The Meanings in Micro History -- An Analysis of Wang Shi's Death from the Traumatic Perspective

: The Death of Wang is the work of the American Sinologist Shi Jingqian. Explore the living environment and imagination space of the bottom people in the early Qing Dynasty, focus on the case study of the characters, see the big from the small, from the macro world to the contrast between Chinese and Western cultures, shift the focus to the lives of farmers and rural women in remote villages, combine the virtual and the real, and bring literary imagination into the dream, from a variety of perspectives of reality and fiction. Let readers feel the living environment at that time to the greatest extent. From the tragic fate of "Mrs Wang", we can touch on the thinking of the historical environment at that time.


The cause of Wang's death
The subtitle of the chapter "Wang's Death" is the elopement of women. The theme is very clear, straight to the point, and provides a clue to the writing. In the Qing Dynasty, according to common sense, women who eloped had no good end, and would be despised and spurned by the people around them, which also foreshadowed the death of Wang. There are many reasons for Wang's death, which is the result of multiple factors. When the author recounts this fact, his feelings are sad, heavy and depressed. The direct cause of Wang's death was her husband's murder. On the surface, the natural disasters in Tancheng County, Shandong Province aggravated the internal contradictions of the Wang family. In the 1960s and 1970s, the locust plague, famine, flood and other natural disasters broke out here. An earthquake occurred in Pizhou, Jiangsu Province, around which most of the fields and farmhouses were destroyed. There were refugees, and people fled one after another, leading to the decline of the local population. And then there were bandits, thieves and other man-made disasters. Social disasters and natural disasters are superimposed together. The people are miserable. They leave people in disorder. They are inferior to the dogs of peace. [2] What a misfortune it is to be born in a troubled world. Wang lived in such a social background. The previous chapters described this social tragedy in detail, which also paved the way for the following description of Wang's death.
The Wang family was originally poor, and her husband lived by working as a permanent worker. She and her husband's family were two people, and their families were empty. The poor couple felt sorry for everything. The Wang family and her father-in-law had differences. She and her husband had always been at odds with each other, and there were emotional cracks. Wang suffered from both the misfortune of his family and poverty. Happy families are similar, but unhappy families have all kinds of misfortunes. When the family cannot become a shelter for the body and a harbor for the soul, escaping is also a choice to pursue a new life. Therefore, Wang chose to leave to find another direction of life. Wang chose to elope with his lover and escape from his original home -Guichang. Life on the way to escape was full of frustrations and met many checkpoints. They considered several places to live after escaping, such as Pizhou, Jiangsu, which is opposite to Heqing and Haiyan, There is also Matou Town, where couples can easily hide and provide employment opportunities. It is difficult to obtain living materials along the way. They continue their bitter journey of escape. Later, Wang was abandoned by lovers for various reasons. It is difficult for women to continue to escape alone. They have to return to their hometown. Returning to their hometown is the beginning of Wang's nightmare. A series of attacks such as neighbor's contempt and husband's revenge followed, Wang has been teased by fate and struggled on the edge of life and death, and the feudal traditional laws are also extinguishing Wang's hope of survival. The Law of the Qing Dynasty stipulates that if the husband catches the adulterers on the spot and kills them in anger, whether the wife or the lover is killed, it is legally justified. Also, unless the wife is seriously injured or disabled by her husband, or the husband forces her to have sexual relations with others, the wife can leave her husband freely, [3] It can be seen that the law is very unfair to women, and the social environment in the Qing Dynasty was extremely unfavorable to women's survival, which also revealed the oppression of feudal ethics on women.

The follow-up of Wang's death
Wang's death was followed by a case, which was not complicated. Shortly afterwards, Tancheng County Magistrate Huang Liuhong solved the case, and the truth came out. Ren and his father were sentenced to frame up (because they framed his neighbor Gao to kill Wang Shi). According to the laws of the Qing Dynasty, Ren and his father should be sentenced to death. However, Huang Liuhong comprehensively analyzed the relationship between the characters and the seriousness of the circumstances and made a sentence of commutation. Ren's father was found not guilty, and Ren was sentenced to heavy cane beating and long-term humiliation. Ren was punished by the law. As Wang's husband, Ren, had to support the elderly, he was not sentenced to death as appropriate, Ren was able to take care of the elderly, and Wang was properly buried. The trial seemed reasonable. The case seemed to have a successful outcome. On the one hand, the elderly could be supported as they should be, and the perpetrators could also be punished by law. However, it could be seen that there were various drawbacks in the feudal law. Even female elopement was not a small crime at that time. Under the feudal superstructure, women's elegy was created. This kind of punishment was unreasonable for women, too kind to male offenders at that time, which could not reflect the dignity of the law, and could not guarantee women's rights and interests to the maximum extent.
Wang's death can be analyzed from various perspectives, just as there are 1000 Hamlets in the hearts of a thousand readers. Different people have different views on Wang's death, and different conclusions can be drawn from the perspective of painless analysis. Wang's death is not only the misfortune of society, but also the misfortune of the country. It profoundly reflects the situation that China faced with many disasters in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, with the people living in poverty and the river declining. Wang's death was just a drop of blood from the pores of the old Chinese body. Wang's death reflects that the country and society are less attractive to individuals, and can not guarantee the basic rights and interests of individuals, let alone provide security for the happy life of individuals. In the late feudal society, it was difficult for widows to continue to live alone, and women still had a personal attachment to men. [4] Moreover, in the late Qing Dynasty, capital employment relations had developed, and more jobs could be provided for women in economically developed regions.However, in most regions, it was extremely difficult for women to find jobs. It is not difficult to understand that after Wang's elopement failed, He was forced to return to his original home. Facing his husband who had no feelings, he was also forced by life. After all kinds of factors, Wang returned to his husband who was fickle and disinterested, and continued to endure the heavy pressure brought by family and society. The cold wind is bleak, and the winter in Tancheng is colder than usual. The cold winter adds more coolness to the "death of Wang". Wang's death seems insignificant, but it is intertwined with natural and man-made disasters such as banditry, famine, earthquake, war, etc. in Tancheng.

