Character names in this essay follow the transliteration style found in Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang's translation known as A Dream of Red Mansions, and therefore might be unfamiliar to some readers. David Hawkes' more popular translation, published by Penguin as The Story of the Stone, directly translates character names into English terms, a practice I consider somewhat distasteful.

I have taken the extra step of bolding a character's name each time they are first mentioned during a section, to allow the reader to easily look back and find their bearings, because I understand that a plethora of foreign names can often prove disorienting.

Illustrations are by Tai Tun-Pang, from the Foreign Languages Press edition of Yang & Yang's translation.

Table of Contents:

• Part One — Introduction — Dream Worlds — Baoyu's Dream — Daiyu & Bao-chai
• Part Two — Xifeng — Concubine Chao & Jia Huan — Granny Liu — Yuanyang — Baoyu & Women
• Part Three — Provenance & Authorship — A Brief Personal Interlude — Renunciation I: Daiyu & Xichun — Renunciation II: Baoyu — Optimism or Pessimism? — Conclusion

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as A Dream of Red Mansions or The Story of the Stone, originally published in 1797 and written primarily by Cao Xueqin, is the most recent and therefore most modern of the Four Classic Chinese Novels, a list that also includes: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a military novel about a fractious period of China’s history and the heroes that emerged from it; Bandits of the Water Margin, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men are Brothers, a story of 108 outlaws who band together to fight a despotic government; and Journey to the West, a mythological account of a Buddhist monk’s trip to India, accompanied by a mischievous monkey, a drunk and violent pig, and a loyal ogre-man.

Dream of the Red Chamber is the most grounded and realistic of these four novels, with its supernatural elements serving mostly as a framework for a more mundane familial story. Its focus on the everyday rather than the extravagant and fantastical might explain its relative lack of popularity in the West. There’s also the fact that it is steeped in the rituals and customs of Chinese culture in the 18th century, full of events and relationships that might immediately feel unfamiliar to the Western reader. However, I believe that the modern reader will find that that Dream of the Red Chamber most closely resembles what they might think of as a novel, and is actually the most approachable of the four, even if many aspects of its setting and structure may be unfamiliar or mysterious. To my mind, this novel is severely underlooked, and definitely belongs in the upper echelon of the World’s Great Works of Literature.

All this being said, readers coming at the book from a Western perspective will find that it doesn’t quite feel like anything they know. Some of this is due to the fact that it is coming from quite a different tradition, and its structural elements are tied to the form of the Chinese novel. However, even within this form, Cao Xueqin plays with the reader’s expectations, not giving us exactly what we want, and deliberately contrasting the realism of this novel with the operas and romances that the characters within are watching and reading. This is a work that concerns itself with real-life people: not mythological or legendary heroes; nor symbolic representations; nor shallow or vulgar caricatures. Most everyone in the book has a lot going on, and are often trying to balance their personal characteristics with their formal role and the expectations that come with it. In many ways, we could say that one of the primary ideas of the novel is this contrast between form and the reality that lies beneath.

The book follows the Jia family, a so-called Grand Family with Imperial connections, residing in the city of Jinling, now known as Nanjing — at the time, the capital of China. The Jia family is split into two houses who live across the street from each other in the Jung and Ning mansions. Our story focuses primarily on the inhabitants of the Jung mansion, which consists of three generations, the eldest represented only by the Lady Dowager, who occupies the highest point of honour in the household. The third generation, made up of her grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews are who we spend most of our time with, along with a few characters whose position in the family tree are too complicated to reckon with at the moment.

The Jia family is an aristocratic and noble one. They are certainly well-off, but their status is based less on their wealth as it is on their connection to the Imperial Family and the honour that comes with it. A key signifier of their status is the fact that one of the daughters has been selected as an Imperial Consort, which is about as honourable position as a young woman can get. However, their financial position is slightly more precarious than it might seem on the surface, with much of their wealth being siphoned off into the elaborate ceremonies and gifts required to maintain their position, as well as being misused carelessly by the less responsible members of the family.

Only a few members of the household truly understand this situation, with the rest living in what is essentially a fantasy land. With each generation, their understanding of economy decreases, with more and more of the men of the family in particular devoting themselves entirely to book-learning, religion, or womanizing. The fact that their needs are taken care of almost automatically, and even their whims are fulfilled with ease, means that they are trapped in a perpetual childhood that points to the looming demise of the family.

In the first volume, consisting of chapters 1 through 40, which is the section of the book I will be focusing on in this first part, this fall is only explicitly indicated once, at the very beginning, during a conversation between two characters from far away. Once we actually find ourselves in the mansion, this grim fate exists only as a shadow in our minds, as no one caught up in this luxurious environment ever stops to give it any thought. Thus, even in the setting of the novel, we already see this contrast between appearance and what lies underneath.

For all this, the first volume does not seem to introduce the reader to much of an overarching plot. Aside from the introductory frame-story, we are for the most part simply carried along through the everyday lives of the inhabitants of the mansion, primarily via the youngest son of the main family, Baoyu, as he plays around with his sisters and cousins, and pays visits to his parents, aunts and uncles, and grandmother. Over the course of these forty chapters, a series of domestically significant events elucidate for us the personalities and relationships that exist within the mansion. While at the end of these 600 pages you might be hard-pressed to find much that has significantly changed in the world of the book, what you will find is that you, the reader, have become a member of a large and complicated family; you’ve become familiar with some of their customs and traditions, and most importantly, find yourself eager to know what they might get up to later.

A term, originally coined in the world of anime and manga, but now often used to describe all sorts of media, is slice-of-life, and Dream of Red Mansions certainly fits this descriptor. The most important attributes of a slice-of-life work of fiction are that the setting and the characters feel real, and that the pacing allows one to become comfortable in this world and with these people. Instead of grand, dramatic events that shake everything up before you even know where you are, a slice-of-life story is more concerned with mundane events that shed light on the characters and their relationships. It is easiest to understand and appreciate Dream of the Red Chamber when placed within this sort of dramatic framework.

In terms of narrative structure, Dream of Red Mansions follows the tradition from Chinese novels when it comes to its chapters. Each chapter’s title contains vague descriptions of two events that often book-end the chapter. For example, the first chapter of Dream of Red Mansions is titled, “Zhen Shih-yin in a Dream sees the Jade of Spiritual Understanding/ Jia Yu-tsun in His Obscurity is Charmed by a Maid.” Later, we see such titles as, “An Eloquent Maid Offers Earnest Advice One Fine Night / A Sweet Girl Shows Deep Feeling One Quiet Day,” and “An Ill-Fated Girl Meets an Ill-Fated Man / A Confounded Monk Ends a Confounded Case.”

These playful titles are amusing, and also a great way to interest the reader in continuing the story. They make it clear that something new is going to occur in the near future, but what exact form this new thing is going to take is left up to the imagination. You begin each chapter with a little mystery: what earnest advice will this eloquent maid offer? Who is this ill-fated man? The only way to answer these questions is to read on.

This is not groundbreaking by any means, and obviously we see this sort of device used in all sorts of serialized works. However, the playfulness of using such a device in a dramatically low-stakes style of story, as well as the clever ambiguity of the chapter’s titles, add an element of fun and humour to the novel, encouraging us to maintain a somewhat detached perspective, and thereby enabling us more clearly to understand the ironical nature of much of the story.

This playfulness carries over into the way mythology, premonition, and spirituality are incorporated into the story, and so it seems fitting that we should begin our exploration by discussing the ways that the supernatural and the dream-like manifest within the novel.

DREAM WORLDS

Dream of the Red Chamber begins far away from the Jia household in which we will spend most of our time. After a quick introduction by the author, we are presented with a small fable that explains where the story came from. We are told that when the Goddess Nu Wa melted down rocks to repair the sky, she made 36,501 stones, each 120 feet high and 240 feet square. However, she ended up using only 36,500 of these stones, and threw the remaining one down at the foot of a mountain. This stone had somehow during this process acquired spiritual understanding, and therefore spent many a long year lamenting the fact that it had not been chosen to mend the sky.

