Some time ago, I met a fortune teller.
He told me that over the years, many female customers who came to him were in a state of mind of "standing on the threshold of marriage and ready to retreat at any time". Once they find it difficult to continue their marriage or love, they will not hesitate to retreat, and a marriage will dissipate.
I said, when women have the conditions for divorce, they naturally have the courage to divorce and not wronged themselves, isn't it normal?
But he was very puzzled and sighed sadly, "This is not good!" he smiled vaguely, "It depends on which angle you think." If from the perspective of "maintaining the integrity of the marriage", being able to endure and tolerate is the "good" in the ultimate goal of life.
Of course, this perspective will not be suitable for the vast majority of young people today, especially the "post-90s" and "post-00s" who have received education and have their own jobs in the city. In their eyes, whether in love or marriage, mutual comfort comes first. If you need to put up with each other, or even look at each other and hate each other, it is better to separate neatly than to forcibly bind.
The fortune teller's clients must include young people, and if the saying is not in step with the times, how can business be good? I expressed this idea euphemistically, but he still just smiled, "You don't understand".
His "perspective theory" on marriage reminds me of the popular 10,000-word long article "The Death of My Wife" that swiped the Internet not long ago. To be precise, this is a eulogy.
The author of the article, "Qiao Jialan", recorded the whole process of his wife who had been married for 13 years from cancer to death. The husband first spent about two-thirds of the article complaining about the Canadian health care system and its possible impact on his wife's death. The remaining 1/3 of the article uses affection and gratitude to detail the wife's excellence, perfection, and meticulous care and dedication to this family of five.
In the author's pen, he and his wife have known each other for 20 years and have been married for 13 years. The wife is a typical Kochi woman. After graduating from the United States, she married the author and gave up her H-1B (a U.S. work visa for foreign professionals) to return to China for her husband. Later, in order to have a third child, the couple decided to immigrate to Canada.
His wife got a bank offer from Canada through a study abroad visa, and she gave birth to three children while working. The husband quit his job in the system and stayed at home. But the wife is still in charge of many large and small affairs in the family, such as cooking, shoveling snow, and cleaning the yard.
On April 29, Qiao Jialan posted a long article "The Death of My Wife" on the official account
At the end of the article, the husband expresses his grief over his wife's death, and then calls on readers to "donate money for children's books" to his three children.
In early April, the article quickly exceeded 100,000 views after its release and sparked heated discussions. Perhaps the author's grief and praise and expectations for his wife are just to pave the way for an indictment of the Canadian medical system, but he obviously did not expect that such a touching and heartfelt eulogy would be questioned and criticized by many netizens.
The suspicion lies in the fact that the author spends a lot of space describing the many tasks that his wife does for the family, but does not see what role and contribution the author plays in the family as a husband. He has no job in Canada, can't drive, doesn't speak English well, and even asks his 13-year-old daughter to help translate when communicating with doctors. And because she didn't have a driver's license, she couldn't rely on her husband to go to the emergency room when she was sick, so she had to take a taxi by herself.
These things seem to be for the self-presentation of praising the wife, and the subtext of "the wife picks up the burden of the whole family" is hidden, and then extends to the motherhood and wifehood of women in the marriage. And the husband's praise and then asking for it also makes the reader feel the sincerity of a person who has just lost his wife.
A photo of Qiao Jialan's family posted on the official account
On May 1, due to the pressure of public opinion, Qiao Jialan responded to the controversy he suffered through a media interview.
He began by listing the various things he has done for the family, such as supervising the children's studies and occasionally cooking. In addition, he emphasized that in the 13 years of marriage with his wife, he has borne the financial expenses of the whole family for about 11 years. "Although my wife is away from home and I am at home, we both contribute equally to the family. ”
This is a very interesting response, emphasizing "equal contribution", emphasizing that one's own contribution is not less than that of his wife, and that it is important to have a balance and equality. Like two collaborators on a project, they have to prove that they are not cutting corners.
Marriage is different from all other intimate relationships in human beings. Marriage is concluded out of affection, but more importantly, out of economic and value exchange. There are times when trading is not equal, but people tend to wrap it in love, sacrifice and devotion.
As early as the end of the nineteenth century, Engels pointed out that with the emergence of the "autocratic individual family", women's labor lost its public character and became a "private service", which was different from the equal division of labor in the era of ethnic hunting. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, he writes that "with the birth of the autocratic individual family," housework loses its public character, and it ceases to be socially irrelevant but becomes a private service. The wife becomes the main domestic maid and is excluded from social production".
Stills from "82-year-old Kim Ji-young".
If "marriage" is regarded as an independent object, are the people in it its servant or the leader? In the past, people were ashamed of divorce, and obviously regarded people as the servants of marriage. Now, singing the praises of a perfect, powerful wife is essentially a celebration of "wifehood."
This is a concept that has only been widely discussed in recent years, and it emphasizes a professional identity. Since it is a profession, it has more or less extracted a person's time, body and skills, and to some extent alienated a part of the person.
Alienation is not necessarily a bad thing, and any intimate relationship, from parent-child relationship to love and marriage, requires members to make certain concessions and understandings for a shared harmony and happiness.