Reflections on Wang's Death
The tragedy of the little people can better reflect the general mentality of the people at the bottom, and the national conditions of the whole empire can be seen through the lives of the people at the bottom. From this, we can see that Tancheng is a small area with heavy taxes, exorbitant taxes and administrative exploitation coexist, thieves and bandits are rampant, public security is also in chaos, and the people are suffering from the suffering of the court and society. It can be seen that the Qing Empire is bruised. As if the empire was dying. The people at the bottom are in dire straits. Wang's death is on the surface a tragedy of Tancheng, but also a tragedy of the whole country and society. [5] When the author narrates the story, his feelings are cold. The author seems to be writing with sadness, and deeply analyzes the social situations in the late feudal China.
The description of Wang's death also uses the techniques of association and imagination to exaggerate the story with the dream of Wang's death. The beauty of the dream sets off the cruelty of reality. Wang suffers from a series of blows and torture in reality. Her hope for a better life is dashed. She has struggled, hesitated, disappointed, and despaired. Finally, she left the world with regret and dissatisfaction. Wang once thought that he had met love, chose to elope with his sweetheart, and then experienced all kinds of frustrations and tortures on the way to escape. Finally, he was abandoned by his sweetheart, and the last straw was lost. In order to live, he had to return to his original home. It is difficult for women to survive alone in the society. This is more reflected in the weak social independence of women at the end of the feudal society, and they still have a certain dependence on men. Even if their husbands torture and attack them, they still have to endure such a life in order to survive. However, Wang's elopement and neighbors' ridicule made her husband feel murderous. Wang's behavior in feudal society made her husband suffer huge humiliation, and her husband's dignity was greatly challenged. They had no common feelings, and finally her husband committed a criminal act. In feudal society, the dignity of men did not allow women to challenge. This social psychology caused many family tragedies in Tancheng. This social psychology seriously blocked and imprisoned women's body and personality. From the perspective of micro history, Wang's death is an ancient micro history work, which can be said to be both refined and popular, with academic research and popular reading. Wang's sudden appearance, and then rapid death, is just a sad ending. The author, like a painter who pays attention to the description of the environment, has given a rich and sufficient description of the social background in the previous chapters.
Readers have learned about all aspects of Shandong County at this time. Before Wang's fate, they have learned about earthquakes, heavy snow, locust plagues, and human disasters -Li Zicheng's uprising and defeat, the entry of the Qing army, bandits, and people who can't go on living "eat their brothers, and their husbands eat their wives.", [6] As well as the unexpected land annexation caused by the implementation of the whip method... Tancheng is not a place far away from the emperor. In this tiny place, the tentacles of imperial power still extend to every village. Manchu's oppression of Han people is full of pages. The Great Qing Law restricts people and leaves many loopholes to be drilled. Under such a big historical background, [7] The fate of ordinary little people gradually unfolded: poor farmers struggled for a living, some could not bear the hardship and misery of life and committed suicide, and countless people died of killing each other; Huang Liuhong, the county magistrate, was a conscientious official. He spared no effort to apply to his superiors to reduce taxes and labor in the area under his jurisdiction. When dealing with Wang's case, we made rational analysis to minimize the adverse impact of the case, and also took into account the social psychology and public opinion guidance of Tancheng people at that time. Huang Liuhong's practice seems inappropriate today, without considering the protection of women's legitimate rights and interests. However, under the social background at that time, Huang Liuhong has done his best to handle the case reasonably and reasonably.
The characters in Wang's death are all flesh and blood portrayed by the author, who describes the tragic suffering of Tancheng, Shandong Province. The author was shocked by the unimaginable suffering of this small city in Shandong Province in the early Qing Dynasty. Most of the stories took place here from 1668 to 1672, focusing on the local non intellectual elite at that time: farmers, farm workers and their wives, who went deep into the bottom of the society, and stories in the dust at the bottom of the pyramid, The dreams, pursuits, love and hate, desires, joys and pains of the little people behind the great history all take place here. They try their best to show the darkness and evils of this city. The little people struggle with their destiny when the country changes and the people live in poverty. The cited material "Tancheng County Annals" does not whitewash Taiping. The description of the county is realistic and vivid, which is also a true and bleak record of specific areas.

Conclusion
Under the nest, there is an end to the egg. The fate of the country and the fate of individuals share weal and woe. This is deeply confirmed by the 'death of Wang'. The country was bruised in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, and the fate of such small people as Wang was also weather beaten and destroyed. From the ups and downs of such small people as Wang, we can grasp the main pulse of the society at that time. The miserable life of the people at the bottom of society is inseparable from the rise and fall of the country. Today, Wang's behavior will be condemned to some extent, but will not be criticized by others. The cruel feudal ethics, to a certain extent, affected the social restrictions on women's behavior, which was deeply reflected in the laws and regulations of the Qing Dynasty. In the early Qing Dynasty, these little people struggled and hesitated on the edge of their destiny. The combination of the individual experience, life struggle and fate of the small people can not only feel the value of the small people's own existence, but also feel the helplessness of the small people's annihilation in the long river of history. Perhaps no one will ever understand or care about their existence. Their destiny is fleeting in the changing social environment, but they can feel the imprint of the times in their lives.