After a while, a Taoist priest and a Buddhist monk show up, and find that the Stone had in the meantime has shrunk to the size where it can fit in the palm of someone’s hand. The monk recognizes that this Stone is precious, and decides to take it to a cultured family and allow it to see some of the world while living in comfort.

Many generations or aeons later, another Taoist priest known as Reverend Void comes across the Stone, once again at the foot of this same mountain. He finds inscribed on the back of the Stone the complete story of the Stone’s experiences on Earth. After a brief conversation regarding the merits and flaws of the tale, reflecting the ways in which it differs from more conventional stories, primarily in its realism and lack of stereotype, the monk is persuaded to re-read and reconsider the story, and is won over by its quality. He decides to publish the book, which ends up being this book, the Dream of the Red Chamber.

We are then introduced to Zhen Shih-yin, who has a dream in which he sees the Buddhist monk and Taoist priest right after they initially picked up the Stone. The monk explains to the Priest: “a love drama is about to be enacted, but not all its actors have yet been incarnated. I’m going to slip this silly thing in among them to give it the experience it wants.”

He goes on to tell the story of a Vermillion Pearl Plant growing on the bank of the Sacred River, which was watered every day by a man named Shen Ying, an attendant in the Palace of Red Jade. Eventually, this Vermillion Pearl Plant, after being watered by the essences of Heaven and Earth, transformed into a human girl. As a human girl, she roamed “beyond the Sphere of Parting Sorrow” and drank from the Sea of Brimming Grief. She had no way of repaying the kindness of Shen Ying, and this made her heart very heavy indeed.

As luck would have it, Shen Ying is seized by a sudden desire to become a human himself and visit the human world. He asks the Goddess of Disenchantment to allow him to do so, and she sees this opportunity to allow Vermillion Pearl Plant to repay her debt of gratitude. She wants to “repay him with as many tears as I can shed in a lifetime.” Along with her, many other amorous spirits who have never atoned for their sins decided to accompany the two of them, and play their own part in the oncoming drama.

After overhearing this conversation between the monk and the priest, Zhen Shih-yin, who is seeing this all in a dream, asks them to explain the mystery of what they’re talking about. They show him the Stone, which is now a piece of translucent jade called the Jade of Spiritual Understanding.

The dream ends when they reach the gates of the Illusory Land of Great Void, whereupon there are two pillars inscribed with a couplet that reads:

When false is taken for true, true becomes false;
If non-being turns into being, being becomes non-being.

This couplet is deliberately nonsensical, even in Chinese. In the vein of the Tao Te Ching or the Chuang Tzu, it plays with contradiction and ambiguity in an attempt to get at truths that are immediately unintuitive. This theme of truth and falsehood plays a subtle role in the novel. I’ve already mentioned in the introduction the contrast between form and reality, but that is only one aspect of what’s going on here.

Jia Baoyu, the main character of the novel, is born with this Jade of Spiritual Understanding in his mouth, and his name Baoyu means “precious jade.” He lives among the so-called “Twelve Beauties of Jinling,” a moniker for a dozen of the more important women in the novel, who are the reincarnated spirits mentioned earlier.

The family name Jia is a homophone of the word “false” or “fictitious,” and during a conversation at the beginning of the novel, they are directly compared to another family named Zhen, a homophone for “true.” Thus, the family name Jia, or falsehood, is a reflection of the contrast between the material world and the heavenly, spiritual world. These characters don’t really belong here in the human world; their real forms are the heavenly spirits from which they have been transformed, and to which form they will return after their death.

Unlike other stories where dreams are subordinate to the real world, either as manifestations of psychic states or simply wild fantasies, in this book it is the real world, the material world, that is fake, and the heavenly realm that is real. This is concordant with Buddhist and Taoist metaphysics, but I don’t believe the novel is being precisely literal by invoking these concepts; I think that it uses them as a framework for understanding the characters and the social conditions found in the book.

Latching onto the idea that the world is fake is often a symptom of dissatisfaction with the state of things, either on a personal, social or a political level. If things were going well down here, what use would there be for another world up there? However, it also allows one to forgive people for being, well, people, because it means accepting that there is no such thing as perfection on this Earth. We see both of these aspects at work in this novel.

In a way, Cao Xueqin is playing around with certain characteristics of fiction. He stresses at many points in the introduction the realism of the novel, that these characters are real people, and not the sort of stereotypes you’d find in operas or romances. He also stresses the mundanity of the work, somewhat ironically stating that the novel does not have political overtones, and is instead simply a book about a bunch of young girls living in a Garden.

So, the characters are real, in that they resemble real people, and they live the sort of everyday life that real people live. However, at the same time, they are fake, and their very name reveals them to be so: they are manifestations of heavenly spirits, and also, in another sense, they are characters in a work of fiction. They are real fake people, and they are fake real people. “When false is taken for true, true becomes false. If non—being turns into being, being becomes non-being.” This contradictory and nonsensical couplet actually, in a strange way, describes exactly what’s happening in the book, and the multiple ways you need to look at it in order to make any sense of it.

While the book is enjoyable in itself without worrying about any of this, the frame-story here adds additional layers of meaning and mystery to the novel, and puts into perspective certain enigmatic scenes that would feel out of place in a strictly realist work.

This interplay of truth and falsehood is what elevates the novel beyond being just a love story, or just a family tragedy. Lying in shadow behind everything is a sort of cosmic structure that adds cohesion to all the disparate events and characters. It’s what prevents the novel from just being a bunch of things that happen to a bunch of people. At the same time, it’s not so straightforward that it feels tacked on or unnecessary. It is its ambiguity, and the fact that it seemingly disappears into the background for long stretches of time, that makes this frame-story so effective.

BAOYU'S DREAM

The story centres around Jia Baoyu, the young man born with a jade pendant in his mouth. Baoyu is the son of Jia Zheng, the second son of the Lady Dowager and de facto head of the household. Baoyu is his grandmother’s favourite of all her grandchildren, and thus is spoiled, allowing all of his eccentricities to thrive in the almost unreal world of a wealthy elite family. Thus, Baoyu doesn’t put effort into his studies, and instead spends most of his time playing around with his cousins and sisters.

Baoyu is much more comfortable in the company of women than of men. He believes men are dirty and crude, unintelligent and unrefined. Women, on the other hand, are not only beautiful and elegant, but also more clever and artistic. In many ways, Baoyu is treated almost the same way as many of his female relatives. It’s only the rare scene in which he hangs out with any of the other boys, and when he does, such as when he tries to go to school, it often ends in conflict.

His male relatives, for the most part, only serve to prove his preconceptions. They are often womanizers or drunks, or else pious to the point of losing touch with reality. Baoyu’s attachment to reality is tenuous at best, and he often speaks complete nonsense, but he is kept down to Earth to a certain extent by his female companions. The women of the family, particularly the third generation with which Baoyu spends most of his time, are able to maintain a balance between Heaven and Earth.

They are, in a way, worldly, in that they understand their position both in the family and in the world. They know that, as women in a male-dominated society, their position is often tenuous at best; even if they marry a wealthy man, there’s always the chance that he may later take a concubine that he fancies more than them. Or else, they might become a concubine themselves. In particular cases, they are orphaned, such that if they lose the generosity that is being accorded to them by the Lady Dowager, they might even become servants.

This understanding of their material position is also what allows them their philosophical and artistic maturity. Some are skilled poets, some skilled artists, and all of them at least have an appreciation for such otherworldly activities. Early in the novel, they create a poetry club, where they get together and compose long or short poems, at which composition they consistently outdo Baoyu, who is supposed to be more learned.

But at the same time, these are teenage girls, and for all their maturity they are also emotional and occasionally cruel. But once again, Baoyu is the most emotional of them all, the most gullible, the most impressionable, and the most naive. It seems that he can not shake this masculine tendency toward extremes; when living almost as a girl, he lives as the most extreme form of girl possible, because he doesn’t have that worldly understanding of his position. As a man, or as a boy, he is given many privileges and assured of certain things that are not assured to the girls, and this security allows him to embark on flights of fancy that are both ridiculous and destructive.

