In the story The Peacocks Fly Southeast, Jiao Zhongqing, although the head of his family, succumbs to the pressure of his mother who wants him to divorce his wife. Rather than trying to resolve the tension between the two women, he is not assertive, in that all he does is to make a weak threat: "If you send this woman away, I will not marry anyone else."
而焦仲卿身為一家之主，在面對母親出妻的壓力下，不曾試圖化解兩人之間的嫌隙，只是軟弱的表示「今若遣此婦，終老復不娶。」