Winter snow falls in a white, bleak, and frigid blanket. Women driven to madness, seeking death as their escape.
China, the cradle of rigid feudal thought, birthed a Confucian ideology that prized men and scorned women. This wasn’t just a relic of ancient Chinese society—it spread to neighboring lands under the hooves of feudal armies, lingering even into modern times. Whether it’s the poor village girl in Ju Dou or Red Sorghum, or the educated student in Raise the Red Lantern, they all face the same fate: sold off to marry, then trapped in a life of shame and injustice, with no one to hear their cries in a society that binds women like worms or silkworms.
Ju Dou – Where’s the Escape from Feudal Chains?
Ju Dou tells the story of a young woman named Ju Dou (played by Gong Li), sold as a wife to Yang Jinshan, a cruel dye shop owner. Jinshan torments her, often at night, with savage brutality because she can’t bear him an heir. Zhang Yimou masterfully uses sound in these scenes—Ju Dou’s pained face, her stifled groans, Jinshan’s furious, helpless snarls. Rows of silk hang vertically, like ropes tying women to outdated customs that never seem to end.
But Ju Dou refuses to accept this oppression, rejects her lowly lot. She finds love. It starts when she catches Tianqing, Jinshan’s nephew, sneaking a peek at her bathing. Through a tiny hole in the wall, she turns to face him boldly. Later, she wraps her arms around him from behind, daring to voice her desire. The camera pans to Tianqing’s foot kicking over a silk-winding machine, letting the fabric spill free, swirling into loops on the floor. Could this be a metaphor for Ju Dou breaking free from tradition’s shackles, chasing the one she loves? They have a son together—a handsome boy Jinshan assumes is his own. The abuse stops, and with Jinshan paralyzed from the waist down after an accident, Ju Dou gets her chance at revenge. She flaunts her bond with Tianqing right in front of her powerless husband.
Yet, even after Jinshan’s death, their love can’t be free—old customs still bind them. “A widow follows her son,” they say. Her happiness with Tianqing isn’t just incomplete; it turns tragic by her own hand. Her son mistreats his real father, Tianqing, and drowns him in a dye vat. The film ends with Ju Dou setting fire to the dye shop, burning away the tangled web of constraints, torching her own misery. But what becomes of her and her son? That’s left unanswered.
Back in the 1920s and ’30s, before any light of liberation, was this all people could do with their stifled lives? With its fierce critique, deep humanity, and stunning visuals, Ju Dou earned a spot among the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.
Raise the Red Lantern and the Fate of Women Sharing a Husband
It’s not just rural girls who suffer under feudal tragedy—even an educated woman like Songlian can’t escape. Though their backgrounds, education, and husbands’ households differ, both Songlian and Ju Dou are sold into marriage, blind to the face of the man they’ll wed.
If Ju Dou mourns one woman standing for a generation, Raise the Red Lantern grieves for four. They share a husband, each craving happiness and love. But their endings are all dead-end tragedies.
Songlian, a beautiful, educated girl, is forced by her family to become the fourth wife in the Chen household. There’s the eldest wife, an older woman, resigned but wielding the most power. The second wife is cunning and scheming. The third, an opera singer, is blunt and wild. Then there’s Yan’er, the maid, dreaming of becoming a concubine herself. Life as a pampered wife in silk sounds blissful when the master favors you. The family has a ritual: whichever wife the master chooses for the night gets a red lantern hung above her quarters. From this springs a web of conflict, plotting, and jealousy.
Songlian enters this miniature harem as the most favored. Youngest and educated, she’s seen as the one to topple the second wife’s schemes. She knows how to draw eyes—hanging red lanterns every night, pretending the master’s hers alone. She fakes a pregnancy to be treated like royalty, a status the other wives and even the maid covet. Those lanterns light up fierce desires for love and attention. For Songlian, they’re also defiance—a refusal to bow to fate or a man’s whims. The red lanterns are hope, but also envy and resentment, as one wife is favored and another cast aside. Without realizing it, this educated girl gets sucked into the petty vortex of a shared husband’s life.
She exposes the third wife’s affair with a doctor, leading to a brutal punishment from the Chen family’s harsh traditions. She confides in Yan’er about her life as a concubine, only to shatter the maid’s dreams and drive her to a cruel death. Is Songlian to blame? She’s more pitiable than culpable—caught in a cycle of envy and spite that forces her hand.
The image of the third wife dragged to her death in a tower is a searing indictment of that old society. Her screams—raw cries for freedom, love, and despair—echo into silence. Even the snow outside falls calmly, as if nothing’s happened. Alone, powerless, with no one to call out to. But does the fourth wife’s madness or the third wife’s punishment mean the second wife wins favor? No. The master moves on, marrying again, and the Chen household keeps spinning its vicious bedroom intrigues. The steady tap of a foot-massage hammer sounds so peaceful—yet it carries a storm of rivalry and ruthless plots just to hear it ring out in the cold night.
Winter snow falls in a white, bleak, and frigid blanket. Women driven to madness, seeking death as their escape. Such is their cruel fate, their chilling reality. The film closes with inescapable tragedies and no answers for these women’s doomed lives.
Conclusion
The color red floods Zhang Yimou’s two masterpieces, his most striking artistic signature. It’s the hue of struggle, bondage, and piercing pain. In Raise the Red Lantern, it sparks hope, yet stokes anguish and shame for so many others. In Ju Dou, the red of tangled silk screams outrage at women tortured and blamed for sins not their own. Both films end in deadlock—even an open ending like Ju Dou’s offers no way out. Back then, who could set her free?