The story of Madame White Snake, originated around the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644), is one of the four main love stories in China. In the story, the writer revealed people’s animosity for restrictions of love placed on them by the old society.The story happened During the Song dynasty in ZhenJiang city. BaiSuZhen was a snake demon that had lived for thousands of years. XuXian was a student who saved her life in her previous incarnation. BaiSuZhen, in order to thank XuXian for the help, transformed into a human. Since BaiSuZhen could not meet XuXian randomly, she had to create a circumstance to meet XuXian. BaiSuZhen then used her power to generate rain. During the rain, they were both hiding under the same canopy. Later on, BaiSuZhen hid the truth that she was a snake demon, and fell in love with XuXian.
After they were married, FaHai, who was a monk from JinShan temple and hunted after demons, one day realized that BaiSuZhen was a demon, and was mad that she married a man. FaHai then told XuXian that BaiSuZhen is a snake demon. XuXian half-believed him. He was surprised and sad at the same time. He could not believe that his beloved one was not human. To check whether FaHai was telling the truth, XuXian decided to follow what FaHai told him to do. XuXian put a special treatment from FaHai that would make demons show their real identity in BaiSuZhen’s wine. The next day, after BaiSuZhen drank a cup of wine that was poisoned by XuXian, she showed her real identity, which was a snake, and XuXian was scared to death.
BaiSuZhen was really sad and felt guilty. In order to compensate for her hiding the truth to XuXian, she decided to save XuXian. BaiSuZhen had to steal magic grass that could make dead people rebirthed from heaven. FaHai in order to capture her, had to meet with BaiSuZhen. While BaiSuZhen was looking for the special grass for XuXian, he took XuXian to JinShan temple and confined him there, because he knew BaiSuZhen would come to save xuxian. BaiSuZhen went to look for XuXian, and found that FaHai was confining him, so she fought against FaHai for XuXian. Because BaiSuZhen’s power hurt other creatures , she broke the law of heaven. At this time, heaven sent people to help FaHai to capture BaiSuZhen. To punish her, Heaven and FaHai confine BaiSuZhen under LeiFeng temple, which was a heavy temple that could jails demons.
Snakes
In ancient society, snakes represented evil and everyone hated them because their venom could easily kill people. In the story, Fahai believed snakes should be killed.
Desire for Love
In the story, BaiSuZhen also represents people who came from a different social class than their mate. In ancient society, people were forced to marry people from their social class. In many cases, couples had to leave each other by the elders in their family. The writer implicitly criticized this phenomena in the story.
As we can tell from the story, snakes are “evil”. Similarly, people from lower social classes are not inferior to people from higher social class, therefore, restrictions for relationships between people from different social classes should be eliminated.
Reference:
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