The traditional sense of "wifeship" is the cliché "good wife and good mother". Premier Zhou Enlai once wrote an article about this statement, first of all, to disenchant the "wife": "Of course, the mother must be good, the wife must be virtuous, the father must be good, and the husband must be virtuous, and it has become an immutable truth", and he also realized that in the context of patriarchal society, how to be a wife and how to be a mother has become a one-sided requirement and shackles for women.
Because if a woman wants to perfectly fulfill the "wife" and "motherhood" within the family, under normal circumstances, she will not be able to take care of her career more perfectly, that is, the external social occupation.
Stills from "Finding You".
Back to "The Death of My Wife", the wife in the text is a woman who tries her best to be perfect both inside and out.
She is a typical Kochi woman. High requirements for themselves, strong sense of responsibility and honor and disgrace, and strive to achieve full marks in all identities and on all occasions. This may be the result of family education or social education, or it may be that she is a naturally tough, independent person who is responsible and regards self-worth as the main source of fulfillment.
Even if they are tired and tired, such women often do not become the kind of "resentful women" who are out of control, but will continue to do their best to be good wives at the expense of their energy, time and even health. Although, they may not be aware that they have also invisibly taken on the "husband".
Is a strong, independent, all-powerful woman worthy of praise? Even if it is, the role of praise should not be her husband.
Stills from "Thirty Only".
I wonder if the author of "The Death of My Wife" was inspired by Chen Lang, a doctor from Yale University who wrote a eulogy for her husband a few months ago, to write this long and moving eulogy. However, Dr. Chen Lang's eulogy starts from "me" and describes his position and feelings in this marriage from the perspective of a scholar's wife, which arouses a universal and homogeneous resonance of female experience.
Unlike Chen Lang who made concessions for her husband's career, in "The Death of My Wife", her husband is the one who stays at home. In his eyes, his wife is undoubtedly a perfect woman, but he does not understand the source of "perfection".
Later, he defended himself in another article and emphasized that he also paid because readers cared far more about the exchange value and the proportion of division of labor than he imagined.
In response, the husband argued that he had learned to fish in order to supplement his pregnant wife's nutrition. The ironic example of a more recreational activity as a contribution to the family reveals the husband's ignorance of the nature of the role assumed by his wife.
Stills from "The Big Exam".
A person who has nothing but gratitude in marriage is something to be wary of. Judging from the follow-up responses and explanations, the husband of "The Death of My Wife" is not a person who cares nothing about public opinion and external evaluation, and is not an absolutely indifferent person who is willing to hide behind the scenes of the family and is like those housewives who are speechless.
In this way, his gratitude becomes strange.
Under traditional values, there is often no contradiction between men moving forward on the road to success and being a good father. Motherhood is often opposed to "successful women".
And because of the irreplaceable nature of motherhood, people rarely praise or envy a man who "marries a strong wife" and can sit at home and enjoy happiness. Therefore, women are the ones who are more likely to be asked "how to balance family and career". The older generation is always tolerant and tolerant, but also because they don't have another ocean in front of them.
When a generation discovers that family harmony is not all right, the positioning, needs and reflections on marriage will inevitably change.
What happens if "people" are put before "perfect marriage/family"? The most recent ideological experiment is the French film "The Fallen Judgment," which recently won Best Film at Cannes.
In the movie, a talented and career-rich woman does not ask herself to be a perfect wife after entering marriage. The wife moved to the countryside with her husband, who quit his job to take care of the children, but when the wife faced trial for her husband's accidental death, she did not make any excuse for her duty as a wife, when everyone tried to portray her as a bad wife.
Stills from "The Fallen Judgment".
The husband of "The Death of My Wife" believes that he and his wife have made equal contributions to the family, so they are loving, and this marriage and this family are worthy of blessing and remembrance.
But the individual in the family, the thoughts and desires of the individual in a symbol of happiness, are blinded by the overall situation of happiness. sprinkled with 10,000 words, like a long essay written by a primary school student to praise good people and good deeds, he will definitely win an award if he takes it to the competition, but the person in the essay is a moral totem who is worshiped and admired, not a person with flesh and blood and strength.
Let's take Dr. Chen Lang's eulogy to her husband as an example. Between the lines, the wife's words do not hide her love and complaints for her husband, and the two are opposites and unified, and together they build a complex marriage. With affectionate grievances, it is a three-dimensional portrayal of a real and complex marriage, and it can only resonate with people.
Intimacy is a mirror that best exposes oneself, and everyone who has felt loved and loved can sharply feel sincerity and hypocrisy from the self-exposure of others.
The fortune teller at the beginning of the article finally advised me: "Don't think too much", he said, "In the relationship, it is rare to be confused".
In a sense, this sentence cannot be said to be the truth, and the ignorant are fearless and sorrowless, but from another perspective, it is precisely because we have consciousness that the kind of confused and obscured happiness and fulfillment can no longer be the so-called "big picture" that hinders personal expression.
Author | Yongzhou
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Huang Mingting
Edit | Sumi
Typography | Eight pounds