However, as a sort of untethered emotional machine, Baoyu is immediately relatable, if only as a representation of our most extreme moments. We have all experienced the emotions he undergoes, but we are never allowed to experience them quite to the extent which he does.

It is important to mention though that Baoyu is also kind and generous, offering help and compliments to all the girls and always looking for ways to cheer them up. He is carefree and doesn’t mind being the butt of jokes or being criticized. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have much care for himself at all, and his only joy in life is the joy of his cousins, sisters and maids. He has a bizarre sort of philosophical bent that makes the tribulations of this world flow by him like water off a duck’s back. This combination of naivete and a sort of wisdom gives him the character of a holy fool, or a Taoist sage.

Early in the book, Baoyu and his sisters and female cousins move into a section of the family estate that was originally designed for a visit from his sister, the Imperial Consort. This area is a vast garden, complete with flowing streams, rocky paths, stony hills, and lush verdure. This idyllic realm is where much of the story takes place, with each character living in one of the homes or cottages within the garden. They travel to other sections of the estate in order to visit their older relatives, but for the most part, they are secluded within this world.

But even when they do travel outside, it’s mostly to visit their mothers, aunts or grandmother. It’s important to emphasize that outside of Baoyu, there is very little male presence in this book, and when men do show up, it’s often disastrous. Baoyu’s relationship to his father, Jia Zheng, is incredibly strained, as Zheng sees Baoyu as an eccentric bumbler and a total disappointment. He views Baoyu’s tendency toward femininity as a sort of perversion, as if Baoyu is a lecherous young man who is drawn to girls purely out of lust. At a certain point, he believes a rumour spread by Baoyu’s jealous half-brother about Baoyu attempting to rape a maid. This, combined with another rumour about Baoyu engaging in homosexual acts with an actor from another household, causes Jia Zheng to beat Baoyu almost to death.

The fact that these rumours are both untrue is less important than the fact that Zheng believes them to be true. In his eyes, Baoyu is a sexual deviant, a result of the complete lack of control anyone has over him. Because Baoyu is the Lady Dowager’s favourite, and Zheng has to comply with her wishes, Zheng feels that he has not been able to raise Baoyu properly. Zheng believes in a Confucian ideal of society, where the highest values are pious respect for male relatives and faithful service to the government, with both of these being intertwined in a sort of paternalistic complex. If Zheng had his way, Baoyu would spend all his time studying the Four Books and Five Classics which are the staples of a Confucian education.

One can almost understand Zheng’s concern here, as when considered practically, Baoyu’s situation and education is pretty poor. However, practicality is exactly the sort of thing Baoyu rejects. Baoyu almost floats above the world, and explicitly doesn’t belong in it. Trying to impose practicality or pragmatism on such a being is impossible, and in many ways might only make him worse off.

But it’s perhaps worthwhile to try to understand what role the lust that Zheng perceives in Baoyu’s actions actually plays. While the book is often tame or indirect in its depictions of sexuality, it does not try to ignore its existence. As in many cultures, sexuality is rarely explicitly mentioned within the Jia household, and when it does appear in the novel, it is often as something hidden being stumbled upon by one of the primary characters. These scenes imply that sexuality almost exists as a sort of shadow world behind the clean and respectable surface.

The most explicit and enigmatic nod to Baoyu’s sexuality in the novel occurs near the beginning, during the eponymous Dream of the Red Chamber, dreamt by Baoyu during a visit to his family in the Ning household across the street. The Ning household, of which Jia Zhen is the head (not to be confused with Jia Zheng, Baoyu’s father), are distantly related to Baoyu’s family from his grandmother’s generation, with Jia Zhen being a sort of distant-cousin.

When Baoyu is overtaken by sleepiness during his visit, Qin Keqing, Zhen’s daughter-in-law -- importantly not related to Baoyu in any meaningful sense -- arranges for Baoyu to have a nap somewhere. However, the first room she tries to set him up in has a couplet on the wall which reads,

A grasp of mundane affairs is genuine knowledge
Understanding of worldly wisdom is true learning.

Baoyu is so disgusted by this sentiment that he refuses to sleep in the room, so Qin Keqing takes him to her own chamber. Qin Keqing’s room is filled with the aroma of perfume, and adorned with artifacts belonging to sensual women from history and myth. Qin Keqing here is an embodiment of sexuality, and by taking Baoyu to her chamber she is initiating him to this semi-secret sort of realm. When Baoyu falls asleep, he is led by a dream-version of Qin Keqing into a pleasant land, where he meets a fairy that turns out to be the Goddess of Disenchantment, whom we met in the initial frame-story.

Here, the Goddess shows Baoyu to an area where he opens a cabinet and finds the “Register of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling,” which contains descriptions of the fates of many of the novel's characters, written in such a way and introduced at such a point in the story that it’s impossible for either Baoyu or the reader to make much sense of them. She also orders some maids to sing Baoyu a collection of songs called the “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which similarly foreshadow future events, and introduce the thematic qualities of the main characters, once again without explicitly naming the characters in question.

Baoyu soon grows bored of these mysterious songs, and wishes to sleep in his dream. The Goddess of Disenchantment leads him to a chamber, where she speaks to him about the error of treating love and lust as two disparate things. “Love of beauty leads to lust,” she says, “Thus, every sexual transport of cloud and rain is the inevitable climax of love of beauty and desire.”

“And what I like about you,” she says to Baoyu, “is that you are the most lustful man ever to have lived in this world since time immemorial.”

Frightened by this assertion, Baoyu pleads innocence. His parents already admonish him enough for his laziness, to add lustfulness to that would simply be too much. Besides, he says, he’s still too young to really understand what lust is.

The Goddess explains that Baoyu’s lust is not the lust of people who crave physical pleasure, but is instead “lust of the mind.” It can not be expressed physically, but only apprehended intuitively. She says that this is what makes him such a welcome companion to women, but also what makes him seem odd in the eyes of the world.

In order to prove to Baoyu the illusory nature of physical desire, she introduces Baoyu to a girl she describes as her younger sister. This girl is named Chien-mei, which means, “Combining the best,” the meaning of which I will get into into a little bit later. For the moment, we can say that the Goddess hopes that after they “consummate their union,” Baoyu will see the vanity and emptiness of sex, even in this heavenly realm. She hopes to cure him of his lustful nature, so that he will be able to devote himself instead to the betterment of society. As the narrator says, “We can draw a veil over this first act of love.”

Unfortunately, Baoyu becomes attached, in the dream, to this younger sister, whose name is now suddenly Ko-ching, in the way that dream figures often change their names or even change into other people completely. Baoyu and Ko-ching go for a stroll, and find themselves in a dense forest, before a rushing river. The Goddess of Disenchantment finds them there, and she tells them that this is the Ford of Infatuation, and that if they had fallen in, all her work would have been for naught.

Monsters and devils emerge from the river. Frightened, Baoyu screams out, and this scream escapes into the real world and wakes him up. His head maid, Xiren, finds that he has ejaculated in his dream. Later that night, he tells her of the nature of the dream, and all that happened to him. Xiren, a few years older than Baoyu, finds the entire thing hilarious, no doubt considering it the wild fantasy of a sexually frustrated young boy. They secretly have sex, and we are told that “from that hour, Baoyu treated Xiren with special consideration.”

One might pause to wonder here if the Goddess was successful or unsuccessful in her gambit. When the real world mirrors the dream world, i.e. when Baoyu follows his first act of love in the fairyland with his first act of love in the material world, we have to wonder if this mirroring is a part of the lesson he is supposed to learn, or if it is proof that it has not been learned, and that he instead has only increased his lust and thereby his attachment to material pleasures. When we’re told that the relationship between Xiren and Baoyu is strengthened by this event, it parallels Baoyu’s strengthened relationship with the dream girl that leads him to the terrifying Ford of Infatuation.

However, maybe we should remind ourselves of the couplet again:

When false is taken for true, true becomes false;
If non-being turns into being, being becomes non-being.

If we consider the false to be Baoyu’s encounter with Chien-mei in the dream, and the true to be Baoyu’s real-life encounter with Xiren, we have to consider that this would then cause the true to become false. Which we could take to mean that Baoyu’s lust, by this action, has been nullified, in a sense, that it has been made unreal or untrue, and therefore no longer a real problem. This reading is somewhat vindicated by the fact that, during the rest of the novel, we don’t see Baoyu acting out on any sexual urges, although his “lust of the mind” is just as powerful as ever.

Daiyu & Bao-chai

This ambiguity is only made more mysterious when we consider this dream girl’s name, Chien-mei, “Combining the best.” This name is a reference to Jia Baoyu’s two primary “love interests,” whose complementary natures and differing relationships with Baoyu are at the heart of the novel.

Lin Daiyu, whose name means “black jade,” and Xue Baochai, whose name means “jewel hair-pin,” are two of Baoyu’s cousins who live with him in the garden.

Lin Daiyu is the daughter of Baoyu’s paternal aunt, who married a scholar and moved away from the family. When Daiyu’s mother dies, her father sends her to live in the Jia household for a time, and it is through Daiyu’s eyes that we as the reader first experience the estate. Soon after, her father also passes away, leaving her an orphan under the care of her grandmother, the Lady Dowager. As such, she is a melancholy child, lamenting the loss of her parents and full of guilt for being a strain on her extended family.

A pageboy in Chapter 65, speaking behind her back, describes Daiyu as having “a bellyful of book learning…; but she’s always falling ill. Even in hot weather… she wears lined clothes, and a puff of wind can blow her over. Being a disrespectful lot, we all call her the Sick Beauty.”

Baoyu and Daiyu have a special bond; when Daiyu first visits the mansion and sees Baoyu, she finds him familiar, as if she’s seen him somewhere before. Baoyu, in turn, studies her, and declares to his family; “I’ve met this cousin before.” His grandmother insists that he most assuredly has not. He replies, “Well, even if I haven’t, her face looks familiar. I feel we’re old friends meeting again after a long separation.” This is, of course, because they are the reincarnations of Shen Ying and the Vermillion Pearl Plant, and Daiyu is here to repay her debt with tears.

Thus, despite their initial affinity, Baoyu and Daiyu’s relationship is never without its rockiness. Both being extremely emotional individuals, they push each other away even as they grow closer, constantly irritating and angering each other with misplaced words and deliberate misunderstandings.

Daiyu is sensitive, to say the least, about her familial situation. Anything that reminds her of her parents, her home, or the precariousness of her situation in the Jia household sends her into fits of tears. Often, she hears only what she wants to hear, transforming innocuous remarks into extremely subtle digs at her insecurities. On top of this, Daiyu very rarely says what she means, or conveys in any way the real reasons behind her emotional outbursts, often trying to cover them up with fake reasons, even though everyone around her can clearly tell that she’s lying. Baoyu, being a careless young man with a propensity for talking nonsense, often finds himself in the doghouse. Many of their meetings end with both of them in tears, either tears of mutual sympathy or tears of anger and frustration.

But despite all this, they remain loyal to each other, and their fights rarely last long. Baoyu takes special care of Daiyu, procuring extra medicine during her illnesses, or ensuring the daily delivery of a special soup she likes. Whenever he sees her in tears, he does everything he can to cheer her up, often insisting that he’d rather die than see her sad. “If I meant to insult you,” he says at one point, “I’ll fall into the pond tomorrow and let the scabby-headed tortoise swallow me, so that I change into a big turtle myself. Then when you become a lady of the first rank and go at last to your paradise in the West, I shall bear the stone tablet at your grave on my back for ever.”

It is an open secret within the household that Baoyu and Daiyu will get married when they’re older. It’s clear to everyone how much they care for each other, and both being favourites of their grandmother, there’s no way anyone could object. The only people for whom its not a sure thing are Baoyu and Daiyu themselves. Any reference, either joking or serious, to Daiyu getting married at any point in the future sends her into a fit of rage, as she believes people are making fun of her. It seems that, although she understands Baoyu’s love for her, she doesn’t want to get her hopes up after all the loss she’s suffered in her young life.

This insecurity, in both senses of the word, is a key part of her tragic nature. She doesn’t feel safe or at home in the Jia household; being a daughter of a daughter, rather than a daughter of a son, their formal responsibilities to her are much less than to the other girls. While the Lady Dowager ensures that she is treated exactly the same as her other granddaughters, this informal understanding has no legal or traditional basis, and is entirely tied to the whim of the Lady Dowager herself. If she were to die, or change her mind, then there’s no reason why they couldn’t marry her off or simply send her somewhere else. This ambiguity between her formal position and informal position is a key aspect of her emotional instability.

Baoyu, being the heir apparent to the household, knows nothing but total security, as everyone adheres to his whims and seemingly always will. Thus, he fails to understand Daiyu’s situation, and when it is finally made clear to him, he suffers a complete breakdown. But, perhaps we will talk more about that some other time.

For now, let’s turn to Xue Baochai. Xue Baochai is the daughter of Aunt Xue, Baoyu’s maternal aunt. Like Daiyu, she is a traditional beauty who is also well-educated. The two of them are always quick to quote a passage from an ancient text, and are two of the most accomplished poets among the family. However, in every other way, they are quite different.

Baochai’s father is dead and her brother Xue Pan is good for nothing. She has to give up her education at an early age in order to help her mother with the household, and thereby grows into quite a capable young woman. When her brother decides to take the family to the capital, Baochai and her mother convince him to stay with their extended family in the Jia household, partially to keep him from being completely free to ruin himself.

Baochai is considerate and tactful, always generous and accommodating to her maids. She is not this way necessarily by nature; it is a conscious decision that she makes, understanding the consequences that can come from offending people. She is much more mature than Daiyu, in the sense that she is much more worldly. She understands her position, understands the consequences of certain actions, and acts logically and reasonably.

Daiyu, on the other hand, is, similarly to Baoyu, immature. She sees everything emotionally, and this makes her self-centred and aloof. For all the worrying she does about what the family thinks of her, she still often speaks in a harsh manner that can rub people the wrong way, or makes childish scenes for no real reason. In this book, many physical illnesses are not caused by disease necessarily, but by emotional states. People’s humours get out of line by crying too much, or they get so angry or sad that they throw up. Thus, we can say that Daiyu’s emotional instability contributes directly to her sickliness.

When Baochai initially moves into the mansion, Daiyu is jealous. She thinks that with Baochai around, not only Baoyu but also the Lady Dowager might forget about her, and her privileged position in the mansions might fade away. She sees all the ways in which Baochai exceeds her: in learning, in manners, in propriety, maturity, and in generosity.

But, as is often the case when it comes to people with such contrasting natures, the two eventually become close friends. The circumstances surrounding this are somewhat interesting. Daiyu, while walking in the garden, comes across Baoyu reading a book by a stream. This book is Romance of the Western Chamber, a romantic drama generally considered indecent and immoral at the time, due to its two principal characters consummating their love without parental approval. Baoyu is crazy about the book, because of course he would be, and he lends it to Daiyu, who is also entranced by it.

In Chapter 40, Daiyu, who has in the meantime memorized the entire play, accidentally quotes a line from it during a drinking game. No one else notices, aside from Baochai, who a few chapters later, in a chapter titled “The Lady of the Alpinia Warns Against Dubious Tastes in Literature,” takes Daiyu aside and questions her about her reading habits. She reveals that she has also read these books, back when she was a “madcap” and “a real handful.” But she goes on to say,

“It’s best for girls like us to not know how to read… If boys learn sound principles by studying so that they can help the government… well and good; but nowadays we don’t hear of many such cases — reading only seems to make them worse than they were to start with… As for us, we should just stick to needlework… If we let ourselves be influenced by those unorthodox books, there’s no hope for us.”

Considering the context, this is obviously meant to be read as irony. There’s a common theme to this novel about how it’s unlike any other story: both licentious dramas and more approved works with explicit moral themes. This kind of blanket moral statement regarding fiction is exactly what Cao Xueqin is fighting against.

However, Daiyu is impressed by Baochai’s reasonableness, as well as her care in taking the time to warn Daiyu. It’s clear that Baochai is not making a statement about the quality of these works, as much as a statement about their reputation, and about how reading them will affect one’s status, rather than one’s mind. It’s a material analysis, a grounded view of social reality, which flies in the face of Daiyu and Baoyu’s idealistic appreciation of the stories simply as stories. In this moment of hearing Baochai lecture about stories, Daiyu grows up a bit — or at least, begins to see what it means to be grown up.

This contrast between materialism and idealism is further symbolized by Baochai’s golden locket. As a child, she was given an inscription for this locket by a Buddhist monk, which seems to complement the inscription on Baoyu’s Jade of Spiritual Understanding. This adds a complication to this triangle, because as readers, we know that Baoyu and Daiyu are connected via their former relationship as Shen Ying and the Vermillion Pearl Plant. However, to other characters in the novel, Baoyu and Baochai seem to be destined for each other due to their complementary accessories. This is another case of confusion between illusion and reality, with material reality itself being the illusion, and true reality being something hidden that no one can possibly know about.

Thus, the question of whether Baoyu should marry Daiyu or Baochai is a question of which way of viewing reality takes precedence. From a pragmatic point of view, Baochai makes the most sense. She can act as a foil to Baoyu’s absurd ways, and she is capable of running a household. However, from a romantic point of view, the love between Baoyu and Daiyu is clearly stronger. Her sickliness, combined with the fact that their emotional natures only make each other more and more crazy, likely to turn their household and lives into complete chaos, makes their love seems ill-fated for our world. It’s a heavenly love, a love from another dimension, and this is what makes it beautiful, and perhaps what also makes it impossible.

As readers, we can see both sides of this dilemma, and, if we allow ourselves, we can even sympathize with both. Our impractical and emotional side will always lean toward Daiyu; our pragmatic side will always lean toward Baochai. If we empathize with Baoyu, we want what’s best for him: but it’s almost impossible to truly understand what is actually best. Is his father’s practical Confucianism the proper outlook on life, or is the enlightened foolishness of Taoism really the better way to go? As always, Cao Xueqin does not provide us with a real answer: both sides are made to seem superior or inferior in turn. We see characters in the book turn away from society and embrace Taoism, but we never see what actually becomes of them, and it’s hard to know if it matters what becomes of them, because they are explicitly rejecting their physical presence on Earth.

We return to this question of what is real in the story. Is the story of the characters in the Jia household what is real, or is it the frame-story regarding the stone and the heavenly realm that is real? Or are neither of them real, or are both of them real? True becomes false, being becomes non-being; perhaps these boundaries are less strict than they initially seem. There’s permeability between these realms, as spirits become human, and humans become spirits. If this interchange is always re-occurring, then who is to say which side is the real side and which side is the unreal side?

I suppose we’ll just have to read on, and find out.

In Part Two, we will zoom out a bit from Baoyu and Daiyu and Baochai, and discuss many of the other members of the Jia family. We will explore the perspectives of older characters and of characters from different backgrounds, and see how these all fit into the tapestry of the novel. If this book were only about Baoyu, Daiyu, and Baochai, it would be a romance; but this book is decidedly more than just a romance. There’s much more to the story: themes regarding the nature of nobility and wealth; of ritual and form; as well there are playful moments, beautiful moments, and tragic moments. While I can’t possibly cover everything that goes on, I will attempt in the next part to provide you with something of an overview. Following that, there will be a third part, in which I cover the final section of the book, where we find out the fates of our beloved characters, and try to figure out what exactly it is that we take away from reading this novel.

PART TWO

In the Part One, we discussed some of the more metaphysical and conceptual elements of the novel: the distinctions between Heaven and Earth, idealism and pragmatism, and truth and falsehood. In this second part, we are going to stick to steadier ground, and remain on the earthly plane as we take a broader look at the material conditions of the Jia household, focusing on the corruptive effects of wealth and status; the relationship between the well-off and the not-very-well-off; as well as the precarious position of women in 18th century Chinese society.

To do so, we are going to be introduced to a few new characters. I don’t want to overwhelm the reader with too many names or situations, so we will choose a small set to serve as representative examples. I should mention, however, that one of the more impressive aspects of Dream of the Red Chamber is the fact that, even though there are a fair number of characters, they each, for the most part, have a significant role in the story, as well as a sense of internal agency. This isn’t a novel where characters exist only to further the plot; even characters whose names you probably won’t be able to remember on your first reading have something going on if you take the time to explore the book more thoroughly.

During the second volume of the novel, which in my edition includes chapters 41-80, the reader’s eyes are gradually opened to the truth behind the Jia mansion’s glamorous appearance. There is a greater emphasis here on what goes on behind the scenes: the squabbles, deceptions and corruption that lie behind the apparent beauty. Our focus turns away from the younger set in their garden of luxury, and instead we are immersed in the parts of the mansion that connect to the Outside World, and all the immorality and debasedness that comes with such a connection.

Xifeng

We will begin with Wang Xifeng, the daughter-in-law of Jia Sheh, the Lady Dowager’s eldest son.

Wang Xifeng is what we might call the Mistress of the household, using Mistress in the sense of a female Master and a woman of authority. The older wives, Lady Wang and Lady Xing, don’t like to concern themselves too much with the running of the household, and leave many of these responsibilities to Xifeng. This means that she has to deal with entertaining visitors, hearing petitions, sorting out gifts, allotting allowances, punishing misdemeanours, and much more. However, she does all this as a sort of manager; the true authority lies above, with the elder women, who act as a sort of Sword of Damocles hanging over her head.

All this responsibility foisted upon someone only a little over 20 years old seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but if you were going to foist it upon anyone, Xifeng is one of your better options. Like Xue Baochai, she is extremely capable, clever enough to placate those who need to be placated and ignore those who need to be ignored, all while, for the most part, maintaining a position of authority and respect.

Xifeng’s reputation among the mansion’s inhabitants varies wildly, mostly depending on what side of her one sees, and whether her decisions work out in one’s favour or not. The Lady Dowager, being a lover of good fun, appreciates her quick wit, and this is also what her younger relatives appreciate about her. However, many of the servants view her as overly strict and suspect her of embezzling the family’s money. Her husband, Jia Lien, a rampant womanizer and total jerk, sees her as a jealous shrew.

However, our most accurate account of Xifeng would probably come from her head maid and primary companion, Ping-erh. Ping-erh came with Xifeng when she moved into the Jia household, and the two of them often put their heads together when faced with difficult problems. Ping-erh knows when to bother Xifeng about something and when not to; she can read her mistress’ moods, and advise people about when and how to appeal to her.

Ping-erh would likely recognize that Xifeng’s strictness and her occasional cruelty are a way of coping with her position. Xifeng is keenly aware of her reputation and that of the family: what people expect from her, and what people suspect of her. Some petitioners believe the house to be flush with cash, and view any frugality or reticence on her part as miserliness or haughtiness. However, the reality is that the budget Xifeng is provided with to keep the household running is not even enough for that purpose; she often has to pawn her own possessions in order to merely maintain the status quo. When special occasions roll around, such as a funeral, a wedding, or a visit from the Imperial Consort, they eat up the budget for months, and she’s the only person who fully understands this fact. Thus, she has no one to appeal to; everything is on her shoulders, and she can’t even tell people what she’s carrying. On top of this, she has to deal with with the knowledge that people are constantly misjudging her and her actions due to their ignorance.

We get the impression sometimes that Xifeng, before all this fell upon her, was much like many of her younger cousins. Blissfully free of responsibility, she likely enjoyed writing and reciting poetry and playing around, with her quick wit and generosity probably making her a joy to have around. However, she has had to become cruel in order to adapt herself to the cruelty of the outside world, and has had to put on a hard face in order to protect herself from people wanting to take advantage.

To some characters, it seems that Xifeng puts on a persona of a joking, fun-loving woman when around her elders, but then is a harsh mistress when dealing with her subordinates. But we must ask, which side is truly the persona? Perhaps it is only with the Lady Dowager and her younger relatives that she can wear her true face, and the harshness is a mask. We return to this perennial question of truth versus falsehood, as it’s likely that neither of these is the true Xifeng, and she has learned to become entirely adaptable to differing circumstances.

We can’t ignore the fact that Xifeng is thereby capable of cruelties, and that she has a prideful nature. When Jia Rui, an overly passionate young man, attempts to seduce her, she pretends to play along, meanwhile setting up a trap that ends up indirectly causing his death.

When her husband, Jia Lien, secretly takes a second wife during a period of family mourning, an act which is explicitly forbidden, and then keeps this second wife outside of the household without telling anybody, Xifeng, upon finding out, is furious, to say the least. But, true to her ability to mask, she puts on a pleasant face, invites the new wife to stay in their home and pretends to welcome the new situation. However, she uses her position as allocater of resources to ensure that the new wife only gets the worst food, that her allowance is always late, and that the maids mistreat her, all the while pretending to be on her side, such that the new wife feels that she can’t complain. Eventually, she too ends up dead.

Looking at these incidents, it’s hard to argue that Xifeng is secretly a good person. You don’t accumulate such a body count by being a good person. What we can argue is that Xifeng embodies one aspect of Jia Baoyu’s fear regarding what happens when women grow up. His theory, or belief, is that unmarried women are the only people capable of purity and goodness, and that once they are exposed to the outside world, they either become victims of its cruelties, become cruel themselves, or both.

Xifeng, perhaps, is both. She’s a victim of her husband’s uncaring nature and his propensity for running off after other women. This affects Xifeng’s standing and reputation far more than it does his, and as the only one of them with any actual authority or responsibility, her reputation is what matters. As a woman married into the Jia family, she has to work to prove herself, and that work never ends; she’s always having to prove herself to those above and below her, even when that involves explicit contradictions. She has to walk a line so minuscule as to be practically invisible, and she has to do it in silence and with modesty. She can’t just lash out with anger or violence like her husband can; she can’t just get rid of him like he could she; she can’t run off with other men or simply go travelling somewhere for no reason. Her only means of asserting herself are deception and manipulation, which necessarily leads to a certain cruelty.

Xifeng is naturally clever. We see this when she’s joking around with relatives during dinner or during poetry meetings. She has a quick wit and knows how to pull off a practical joke. Her wit and her cruelty are two sides of the same coin. When used for the benefit of others, to bring laughter, it’s wit; when used for selfish purposes, or to harm others, it’s deception. There’s no place for wit with a jealous and intransigent husband, with servants and petitioners alike knocking at your door, with the honor of yourself and your family on the line with every decision. If we call Xifeng a victim, it’s not to say that she’s only a victim of her husband, but that she’s a victim of the entire structure of society. Cruelty begets cruelty, and Xifeng lashing out in the way she does, with the only real power that she has, is unsurprising.

Concubine Chao & Jia Huan

It might be interesting to compare Xifeng here to another character known for her cruelty. Concubine Chao is the concubine of Jia Zheng, Baoyu’s father. She has a daughter, Tanchun, and a son, Jia Huan. Because she is a concubine and not a proper wife, both her and her children have a fairly low status in the household, a fact which she never forgets, and which never ceases to cause her irritation.

We could say that Concubine Chao’s major fault is that she doesn’t or can’t accept her position, that she’s always striving for a higher status, even though her circumstances make such an ascension impossible. This continual banging of her head against a brick wall only worsens her position; every single person in the mansion dislikes her, except for her son. Even her daughter, Tanchun, who tends to live away from her in the Garden, is ashamed of her, and generally acts as if she doesn’t exist.

Chao is bitter and jealous; as she acts out, people respect her less, and this disrespect only makes her more bitter and more jealous. Considering her situation, we might almost want to sympathize with her at times, but the way she acts and speaks, the way she blows everything way out of proportion, and the fact there’s really nothing to her that redeems her in our eyes, makes that quite difficult. We can only imagine, like with Xifeng, that perhaps in different circumstances she might have been different, but unlike Xifeng, we never even catch a glimpse of a better person underneath. Chao is buried so deep in her pit of resentment by the time we even meet her that no light shines through at all.

In fact, trying to imagine Chao getting what she wanted, imagining her as a full wife of a noble man, only leads us to suspect that she might have been even worse. Her ego is so out of control, her selfishness and vanity so heightened that we can only imagine any power would immediately go to her head and make her a monster.

Concubine Chao thinks of her son, Jia Huan, as much better than Baoyu, and as more deserving of the privileges Baoyu is given as the favourite of the Lady Dowager. Baoyu is blissfully unaware of these privileges and treats them as a matter of course; he is so sure of himself that he takes any criticism or disrespect with good humour. He was literally born with a Jade pendant in his mouth; to him, there is no real correspondence between his actions and his status. Jia Huan experiences the reverse side of this: no matter what he does, he’s lesser than Baoyu, because Baoyu is a true son, and Jia Huan is only the son of a concubine.

We see this type of relationship often when dealing with the feudal period of European history. A bastard son, even though he has the same father and was born into the same house and family, doesn’t inherit his family’s wealth or land, while a true son does. Thus, the bastard son has to go out into the world and find something for himself, often carrying a deep feeling of resentment.

There’s an apparent unfairness here, that speaks to the inherent unfairness of being born on this planet. Some are born rich; some are born poor. Some are born in locations where survival is easy; some are born in locations where it requires much toil. Depending on what sort of mobility exists at that time or place — both physical mobility and class mobility — there are different ideas about how one should deal with this discrepancy.

In modern liberal democracies, there is an ideology of equality, which says that any person from any circumstance has an equal ability, and most importantly, an equal right and opportunity to reach any height of wealth and/or status. This isn’t literally the case, of course, but ideologies aren’t about literally describing reality, they’re about norms. So, in a society with this particular ideology, the emphasis will be to strive to improve your situation, either through education or hard work or a combination of both.

In a society with low or zero class mobility, the predominant ideology will be that those at the top deserve to be there for some reason, either because they’re intellectually or physically superior in some way, or because God just loves them more. In this situation, the norm is to accept one’s station and fulfill one’s duty as best as one can.

Feudal China in the 18th century is an interesting case. There is a small amount of semi-meritocritous class mobility, in the form of the Imperial Examinations. If one studies hard, learns the Five Books, and can scrounge together the money to challenge the examination, depending on one’s score one might land a job in the government. Like today, a job in the government is considered pretty stable as long as you aren’t too explicit about your embezzlement and don’t piss off the wrong people.

So, in the same way that a European bastard son in the Middle Ages might run off on a military conquest, a Chinese son of a concubine might hope for an official position. Of course, a true son can just buy their way in or get appointed through family connections. Thus, Baoyu doesn’t do his schoolwork because he doesn’t care, because he knows that he doesn’t have to. Jia Huan knows that if he wants success, he has to study hard, but his bitterness at the injustice of the whole thing means that he doesn’t want to. Instead, he falls into delinquency.

His social situation, the status he is born with, makes Jia Huan into a worse person. He is mean, he is vain, and no one really likes him, just like they don’t like his mom. He has the taste of luxury, because he does still live in the Jia mansions, and is waited on by servants and given gifts and served delicious meals. Not only that, but he sees how Baoyu gets to live: with all that Jia Huan has, and a little bit more besides. With this tasting and glimpsing of true luxury, Jia Huan is corrupted; he could never accept poverty or anything less than what he has, and thus he strives for that and for more.

Granny Liu

We are offered an interesting foil to this sort of attitude, and to the Jia family in general, in the character of Granny Liu, who visits the Jia mansion from the countryside at regular intervals throughout the novel. Granny Liu’s son-in-law’s grandfather was close to Jia Cheng’s wife’s father, a connection which is tenuous to the point of absurdity. She heads to the city to pay her respects and, hopefully, collect a few gifts for her struggling family. Thankfully, she has an in with the family’s steward, and somehow or other finds herself with a face to face meeting with Xifeng, who takes a certain liking to her country charms.

During this first visit, Granny Liu is overwhelmed by the wealth and prosperity of the Jia household, and barely knows how to act in front of Xifeng. Even Xifeng’s maids are so well-dressed and made up that, at first, Liu confuses her head maid Ping-erh with the mistress herself. However, while someone more adjusted to the city might make a fool of themselves by overestimating or overstating their status, Liu’s modesty and humility, as well as her obvious disorientation, lends her presence a certain charm. Xifeng agrees to have a meal with Granny Liu and sends her and her young nephew home with a selection of gifts, as well as some money to tide them by.

While this first appearance at the mansion feels fairly innocuous, we are provided a hint to the future at the end of the chapter with the couplet,

In affluence, charity is freely dispensed
One deeply grateful is better than kinsmen or friends

Which foreshadows Granny Liu’s helping hand later on in Volume 3.

After the generous reception to her first visit, Liu returns the next fall to bring the Jia family the first pickings from her farm’s harvest. This time, she is introduced to the Lady Dowager, and the two immediately become fast friends. Liu’s good humour and shade of ridiculousness appeals to the Lady Dowager’s fun-loving nature, and the two bond over being above 70 years old.

What’s interesting about this relationship is that it’s quite a bit more complex than it seems. The difference in status between Granny Liu and the Lady Dowager is about as extreme as it gets, and both parties are highly aware of this fact. Liu has to put on an act of extreme reverence, professing disbelief that the Lady Dowager would even deign to acknowledge her existence, and constantly referencing the various advantages the Lady Dowager has over her. When Xifeng and the Lady Dowager express delight at the fresh produce she’s brought, Liu says it’s “rough country fare but at least it’s fresh. We’d rather eat meat and fish ourselves, but we can’t afford it.”

Now, we might hear that and think that she’s complaining or fishing for gifts. In a society based on an ideology of equality, people don’t often talk about their economic situation like this, because they find it uncomfortable to acknowledge these disparities. Someone in Liu’s position might pretend to be less impressed than they really are, in order not to give away their status, because if all are considered to have equal opportunity for wealth and success, then poverty is a sign of personal failure.

However, these characters are operating within an entirely different framework. It is certainly unfortunate that Liu’s family doesn’t have a lot, and the Jia family is willing to provide them gifts and support as a nice gesture, but it’s also just the way of things. The Jia family is favoured by the Emperor, and the Emperor has the Heavenly Mandate, so what he says is law. They exist in such a different realm than Liu that it’s not even realistic for her to be jealous. Poverty itself is not shameful; what is shameful is being unable or unwilling to recognize one’s own status. Concubine Chao’s great transgression is to consider herself worthy of treatment equal to that given the other ladies of the household, when the objective social conditions are such that this is simply not the case. It is for this, above all else, that she is punished.

Later on during dinner, a few of the maids, prompted by Xifeng, play some practical jokes on Granny Liu, operating under the assumption that, being a country bumpkin, she will be ignorant of proper etiquette. But Liu is no fool; she knows that she’s being tricked, but she plays along in order to entertain everyone. It’s similar to how Baoyu allows himself to be made fun of as long as it makes his friends laugh, because he doesn’t attach much importance to his reputation or his ego. Liu is a person of low status; she has no face to lose, and this allows her to face condescension with an inner resolve. She knows who and what she is.

Granny Liu’s presence in the novel is one of many ways that the Jia family’s position in the world is made clear to the reader. While we spend much of the story within the walls of their estate, we are not constrained to a myopic view of the world in which their material conditions are treated as the default. Between Granny Liu’s visits and the several chapters devoted to the goings-on of maids and other servants, we are presented with a wider context that allows us to make sense of the main events of the novel.

This story, like many others we’ve discussed on the show so far, is concerned with wealth and privilege, but it is in no sense offering a simple moralistic determination regarding this subject. The disparity between the Jia’s family status and their actual wealth is one aspect of the True/False dichotomy, offering a more complex view of what might at first seem a direct connection. Further, their relationships with and responsibilities toward the lower-status individuals who work in their household provide an additional layer of ambiguity to what many may perceive as a direct hierarchical system.

Yuanyang

On this note, I’d like to talk briefly about Yuanyang, the most capable and essential of the Lady Dowager’s retinue of maids. So diligent and loving is she in her service that the Lady Dowager swears that she can’t do anything without her help, so while other maids are gifted to her many grandkids, Yuanyang is always kept in her service.

In a fit of caprice, the womanizing eldest son Jia Sheh decides in his old age to take another concubine, and the woman he sets his eyes on is Yuanyang. This is not a totally unreasonable request at its face; promoting maids to concubines is a regular occurrence, and is in fact seen as a great stroke of luck. As a concubine, Yuanyang would have a much higher status, and this rise in status would even transfer to her family living outside the mansion.

When Lady Hsing, Jia Sheh’s wife, first talks to Xifeng about the idea, Xifeng is dismissive. She points out the obvious arguments against it: that Jia Sheh is too old and the concubinage would ruin Yuanyang’s potential future; and that the Lady Dowager would never give Yuanyang up. However, when Lady Hsing insists that she’s going to do it anyway, Xifeng, always ready to change her mask, goes along with her arguments and encourages her.

Lady Hsing then heads over to tell Yuanyang the good news, describing to her the honour and prestige that will come from such a match. But Yuanyang, much to her surprise, doesn’t join in her pleasure at this prospect. She simply hangs her head, and says nothing, refusing to come along with Hsing to announce the news to the Lady Dowager.

Yuanyang’s refusal is curious. Like Baoyu and the other exceptional characters in the novel, Yuanyang doesn’t quite see the world the same way as everybody else. What to another maid would seem a wish come true — a chance for promotion, honour, and riches — to Yuanyang seems worse than a death sentence. It’s not exactly clear why, but Yuanyang has developed a distinct distaste for marriage in all forms. Jia Sheh, specifically, is not the kind of man anyone would want to be attached to, but Yuanyang is so averse to marriage that she declares she would not even marry a Heavenly Emperor.

Yuanyang doesn’t care for riches or status. She is devoted only to the Lady Dowager. In caring for her and performing the duties of her household, Yuanyang feels she has found her rightful place. It might not be what others want for her, and it might not be what they see as her “highest potential,” for her beauty and charm provide her the possibility of a good match. But Yuanyang has, maybe unconsciously, asked and answered the primary question, which is what would any of those things actually do for her happiness? Despite being honourable, a marriage to Jia Sheh would provide her with a worse day-to-day existence than doting on the old lady. She likes the Lady Dowager, and she likes her life the way it is.

In the end, it is this ability not only to recognize her own desires, but to stand up for them against the machinations of others that makes Yuanyang heroic. In the end, she appeals directly to the Lady Dowager, who had been kept in the dark about the whole thing, and declares that she will kill herself if forced to marry. This threat of suicide is basically the only real autonomy she has. And it’s, frankly, quite powerful. There’s very little one can do against an opponent who does not care whether they live or die, besides capitulate. It’s an extreme way of going about things, but Yuanyang is an extreme personality.

Yuanyang’s devotion does not go unrewarded. Not only does the Lady Dowager take her side and keep her away from Jia Sheh, but after the Lady Dowager’s death, when Yuanyang makes true on her promise to end her life alongside her mistress, Yuanyang is visited by a spirit from Heaven that, like the one that visited Baoyu in his initial dream, takes on the form of Qin Keqing. This spirit tells Yuanyang that she has been selected to take charge of the Board of Infatuation in the Illusory Land of Great Void. Yuanyang counters that she has never known passion, and is thus unfit for such a post. The spirit tells her:

“Mortals mistake carnal appetite for love, and justify their immorality by calling themselves romantics and passing it off lightly. In fact… love is latent in each one’s nature; once these feelings are expressed, then we have passion. Our love is as yet unexpressed like flowers in a bud. If once expressed, it would cease to be true love.”

There are a couple of things going on here. First, at its most basic level, Yuanyang being given a position in the Heavenly Realm is a vindication of her actions and convictions on Earth. She has repudiated the normative worldview of her time and place, and instead followed the way of Heaven. This led her to great sorrows at times, and eventually to suicide, but this only shows the inadequacy of the Earthly realm. Her death is treated as heroic and proper.

In this there is an implicit criticism of the worldviews of all those who opposed her. Jia Sheh, who wanted to turn such a lady into a miserable concubine; Lady Hsing, who simply follows Jia Sheh’s whims; and even Yuanyang’s family, who tried to push her towards the marriage for their own benefit. All of them are trying to use Yuanyang, and society has been structured such that Yuanyang is supposed to feel honoured for being used in such a way. This norm is clearly beneficial to those already with power and privilege, while ignoring the wishes of those worse-off.

