Preface
Although the background of "Water Margin" is the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, it seems to be closely related to reality, but in fact, there are quite a lot of unreasonable things in this book.
Let's not mention that there are a lot of strange and chaotic elements in this book, and even the 108 heroes all have the mysterious origin of "the reincarnation of the demon god".
But this is actually a manifestation of people's belief in gods in ancient times, and the four famous books have similar settings, which is not surprising, in fact, the most unreasonable is the closest to life - heroes are not close to women!
As the saying goes, "heroes are sad to pass the beauty pass", and there are many typical examples of heroes loving beauties in another book of the four famous books, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and there are also many heroes in history who love beauties.
However, in the Water Margin, this group of heroes all have unique skills and are written to stand up to the sky, but they have no pursuit of beauty, which is really an incredible thing.
Not only that, after careful reading, people often find that heroes are not only not good women, but even flower messengers, which is completely inconsistent with people's impression of heroes in the green forest, why is this?
1. Wu Song does not sit back and help women with righteousness
When it comes to the beauty in "Water Margin", I believe people will definitely think of Pan Jinlian, a beautiful woman known as "the first prostitute of the Water Margin", and even people in history recreated "Golden Vase Plum" based on Pan Jinlian's image.
However, this plot actually shows Pan Jinlian's "lewdness", but also shows Wu Song's unapproachable female color everywhere, which can be said to be a model in this regard.
Pan Jinlian is the daughter-in-law of Wu Song's brother Wu Dalang, but because Wu Dalang is short and ugly, Pan Jinlian and Wu Dalang do not live in harmony, and they dislike this husband very much.
Therefore, after meeting Wu Song, Pan Jinlian was instantly impressed by Wu Song, a handsome and extraordinary little uncle, and even took the initiative to seduce Wu Song when Wu Dalang was not paying attention, wanting to achieve something beautiful.
However, although Wu Song is reckless, he is quite affectionate and righteous, and in the face of Pan Jinlian's overtures and even seduction on his face, Wu Song was not only indifferent, but even scolded Pan Jinlian in turn.
This is very unreasonable in the eyes of people, because a big beauty like Pan Jinlian takes the initiative to show affection, even if the two have an uncle-sister-in-law relationship, I believe that few people can control themselves.
In reality, this is the case, many disputes often come from the fact that beauty cannot control herself in front of her, and even many literati who claim to be civilized find it difficult to refuse this temptation.
But Wu Song, a martial artist with little culture, in the face of this level of throwing, he was able to control himself, and even taught Pan Jinlian a lesson in turn, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he "does not understand the customs".
If Wu Song has such an attitude towards Pan Jinlian, it is because of the estrangement between the two of them as an uncle and sister-in-law, and Wu Song's respect for his brother makes him not want to destroy the relationship between his brother and sister-in-law.
After that, when Wu Song walked Centipede Ridge at night, he saved the daughter of Mrs. Zhang's family, and he was really a flower messenger while doing chivalrous righteousness.
Wu Song rescued the kidnapped daughter of the Zhang family in Centipede Ridge, not only that, but he himself was not rich at that time, but in order to let the woman leave safely, he gave her part of the property he obtained.
Even Madame originally thought that a fierce man like Wu Song would not let go of herself, but she didn't expect Wu Song to not only speak so well to the poor woman, but also had no evil intentions at all.
Second, the attitude of heroes towards women
And the matter between Wu Song and women is just one of these Liangshan heroes, in addition to Wu Song, there are many people who are also quite unmoved by women in the text.
Although "Water Margin" is a group novel, the core character is none other than Song Jiang, Song Jiang is a chivalrous person on the rivers and lakes, but such a rich man has no pursuit of beauty.
Although Song Jiang has an outer room that has not passed through the door, the relationship between him and Yan Poxi is not like that of other men who raise an outer room to hide Jiaojiao in the golden house, but to a certain extent, they are forced to be helpless.
Yan Po's father died, and the family had no money to bury him, so Yan Po took her daughter to find Song Jiang, who had a reputation for fighting righteousness and squandering money, and after explaining the situation, Song Jiang really took pity on them and gave them money to complete the funeral.
