to little Tuan. I think that is reading too much into it.
Everything depends on power. At that time, the old white flower had already split from the main household and moved out; her husband had no great prospects to speak of — how could she possibly compare to Gu Tingye, who held all the reins? Who would even help her? Besides, Stewardess Cui, who watched over the child at every moment, would never have allowed it — the old white flower would never have gotten close enough to see little Tuan. Was she going to storm in with hired muscle?
And Mr. Gongsun was still at home as well.
In writing the events surrounding the old woman’s illness, I have tried to portray each character from their own perspective.
First — a wife plotting to poison a mother: regardless of whether the matter could be perfectly resolved, once it came to light, it would be a scandal. It would have a grave impact on Sheng Hong’s career and his son’s official prospects.
So how would Sheng Hong think about this? Naturally, he would want to keep the matter within the family — ideally, with no one outside knowing a single thing.
Second — why was Wang Shi able to hold her ground? Because she understood this point perfectly. The old saying holds: family shame must not be aired in public. She knew Sheng Hong would not want to make a scene, and if it were handled internally, she had her own family to back her up.
Third — what exactly was Minglan using as leverage?
Between this father and daughter, and between husband and wife, a very delicate, mutually compromising relationship had formed.
To say it once more: in ancient times, family shame was never to be aired publicly. Any domestic disaster, if at all possible, was to be kept sealed — never allowed to spill outside, and absolutely never taken to court.
In wealthy households, as with the Jia family in Dream of the Red Chamber — the interior was rotten to the core, yet on the surface all remained brilliant and splendid, not a ripple out of place. And Minglan’s role, precisely, was to force the affair into the open.