ep.8 , don't get me wrong, I can't wait for the next episodes to air as I love the fast pacing, the tension being…
He set them up. The lover apparently arrived at the Zhao house in a drunken panic, and she was already off-kilter emotionally because her husband had insulted her by refusing to accompany her to her mother's birthday party. This was all due to the MLs manipulation. Even the scholar guy being there was part of his plan.
I started this show late, because the theme is depressing and dark & so is the music, so caught up to first…
This feels like you are expecting what is in effect a period drama from a historical perspective to contradict history and uphold modern norms and standards. No matter how stupid we may think it is today, at the time in which the drama is set, social norms and values, especially amongst the nobility, were different. In the first episode, the drama makes it quite clear that the "training" the young women would have received was to be sexually assaulted. Every woman aside from the grandmother was going to become a sexual slave, including the little girl. Given the social norms of the time, when even remarriage as a widow was considered "not quite", such a fate would have seemed worse than death to these women. The education they had received, after all, would have been focused on Confucian ideals of honor and morality. From their perspective, dying well was better than living so miserably. Again, the grandfather is indeed foolish for allowing his family to be condemned in that way, but by his lights and the standards of the time, he was considered honorable and worthy. The Lin family, OTOH, would have been thought of as "not quite" ... and the whole business about meeting one's ancestors would have held a kind of meaning that would not resonate with us today. The FL, decision to marry the ML.... how much agency does she have? We are not that far along, but does she even have a choice? From her perspective, the Lin family cancelling the betrothal was to be expected, since she was going to become a slave anyway. When she heard about his marriage, IMO her reaction was less to him marrying someone else and more to the reminder that her true self was dead to the world and she couldn't go back. And given a choice between living as a slave, at the beck and call of everyone, rather than as the head wife, able to influence what happens to everyone, she chooses wisely. As for the MLs lack of dimension, I think 8 episodes in is a bit early to make that judgement. There are two ways writers can create rounded characters. We see the first in Xingtang's character. She has both positive and negative traits and is given a set of circumstances that make the audience view her as more than just a textbook villain. I think the ML is the second kind of rounded character. The drama is slowly revealing who he is to the audience. This first image is important for the story telling because it makes the FLs eventual influence on his life more obvious, but even in these early episodes, where he is sharp and targeted, we already see hints of other aspects of his character in his scenes with his mother and his reaction to the news that his former handmaid had been married off to a mentally challenged person. This drama is definitely focused on showing the lack of agency women of the era had. However, it also illustrates that even the men were bound by the patriarchy their ancestors had created and by the social system that created order from chaos at the cost of personal freedoms. And while I agree with you that the majority of Chinese women probably did not live so cruelly, there's enough information about some who did to make such a portrayal relatively realistic. I think it's easy to view historical stories from our modern lens and dismiss anything that doesn't fit our own world view. I think this drama is encouraging viewers to enter the world of the drama and experience life from the perspective of the people within it.
Was that guy in the library, an ex-lover from seven years ago, before Lin and Zhao's marriage? He said that she…
That guy in the library is the reason she got married to the ML in the first place, to cover up their scandalous doings ... and he is also her lover while the ML is gone ... basically she never ended it with him.
I honestly find this comment section a tad funny because if a person in real life found out that their spouse…
I think he knew she'd been involved with someone prior to their marriage. He's the kind of guy would would have had her background checked out. The fact that they sent him damaged goods pretending to be something else would have fueled his resentment. And a great deal of his resentment towards her personally was because she kept acting like a Zhao in his house; instead of becoming a good wife and daughter in law, she spent all her energy manipulating and mistreating people in his household and under his extended control [e.g. the shopkeepers]. To put it another way; if she'd been receptive to the "no-fault" divorce option at the beginning of his return, she might have been spared the embarrassment.
Looking forward to the Hello Saturday episode....
Not really feeling it, but you do you...
This was all due to the MLs manipulation. Even the scholar guy being there was part of his plan.
In the first episode, the drama makes it quite clear that the "training" the young women would have received was to be sexually assaulted. Every woman aside from the grandmother was going to become a sexual slave, including the little girl. Given the social norms of the time, when even remarriage as a widow was considered "not quite", such a fate would have seemed worse than death to these women. The education they had received, after all, would have been focused on Confucian ideals of honor and morality. From their perspective, dying well was better than living so miserably.
Again, the grandfather is indeed foolish for allowing his family to be condemned in that way, but by his lights and the standards of the time, he was considered honorable and worthy. The Lin family, OTOH, would have been thought of as "not quite" ... and the whole business about meeting one's ancestors would have held a kind of meaning that would not resonate with us today.
The FL, decision to marry the ML.... how much agency does she have? We are not that far along, but does she even have a choice? From her perspective, the Lin family cancelling the betrothal was to be expected, since she was going to become a slave anyway. When she heard about his marriage, IMO her reaction was less to him marrying someone else and more to the reminder that her true self was dead to the world and she couldn't go back. And given a choice between living as a slave, at the beck and call of everyone, rather than as the head wife, able to influence what happens to everyone, she chooses wisely.
As for the MLs lack of dimension, I think 8 episodes in is a bit early to make that judgement. There are two ways writers can create rounded characters. We see the first in Xingtang's character. She has both positive and negative traits and is given a set of circumstances that make the audience view her as more than just a textbook villain. I think the ML is the second kind of rounded character. The drama is slowly revealing who he is to the audience. This first image is important for the story telling because it makes the FLs eventual influence on his life more obvious, but even in these early episodes, where he is sharp and targeted, we already see hints of other aspects of his character in his scenes with his mother and his reaction to the news that his former handmaid had been married off to a mentally challenged person.
This drama is definitely focused on showing the lack of agency women of the era had. However, it also illustrates that even the men were bound by the patriarchy their ancestors had created and by the social system that created order from chaos at the cost of personal freedoms. And while I agree with you that the majority of Chinese women probably did not live so cruelly, there's enough information about some who did to make such a portrayal relatively realistic.
I think it's easy to view historical stories from our modern lens and dismiss anything that doesn't fit our own world view. I think this drama is encouraging viewers to enter the world of the drama and experience life from the perspective of the people within it.
To put it another way; if she'd been receptive to the "no-fault" divorce option at the beginning of his return, she might have been spared the embarrassment.