The New Year's sacrifice.

 I read the heart wrenching short story written by Lu Xun in the wee hours of the morning at 2am.It shows his immense empathy on the plight of a widow who is mistreated by her in laws and had to work as a maidservant for a scholarly family.i felt in preparing for the feast of ancestral worship to mark the end of Luchun,it was not about  sacrificing the chicken and pigs to make a feast but the sacrifice of the widowed maidservant who is taken for granted by the household for her skillful diligence but her personal emotional baggage is ignored.they disregard that she is driven out of her matrimonial home by a callous mother in law who later forces her back as free labour for the late hubbys family and then forcibly married off a second time by her mother in law in order to get a high bride price from a desperate rural bachelor.its as if she is a commodity to be treated as a houseslave and when her son with the second husband is eaten by a wolf and the second husband dies of typhoid fever,she is alone again and the scholars family reemploy her as she is a capable maid.her life is worthless as a woman and her dignity beneath that of a stray dog.

Her death at the end is not met with sorrow by her employers family but she is cursed for bringing bad luck at the new year 's feast important day.so Lu Xun really identified with the downtrodden ordinary people especially the way women were abused in a feudal Confucian society.