Yan Po knew that Song Jiang was not married, so she wanted to match the marriage between her daughter and Song Jiang, so under Yan Po's persuasion, Song Jiang finally gave them a place to live, although Song Jiang did not agree to marry Yan Po.
This is why Yan Poxi became Song Jiang's outer room, although Yan Po cherishes her beauty, but Song Jiang really only wants to help them, not covet Yan Poxi's beauty.
As for Song Jiang who killed her in a fit of anger after knowing that Yan Poxi had hooked up with other men, it was also because Yan Poxi was at least his woman when she said it, so she was cuckolded, and no matter who she was, she couldn't accept it.
And when Song Jiang killed Yan Poxi and fled, he saved Liu Gao's wife in Qingfeng Village, which shows that Song Jiang saved people basically out of morality and created a good reputation of benevolence and righteousness for himself, rather than coveting beauty.
In addition to the two of them, Lu Zhishen is also a fairly typical image that is not close to women, and his image is more pure than Song Jiang's ability to buy people's hearts, and he is completely a person who is loyal and righteous.
There are also a lot of stories between him and women, at the beginning, Lu Zhishen killed Zhen Guanxi in order to save Jin Cuilian, a folk girl who was bullied by bullies, and then began to escape.
Later, Lu Zhishen fought with Shi Jin's master in order to save the weak woman, although the two times he saved women, but there were also preconditions, these two women were bullied and miserable.
Therefore, it can be seen that Lu Zhishen did not save a woman for the sake of beauty, but his sense of responsibility as a martial artist, and he believed that the suffering weak should be protected.
This can also be seen from the bullying of Lin Chong and his wife Lin Niangzi by Gao Yanei later, when Lin Chong and his wife were forced to a dead end by Gao Yu, so Lu Zhishen avenged his brother again, it can be seen that another major element of Lu Zhishen's action is the righteousness between brothers, and he rescued Lin Niangzi for Lin Chong.
And the positioning of Lu Zhishen in "Water Margin" can be said to be a perfect person, as can be seen from his ending, in the end, Lu Zhishen saw the world and passed away after an epiphany.
This is the best ending for a monk, so even if Lu Zhishen fights fiercely, his nature must be kind, otherwise he won't get such a good ending.
3. Why don't heroes love beauties?
Of course, there are not no lustful people in "Water Margin", but those characters are basically hooligans who steal chickens and dogs and don't do business, and they don't have any sense of existence on Liangshan.
These characters are looked down upon by everyone even in Liangshan, and it can be seen from their rankings that like the little overlord Zhou Tong was only ranked eighty-seventh, and there was no good ending.
And the bantam tiger Wang Ying is a little better, but it is not much better, ranking fifty-eighth, he still settled down after marrying Hu Sanniang, and he is no longer as lustful as before, otherwise the ranking will definitely be lowered again.
So why do the heroes of Liangshan generally have unlustful qualities? In fact, there are two main reasons for this.
First of all, even if they want women, but there is no such condition on Liangshan! There are a total of three female leaders on Liangshan, one Gu sister-in-law, one Sun Erniang, and one Hu Sanniang.
Among these three women, the first two already had husbands when they went to Liangshan, and although Hu Sanniang did not have a husband, her force value was quite strong, far above the average level of Liangshan, they couldn't beat it, even if they could beat it, bullying women would be despised.
And Sister-in-law Gu and Sun Erniang are both murderous types, more ferocious than many men, not to mention that they are not beautiful, but ugly, so no one cares about them at all.
There are no suitable women on Liangshan, and they can't go to their brothers' women, even if they are lustful, they have nowhere to play.
Secondly, the heroes of Liangshan are walking the rivers and lakes to talk about a righteous spirit, most of the brothers on the mountain are very "enterprising", and there is no woman in their hearts.
Although the reckless men do not care so clearly in their hearts, there is still a spirit of sacrifice for the sake of unity and doing a better job.