Zhang Ailing was born on September 30, 1920 in a declining aristocratic mansion in the western district of shanghai's public concession, her family is prominent, her grandfather Zhang Peilun was a famous courtier in the late Qing Dynasty, and her grandmother Li Ju coupled was the eldest daughter of Li Hongzhang, a major minister of the imperial court.
Her mother, Huang Yifan, a famous lady of high society, was deeply influenced by Western thought and was a new woman with independent thoughts, while her father, Zhang Tingzhong, belonged to the young master of the young age, immersed in conservative feudal thought and education from an early age, and exuded the old feudal and conservative style.
Both are upper-class people, with aristocratic blood, and seem to be a pair of bi people who are right in the door, but the worldview and outlook on life that the two are completely contrary to have long been doomed to this marriage as a wordless ending.
Zhang Ailing began to receive private school education at the age of four, but in order to escape this loveless marriage, her mother left her young and helpless and went to Europe to study.
The young Zhang Ailing thought that she had been abandoned by her mother, fortunately she was accompanied by her father at this time, and her father also loved Zhang Ailing, would read poems to her, would teach him to read, and later gave her childish composition eyebrow criticism and general approval, and also bound her childish composition into a book. I don't know when my father became the only spiritual pillar in Zhang Ailing's mind.
Perhaps this is the reason for Zhang Ailing's father-in-law complex after adulthood.
Finally, the marriage came to an end. When Zhang Ailing was in the sixth grade of elementary school, her parents divorced, and Zhang Ailing was sentenced to her father.
Not long after the divorce, the father married his stepmother Sun Yongfan.
Zhang Ailing hated the arrival of her stepmother and the fact that she had separated her father's love, so she returned to her mother and wanted to throw herself into her mother's arms and enjoy the long-lost maternal love.
Unfortunately, her mother was bent on cultivating Zhang Ailing into a famous lady to make up for her shortcomings in this marriage, and soon she was disappointed and felt that she was not worthy to be her daughter.
Her evaluation of her daughter Zhang Ailing is: loyal and honest, but loyal is useless.
Later, Zhang Ailing tried to prove to her mother that she was a proud daughter, and she rushed to give her mother the 800 yuan scholarship she won at the University of Hong Kong, but in return she was indifferent, and the 800 yuan was lost by her mother in one night at the poker table.
Since then, Zhang Ailing has completely lost her expectations for her mother's love, and her mother wrote from Europe on her deathbed:
Now I just want to see you again.
Zhang Ailing resolutely refused her mother's last request, but only sent a check for $100, which was considered to buy out all the relationship between mother and daughter, including mother-daughter love.
Knowing Zhang Ailing, perhaps we will understand why her stories and characters are so sad, it turns out that her original family left her too many scars, and these painful memories have become her desolate stories.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="18" >01, Heart Sutra: a loveless home under the veil of warmth, a selfish father, an escaped mother</h1>
The girl Xu Xiaohan in the "Heart Sutra" is an introverted and sensitive girl, but at the same time with a stubborn childishness, perhaps a kind of self-deception, she has a strong Oedipal complex in her heart, which bothers her and also makes her depressed.
She lived in an enviable modern family, enjoying superior material conditions, but the home was filled with a strange atmosphere of harmony, the father and daughter had a good relationship, and the mother seemed to be a superfluous ornament in this home.
Xiao Han has an inexplicable admiration for her father, and at the same time with an inexplicable sense of compassion, she hates her mother, in Xiao Han's view, her father's unhappiness is caused by her mother, and she gradually develops feelings for her father.
In this deformed love, father Xu Fengyi naturally has an unshirkable responsibility.
He knew that this was an unruly love, but he still enjoyed his daughter's admiration without guilt, and he also enjoyed this feeling and ambiguity very much, exposing the selfishness of this man.
When the marriage of the two entered a period of burnout, he did not actively manage and repair, but reacted passively.
Perhaps he felt that only Xiao Han could bring her some vitality and warmth in this home, and in order to enjoy this attachment and pretend not to know, he consciously or unconsciously acquiesced and encouraged Xiao Han's love for himself. His attitude toward love and marriage is to neither initiate nor resign.
As Xiao Han grew older and Xiao Han became more and more obsessed with love, this made Xu Fengyi feel afraid, and he could not face this relationship squarely, but only used another relationship as a refuge.
Perhaps there is a shadow of Zhang Ailing's father, after her parents' feelings have problems, her father is not actively remedying, but indifferent, and finally the marriage is broken, and the father soon remarries again.
And the novel Xiao Han's mother is also hard to blame, her indifference and stay out of the matter, so that Xiao Han repeatedly fell into a deep depression, so that she could not extricate herself.
So Xiao Han in the novel said hatefully to his mother:
"Why didn't you take care of me earlier?"
In fact, is this not Zhang Ailing's inner cry for her mother?
After Zhang Ailing's parents divorced, the mother left her children and studied abroad, Zhang Ailing faced this broken family, how helpless, helpless and collapsed her young heart should be.
At the end of the novel, Xiao Han's mother finally bravely assumes the responsibility of a mother and takes her daughter away from the family that has no deformity. Perhaps this is Zhang Ailing's inner expectation for her mother.
Unfortunately, Zhang Ailing's mother is not Xiao Han's mother, she did not hear her daughter's affectionate and helpless cry, ignoring her daughter's expectation of maternal love.
