31 pages • 1 hour read
The Death of Woman Wang
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Feud”
In an autobiographical story, P’u writes about how, as a child, his wife was tormented by his sisters-in-law, who resented his wife’s close relationship with his mother (77-78). Another story describes a strong young man named Ts’ui “the violent” who fights against and even kills people who commit injustices. His mother tried to stop Ts’ui’s violent ways but fails. After her death, Ts’ui kills a man who forcibly took the wife of a man named Li. When Li is falsely accused of the crime, Ts’ui steps forward and is condemned to death. However, a child Ts’ui once helped has grown up to be an official and secures Ts’ui a light sentence. Later, when a corrupt aristocrat named Wang starts a gang of bandits, Ts’ui founds a local defense force to fight against them(79-89).
The head of the real Wang family, Wang San, was a former officer in a rebel army who fled to T’an-ch’eng after the army’s defeat and purchased a farm. Wang San and his son, Wang K’ohsi, were “gangsters as well as landlords” (90). The Wangs intimidated a farmer, Chiang, who owned land bordering theirs into letting Wang K’ohsi marry his daughter. Another neighboring farmer, Li Yüan, hoped to gain Chiang’s property and was furious when Chiang instead gave the land to the Wangs. After a fight over Li Yüan’s pig rooting around on their land, the Wangs killed Li Yüan and most of his sons (89-91).
The magistrate had difficulty bringing the Wangs to justice because so many people feared them. When Chiang was charged in hopes that he would implicate the Wangs, Wang San simply came into court, said he would be Chiang’s guarantor, and took Chiang with him (92). The magistrate had to raise an armed force to take the Wangs into custody, and Wang San died from a resulting arrow wound. The surviving Li family was supposed to receive the property of the murderers, but it soon emerged that the Wangs kept all of their valuable property in another province. There is no evidence the magistrate started proceedings to have the property sent to the Lis (98).
Chapter 4 Analysis
The story of Ts’ui “the violent” illustrates how violence sometimes broke out between individuals and families. Officials could step in, but they also could not always be relied upon to act against powerful criminal gangs. In Spence’s words,
[T]he moral of the […] story about Ts’ui Meng was merely that such violence must ultimately be controlled by the individual’s will; if channeled for the good of the community there was then a hope that it might ultimately help to make up for the officials’ neglect and enable the local villagers to protect themselves (79).
Next, Spence describes the real-life story of the Wangs, which represents the limits of the officials’ justice in the face of armed criminal gangs. Intimidation of potential witnesses, violent resistance to arrest, and the ability of criminals to send their property away from the reach of local officials all factor into the story. As in P’u’s story, the local community is called upon to help provide its own justice. In this case, the magistrate asks locals to arm themselves and help capture the Wangs.
The story of the Wangs also touches on some by now familiar concerns—in particular, the importance of sons in a patriarchal and patrilineal society. By killing most of the Li sons, the Wangs rob the family of most of its potential heirs, clearing the way for their own claim to the property. A similar issue will later arise when Jan faces charges for murdering his wife; among the reasons the magistrate hesitates to execute him is the fact that he is his father’s only son, and childless himself.
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