陆犯焉识

[Fred0]

Re: 割舍, the term appears in an earlier sentence:

恩娘哭了一夜一昼，是哭别她的继子呢，是在哭着割舍呢。焉识一副身心都化成谢意了，觉得留学的好景都是恩娘赐给他的。

 

En niang cried for a night and a day. She was crying over the (coming) separation from her step-son. It was crying over loss. Yanzhi in his body and mind was filled with gratitude. He felt that his studying abroad was a good circumstance which En niang was bestowing on him.

 

Here 割舍 seems to mean “to part with/ to give up.” When it appears later in   可怜的女人，她就这样割舍给你看, could it be translated: Pitiful woman, in this way she shows you her sense of loss?

 

What follow is:

这一刻，焉识可以拿死来报答恩娘。因此恩娘提出一个仅次于要他死的请求，他也就答应了。恩娘请求他在漂洋过海之前把冯婉喻娶进门。

She is making him feel sorry for her and grateful to her so she can hit him with her demand for compensation that he marry her neice, which would give her a more secure bond with the Lu family? She would not only be the widow of their dead son, but the aunt of their grandson’s wife.  Does this make sense?

[Jim]

Yes, that looks right, and the sense then is of really making a show of it - 给你看 acts as an intensifier.