On the Color of Mother's Novels

A: Mother of Slaves is an excellent short story written by the author on 1930. The protagonist Chun Baoniang is a poor working woman in the countryside of old China. In order to support the family, her husband sold her to a scholar landlord in a neighboring village at the price of 100 yuan. She was forced to abandon her breast and come to the scholar's house, becoming a tool for the scholar to carry on the family line. Reduced to a situation where the mother is actually a slave. But she can't even live like a slave. She gave birth to her son Qiu Bao for the scholar, but she had to leave Qiu Bao reluctantly and was driven back to her former home. When she returned to her husband and son Chunbao, she was satirized and alienated by her relatives.

The bad habit of being a typical wife was written by local writers in the 1920s, but Rou Shi's mother, as a slave, took this theme to a new depth of thought. First of all, the work truly shows the tragic fate of working women in the old society. Chunbaoniang was not only forced to become a commodity and tool, but also suffered physical destruction and was deprived of her qualification as a mother and the most fundamental feeling-parent-child affection. Secondly, through the unfortunate experience of Chunbaoniang, the work shows the root of the tragedy-ugly wife system and harsh economic oppression, thus pointing the finger directly at the feudal social system itself. Moreover, the works expose and castigate the hypocrisy of feudal morality. For example, feudal rulers often advocated the feudal ethical concept of "loyalty all one's life", but from the need of having children and venting desires, they allowed wives.