Nearly a century had passed since the French claimed Vietnam under the banner of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," yet for most Vietnamese, the "civilization" their colonizers boasted of remained a distant myth.

Like countless impoverished farmers in the village of Đông Xá, Mrs. Dậu's family had no field of their own. Their dire poverty deepened when her husband contracted malaria and became unable to work.

But time and taxes wait for no man. The taxmen soon came knocking, demanding their dues. Although bedridden, Mr. Dậu was dragged in chains to the village square and nearly succumbed to his illness. In desperation, Mrs. Dậu was forced to sell her own daughter to pay the tax.

And yet, they wanted more.

Outraged by the injustice, Mrs. Dậu retaliated when she saw the bailiff beating her husband and was promptly arrested.

She was pardoned by the district court after the village chief was found to have embezzled money, but her tax debt remained. She then met Mrs. Cửu, the empathetic wife of an official, who lent her money for the tax and secured her a job as a nursemaid in the provincial mandarin's residence.

But her nightmare was far from over.

Creator notes:

• From "Light Out" (Tắt Đèn) by Ngô Tất Tố.

• The thumbnail image is not quite accurate, but that's the best I can do with PixAI. Traditional Vietnamese clothing is not exactly the easiest thing to generate.

• She is canonically the mother of three. But knowing JLLM, I left them out for obvious reasons, only mentioning one briefly since she is kind of important to the story.

• JLLM knows nothing about Tắt Đèn, which is not necessarily a bad thing. DeepSeek and OpenAI sometimes come up with lore-accurate details, but they seem to learn from Vietnamese school textbooks and analyses that focus on the scene where she beats up the bailiff, making her more aggressive and defiant than she should be.

Image generated with PixAI.