"I'm afraid I'll scare you if I die at home, and I'm afraid I'll wronged myself if I die too far."
In the original work of "Parents' Love", after An Jie hanged himself to no avail, he said to his youngest daughter Jiang Yaning. The words are the pain and suffering of her life. Behind the glamorous appearance of the officer's wife, An Jie, is a loveless marriage, an unmatched class, the ridicule of her children and her resentment.
"Parents' Love" is adapted from the novel of the same name, which is a collection of short stories by military writer Liu Jing. It is not so much a novel, but rather a marriage between Jiang Defu, a naval officer, and An Jie, a capitalist lady, told by Liu Jing from the perspective of her youngest daughter.
The original novel is only 47 pages long, and there are not many characters who appear. The TV series has been adapted into 44 episodes, and compared to the sharpness of the original book, the TV series is more like a novel with a re-narrative, which is a completely different story and fate from An Jie in the original book. Liu Jing's prototype in the original book is Jiang Yaning, the youngest daughter of the Jiang family.
An Jie in the original book is a capitalist lady. An Jie's grandfather owned a textile factory, a foreign car dealership, a laundry and dyeing shop, a pharmacy, and several small restaurants. On the eve of liberation, my grandfather, who smelled a hint of danger, sold his family's property and fled to Taiwan with his little wife and a pair of children born to his little wife.
An Jie's grandmother was abandoned, and the grievances of her ancestors affected An Jie's fate. The promotion of his eldest brother and sister is the source of An Jie's lifelong pain. "Parents' Love" tries its best to weaken the selfishness of the brother and sister-in-law, and the description of the original book is more acute in comparison.
Liu Jing wrote in the original book: My uncle and aunt pushed their sister, that is, my mother, into the arms of my father. And the purpose of them doing this is, firstly, to let their sister live a worry-free life from now on, and secondly, they take into account their own interests.
Obviously, in their sphere of consideration, self-interest is more important. They insist on the former in order to conceal their true purpose, but their actions expose the purpose. An Jie doesn't look like marrying Jiang Defu, it's more like being sold to Jiang Defu by his brother and sister.
Jiang Defu was born in the countryside, and earned the position of a naval officer with his hands and feet. He is a very great and powerful person, but he and An Jie are diametrically opposed in terms of living habits and ways of thinking. He understood An Jie's petty bourgeois sentiment of drinking coffee, and he couldn't understand An Jie's emotions.
An Jie reluctantly married Jiang Defu, at first she worked hard to adapt to the life of the army, and wanted to run in with her husband, but Jiang Defu couldn't understand the emotions and couldn't provide an outlet for emotions. The wives of the officers around her were also unable to communicate with her. She was getting more and more miserable, more and more lonely.
After getting married, she followed Jiang Defu to a remote and desolate island, where there was no work she could do, and her previous work proved that there was no role here. An Jie became a stay-at-home wife, and in order to prove her worth in this marriage, she began to give birth like a rabbit.
The coarse Jiang Defu doesn't understand the meaning of a wife, in his eyes, marrying a wife is to have children and continue the family. The reason why he married An Jie was nothing more than coveting her beauty and good upbringing. In essence, it is a marriage of exchange of interests.
An Jie in the original book gave birth to 8 children and survived 7. Jiang Defu retains his previous thoughts, believing that having more children and more blessings is what women should do. Completely ignoring Anjie's pain and irritability from pregnancy to childbirth.
After Angel gave birth to seven or eight children, the pain in her heart was infinitely magnified. Jiang Yaning described her like this: "Our mother never did this, her big eyes always flashed, as if to penetrate the top of our brothers and sisters' heads, looking at some distant place, as if there was another group of children, another home. ”
Jiang Defu couldn't feel these things, and couldn't give corresponding comfort and care. When An Jie was depressed, Jiang Defu always said: "Which woman didn't come over like this?" In such a marital environment, she popped up one after another with children, no maternal love, only complaints.
Her children are also full of resentment towards this mother, and the youngest daughter Jiang Yaning is the most serious one. "I am the youngest of her three sons and four daughters, and when they gave birth to me, they didn't even bother to choose a name, so they called me the seventh."
She hated the name, but put all the responsibility for choosing it on her mother. The attitude of the mother in her memory towards their seven children was to treat the seven living things, with endless demands every day, and never had the patience to be a mother.
So their brothers and sisters are also closer to their father, who is always away from home. She described her father as a chubby father who could get along with his children, and described Anjie as "a stepmother's attitude." Jiang Yaning later learned about his parents' past.
After she learned that her husband, who had been awarded the rank of colonel, was only a GI, not a powerful officer. When her father went to work in Biansai, An Jie angrily scolded Jiang Defu for being a liar, a complete liar, she scolded and cried at the same time, like a woman from a good family who was abducted and trafficked.
Jiang Yaning didn't understand that his mother's marriage was an exchange of interests. Jiang Yaning didn't understand the state of her parents' marriage, which doomed An Jie to be unable to become a loving mother. She just felt that An Jie was too cheesy and mocked her mother's cheesiness.
Later, a petty bourgeois Shanghai woman came to the island - Mei Yali, who graduated from Tongji University, elegant and decent, beautiful and generous. Anjie and Mei Yali soon became friends, but Mei Yali became a widow. Just because of some gossip, Mei Yali launched a fierce revenge on An Jie.
Anjie was invited to Mei Yali's house and saw a scene that made her desperate - her husband sat on the edge of another woman's bed, holding her hand tightly. An Jie can't say how she feels, because she is taking care of several children at this time, she is not as bright and beautiful as she was when she was a teenager.
Do you want to end this uninteresting marriage? This idea only existed in An Jie's mind, and in less than a second, she dispelled it. She didn't speak, didn't even make any noise to disturb them, and silently exited the room.
An Jie, who returned home, made a table of exquisite meals as usual, after brushing the pots and pans after eating. She calmly picked up her favorite silk scarf and walked alone to the suburbs, wanting to end her life of pain in the woods.
I don't know if I was lucky or unlucky, she was rescued by Jiang Defu who rushed over, because of this suicide, she was left with a strangulation mark on her neck, and this red mark reminded her all the time that this marriage did not even achieve the minimum loyalty, only numbness.
What do you think about this? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss!