Firstly, it is noted that “Grandmother” falls in love with the guerilla captain after he rapes her (Mo Yan, p.71), which means that sexual violence against women was a normality rather than deviance. In fact, the novel contains some more episodes of treating woman as a body. The attitude towards woman as a property of parents and further a spouse is more typical for patriarchal societies which existed before the 20 th century. As one can assume from this episode, women in Republican China were not always allowed to make her own decisions regarding family life and often engaged with arranged marriages, notwithstanding the existence in the post-revolution China of the equal rights group known as “Five proposals Movement”, aimed at giving women an opportunity to choose mates by themselves. She was used by her parents as “a beautiful body”, a controllable and saleable instrument of receiving certain social benefits. The novel does not provide such details, but implies that “Grandmother” was compelled to go through the traditional marriage ceremony with her disabled groom. The preparations for marriage, as Silbergeld assumes, are well-visualized in the film version of “Red Sorghum”, and the director dedicates about ten minutes to showing the obedient bride, sitting in the red sedan, while its bearers are giving her “ a furious, traditional shaking” (Silbergeld, p.56).

On the one hand, the literary work demonstrates the use of woman as a means of entering higher social class in particular, it is stated that the female protagonist was forced by her needy parents to marry an old terminally ill owner of wine distillery. First of all, it is important to note that women’s position in society as shown by Mo Yan has two paradoxical elements.

Red sorghum by mo yan