Therefore, all that is left to the mother and daughter is indifference, and the family affection has long disappeared.
In the original family, material conditions are important, but what young children need more is the spiritual love of their parents, selfish fathers, indifferent mothers, a loveless home, and naturally cannot conceive a sunny and cheerful child.
The lack of maternal love, the selfishness and disguised connivance of the father, make a girl have a state of mind that should not be had, which has caused indelible scars and impacts on her life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="38" >02, "How Much Hate": "Raising Children and Preventing Old Age", the daughter who was kidnapped by family affection finally left only endless hatred</h1>
This novel tells the poignant love story of Yu Jiayin, a female teacher from a poor background, and Xia Zongyu, the husband of a woman who is the owner of a pharmaceutical factory.
This is Zhang Ailing's novel, it is rare to tell a pair of men and women who truly love each other, a pair of men and women who can resonate spiritually, helpless to have lovers can not eventually become dependents, the two fell apart.
One of the important reasons is that Yu Jiayin's father, who constantly kidnapped his daughter with his affection, forced her into a dead end, and finally had to give up love and escape from his favorite lover and the father he hated the most.
When she was young, her father abandoned his wife and daughter and went out to have fun.
When he was older, alone and penniless, he remembered again that he had a daughter, and raising a child should naturally guard against old age, of course, he forgot that he had not taken on the responsibility of parenting.
He came to Jiayin's residence under the guise of "looking for something to do", but found that Jiayin was barely making ends meet, but in addition to disappointment, he still got his daughter's 50,000 yuan savings for thrift.
Of course, this was quickly squandered by him.
Inadvertently, Yu's father learned that his daughter was working as a tutor in the Xia family, and that Mr. Xia was interested in his daughter, which made him smell money.
He first borrowed money from Xia Zongyu with a cheeky face, and then offered to go to his pharmaceutical factory to find an errand, but he was fired not long after for embezzling public funds.
Finally, when Xia Zongyu was preparing for divorce, he simply found Mrs. Xia and was willing to give her daughter to Mr. Xia as a concubine, but only wanted a large dowry.
Yu Father's behavior made Jiayin feel landless, and when she saw her father, she felt uneasy, not knowing what shocking things he would do for money.
"Her father suddenly pushed the door and walked in, and Jia Yin looked at him with confusion, almost as if he had seen a ghost, unable to speak."
The novel is full of mocking descriptions of the identity of the father, which has a lot to do with Zhang Ailing's lack of fatherly love in childhood and adolescence.
Zhang Ailing's father was a widow of an aristocratic feudal family, selfish, and after divorce and remarriage, he was even more alienated and indifferent to Zhang Ailing.
In "How Much Hate", due to blood relations, Jiayin was squeezed by her father again and again, and finally she could not avoid it, along with her love and self-esteem, she was buried and had to escape.
Only a body full of wounds, endless hatred.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="55" >03, "Flower Wither": Family affection is vulnerable in the face of money</h1>
"Flower Wither" tells the story of a sad girl who lives in a loveless family, a flash of love, and the last desolate back.
The heroine of the novel, Chuan Chang, lives in a big family with many brothers and sisters, and on the surface it looks lively and lively, a group of harmony, but it is not.
However, under the appearance of liveliness, it is just an indifferent family atmosphere, full of money.
The mother is a beautiful and sad and somewhat neurotic woman, but the father is like a stubborn widow who never grows up, only knowing that he enjoys and is happy, immersed in alcoholic women and opium.
Mrs. Zheng has many dissatisfaction with her husband, but she does not have the courage of Nala to run away, so she has to pin her hopes on her children and even her son-in-law, of course, everything is in vain.
Because the income can not pay for the huge family expenses, parents can not be careful, but also unwilling to let the daughters pull down to earn a living for themselves, in their eyes, the most secure way out for the daughter is "female marriage", marriage is really the oldest and most secure occupation for women.
In order to win limited resources, a variety of open and secret struggles have arisen between many brothers and sisters.
Among the large group of children in the family, Chuan Chang is neither the most beautiful nor the smartest, she has three older sisters above her, they are spicy and promising, each one is not a fuel-saving lamp, and there are three younger brothers below, who occupy all the love of their parents.
It is not easy for the sisters to get married, chuan chang is also beautiful, and has a suitable boyfriend.
However, an illness caused her to return to her original form.
In the end, she died in depression.
Her life was both short and dull, much less remarkable, the only highlight being the affectionate words inscribed on her tombstone:
Infinite love, infinite attachment, infinite regret... A flower on memory, an eternal rose... Rest in peace, in the heart of those who love you. There is not a single person who knows you who does not love you.
Such a deep epitaph, in contrast to her bleak life, has become a ridiculous irony.
This is both a mockery of her parents' love for their daughter, and perhaps this is the image they should have as a daughter.
They did not have any remorse after their daughter's death, so they made her the most ideal daughter in disguise and nostalgia, in short, Chuan Chang lived in the memory of her parents with a perfect image.
In this family, money is the weapon that destroys everything, and affection looks pale, fragile, and vulnerable in the face of money.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="73" > Conclusion:</h1>
Adler said:
"Happy people use childhood to heal a lifetime, and unfortunate people use a lifetime to heal childhood."
Zhang Ailing uses her novel to tell the trauma of her childhood, but she has not been able to get out of the shadow of the injury, some people say that her novel is too dark, but you can't see that her inner wounds have not been able to heal, and it has become her lifelong pain.