The Picture of Husband-wife Relationship and Its Significance in Jin Ping Mei

The relationship between husband and wife in Jin Ping Mei(The Golden Lotus) should be understood in the context of "husband and wife speech" in late Ming Dynasty. The "husband and wife" narrative context in Jin Ping Mei is constituted of the fashion of marriage on wealth and indulge in sex, the new trend of Confucian couple ethics as well as the Jin Ping Mei's original idea named Shui Hu Zhuan (Heroes of the Marshes) and so on. Based on this viewpoint, Jin Ping Mei constructs the marginalized, money and sexuality and ideal relationship from the perspective of couple ethics. That logically contains the narrator's idea of the Confucian ethics "irony" rhetoric, that is, "to be a role model for your wife, and as for the brothers, run the family and country well", revealing the scholars of the late Ming Dynasty concern family and country. At the same time, it also reflects the novelists' philosophical thoughts on ethics and human nature, and the spiritual decadence and fluidity of certain scholars as well.