"Look at the good daughter you gave birth to, causing me to be scolded like this, even leading to Tianbao being cursed to die early, and the Jiang family to have no descendants. All of this was brought about by you, this good-for-nothing bastard. I was truly blind, how could I have married you, this useless woman?"
Instead of admitting his fault after being attacked by netizens, Jiang Jianguo shifted all the blame onto Zhang Lian.
The Jiang family's generations of favoring sons over daughters had instilled in Jiang Jianguo an extremely twisted and selfish male chauvinism from a young age.
In his shallow and ignorant mind, it was the woman's fault for not giving birth to a son, and if the children turned out poorly, it was because the wife he married had corrupted their Jiang family's lineage.
When Zhang Lian married into the family, she gave birth to good-for-nothing daughters in her first two pregnancies, causing him to be scolded by his parents and ridiculed by the men his age in the village for not being able to produce a son and having no one to look after him in his old age.
Unable to bear such sarcastic remarks, Jiang Jianguo then forced Zhang Lian to abandon their newborn Jiang Ling in a garbage heap to fend for herself.
Years later, when he learned that the child from back then had not only survived but had become the hottest female star in the entertainment industry, his mind immediately became active.
He himself didn't think there was anything wrong with leeching off his daughter to support his son.
This was because many people in the village did this; the bride price was very high, so they would marry off their daughters first, extort a large sum from the groom's side, and then use that money to get married themselves.
His parents had married off his sister back then, using that money to pay the bride price to the Zhang family, which is how they brought Zhang Lian home.
Although after his sister got married, his family's vicious mother-in-law, resentful of the large bride price that only came with two worn-out quilts as dowry, found ways to torment his sister, eventually driving her to an early grave before she reached thirty.
But so what? Daughters were meant to make sacrifices for their sons.
If a daughter dared to resist, she was unfilial and deserved to be struck by lightning and condemned to hell!
In Jiang Jianguo's eyes, Jiang Ling's strong resistance was undoubtedly rebellious and unforgivable.
Unable to deal with Jiang Ling, he could only vent all his anger on Zhang Lian.
It was all this woman's fault for giving birth to that unconscionable bastard Jiang Ling, causing him to be so badly criticized.
This was all Zhang Lian's fault.
After taking the slap, Zhang Lian's face quickly became red and swollen, but she dared not retort. Instead, she looked at Jiang Jianguo with shame and guilt.
Her reaction made it clear that she had endured Jiang Jianguo's beatings and scolding since she married into the family.
This was the tragedy of a daughter, a wife, and a mother under the pervasive influence of favoring sons over daughters.
From birth, she had been fed the idea that daughters were inferior to sons, and that elder sisters should sacrifice everything for their younger brothers. Gradually, she was domesticated by patriarchy, leading her to lose her sense of self-identity as an independent individual.
After marriage, her first child was a daughter, and her second child was also a daughter. The disdain from her in-laws and the scolding from her husband made her feel wronged and develop the idea that only by giving birth to a son would she have a better life.
When her younger son was born, her in-laws and husband's impression of her greatly improved, which further convinced her that sons were good and that sons were her lifelong reliance.
When finding a wife for her son in the future, she would insist on finding someone who was fertile and capable of giving birth, and women who consecutively produced good-for-nothing daughters were absolutely not to be considered.
Through years of such ideological erosion, Zhang Lian transformed from a pitiable victim into a hateful and detestable perpetrator.