Heaven, on the other hand, doesn’t work like that. Like all Heavens, the Heaven in this book represents an ideal, and a dream. In Heaven, those who act righteously are rewarded, and those who debase themselves are denied such rewards. As the author, Cao Xueqin decides who goes to Heaven and who doesn’t; thereby, we can use this metric to determine, to a certain extent, how he feels about certain aspects of the society he lives in.

Baoyu & Women

Baoyu is, in many ways, depicted as someone who is favoured by Heaven. Not only does he get to catch a glimpse of the Illusory Land during his dream, but he was also born with precious jade in his mouth, saved multiple times from death by priests and monks, and is a favourite of the Lady Dowager, who can be seen to represent a sort of childlike purity.

Thus, if we want to explore some of what Cao Xueqin wished to express with this novel, it only makes sense that we should explore Baoyu’s point of view. So, I’d like to return here at the end to Baoyu’s belief regarding married and unmarried women. It may, at first glance, appear somewhat chauvinistic, as if women are too weak or too pure to face the pressures of the outside world, that they can’t handle responsibility and shouldn’t be expected to. However, I think the matter is a bit more nuanced than that.

In a male-dominated society, especially one in which there are such strict limits regarding the autonomy of women, growing up is often the worst thing that can happen to a girl. She can be married off with no choice in the matter, to a man who has every legal right to treat them awfully with no possibility of recompense. We see this when Yingchun, Baoyu's cousin, gets married purely as a means for her father to ingratiate himself with the family of a high official. On a visit home, she reveals that her husband is a violent and abusive man who treats her terribly, and all the older women can say to her is, “Maybe he’ll calm down eventually.”

Their only true freedom, and this is only true in the case of those wealthy or high-born enough to live in a household like the Jia mansion, is during their girlhood, when they are free to cultivate their artistic sides or simply hang around with their friends. This is the time of their life when Baoyu considers them at the peak not only of womanhood, but of humanity in general.

As I mentioned in Part One, the ability of Baoyu’s sisters and female cousins to maintain a balance between maturity and immaturity, between artistic idealism and pragmatic concern, is what elevates them above him. The reason they are able to do this is because they understand their future; they understand the limits that comes with that future, and therefore cultivate a more balanced character. Obviously, this varies wildly from person to person, but even the most impulsive of the women in the Garden seem like Stoics when compared to Baoyu.

Baoyu, and all the other men in the family, don’t have to compose themselves. They don’t have to set limits on their ambitions or their desires. This freedom makes them entirely unbalanced; we see characters like Jia Sheh and Jia Lien lose themselves through womanizing and drinking, and conversely we see Jia Ching destroy himself through his obsession with Daoist elixirs and rituals. Even Baoyu’s father, Jia Cheng, pursues his career to the detriment of any sense of family life.

It’s not so much the innate characteristics of men and women that is at issue in the novel; it’s their position in society. An imbalanced society leads to an imbalanced populace: one group too free to help from destroying themselves, and the other too constrained to help from being destroyed. Baoyu’s concern isn’t that women aren’t strong enough to take care of themselves; it’s that no one, anywhere, at any time, could possibly be strong enough to live in such a world and not be adversely affected by it.

Baoyu’s ideal of the unmarried woman is the ideal of Heaven; it’s the ideal of a realm where we aren’t corrupted by the topsy-turvy material world. A realm of pleasure and art and free understanding. His sympathy comes from the tragic nature of specifically being a woman in 18th century China, but also more generally, of being a person on Earth, the tragedy being that there is no way to ensure against suffering. The girls in the Garden are offered a temporary reprieve, a temporary Eden, with its abundance of fruits and natural beauty all available without toil. But all Edens must fall. You can’t have Heaven on Earth.

Which is real? Our world, with its suffering, its inequity, its constant whirling and changing, good turning to bad and bad turning to good? Or is it Heaven, where good is good and stays good; where souls are all equally free to be themselves? Which one would you rather be real, given the choice? When you’ve experienced hardships, and realized that it’s not just you, that everyone is experiencing hardships lesser or greater than your own, why should you cling to this idea that this is the only world there is?

In the first chapter of Dream of Red Mansions, a Taoist priest sings a song while walking down the street. Another man steps toward him and asks, “What is that you just chanted? I had the impression that it was about the vanity of all things.”

The Taoist replies, “You should know that all good things in this world must end, and to make an end is good, for there is nothing good which does not end. My song is called All Good Things Must End.”

During the middle section of the novel, we see hints of the Garden’s impermanence. We see what has to go on behind the scenes to make such an Eden possible in the first place, the type of world that has to exist to prop it up. The world of the Jia family, that seemed so stable and assured, begins to lose the ground beneath its feet. Finally, we see characters begin to leave, pulled away by fate and circumstance.

In the next part, we will explore the final section of Dream of the Red Chamber. We will find that that which seems too good to be true, really is. Heartbreak and tragedy abound, but not without bittersweet moments of love and generosity. We will also explore the fact that Dream of the Red Chamber almost didn’t end at all, that the provenance of these final 40 chapters is somewhat complex, and shines a strange light on the novel as a whole. When I said at the beginning of Part One that the book was written "primarily" by Cao Xueqin, what I meant is that, despite centuries of scholarship and discussion, our understanding of exactly who wrote this ending is unclear, as well as to what extent Cao Xueqin was even involved.

To find out more about that, you’ll have to read on.

PART THREE

PROVENANCE & AUTHORSHIP

During Cao Xueqin’s lifetime, the only version of Dream of the Red Chamber to be publicly circulated was an 80-chapter version that ends abruptly with Yingchun returning to her abusive husband after an emotional visit home. The story is clearly unfinished. No one has met the fates alluded to in the initial dream, and the Jia family is only just approaching the brink of their impending collapse. While there are plenty of unfinished stories in the canon of world literature, either innately unfinishable or simply cut short by fate, it would be hard to find an example more utterly jarring than this.

We have several novels by Franz Kafka that are cut off mid-sentence during the final chapter, but in those cases, it almost makes a certain amount of sense, as if the reader is suddenly awakening from a long and arduous dream. In the case of the Dream of the Red Chamber, we would be left desperate for an ending, and thankfully, we have one. Collated and published by Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan in the decades following Cao Xueqin’s death, the 120-chapter version of the novel fulfills all the promises laid out in the earlier chapters, ending the novel finally with the return of Zhen Shih-yin, who was our introduction to the book’s world in the first place. However, the question remains: who wrote these chapters, and how?

There is much controversy on this point, as Gao and Chang’s story of how they came across their manuscript reads almost like a novel in itself. According to their prefaces, they were so enamoured by the novel that they searched far and wide for the remaining chapters, eventually happening upon unedited chunks at various book vendors, where they bought them at a high price. After gathering all their materials, the two set to work fashioning them into a complete novel, revising and editing the already existing chapters as they did so.

In the intervening centuries, much has been made of the idea that sections or the entirety of this final volume were composed by either Gao or Chang themselves, veering to greater or lesser extent from Xueqin’s initial vision. The controversy is immersed in political and historical considerations, as well as being highly interpretive due to lack of evidence. Because of the complexity of this ongoing academic discussion, combined with the fact that much of it is carried out in a language that I do not read or understand, it would be unwise for me venture too deeply into these waters.

However, I do feel it necessary to offer a few words on the topic.

There are sections of Volume III, particularly near the beginning, where it’s clear, even when reading a translated version, that they are either the work of a different author, or an unpolished rough draft of work by the author of the previous two volumes. The pacing is different, characters speak differently, and the general style is just clearly not the same. However, that does not seem to be the case for all the chapters, and, if this is in fact the work of a separate author, it is my completely unfounded belief -- or I should say, my impression -- that they are working from extensive notes or drafts left by Cao Xueqin himself, if such a man even exists.

For a book with as much foreshadowing as this one, it might seem like it would be easy for a second or third author to pick up the pieces and construct an ending, but unless done with a careful hand, it would be just as easy for such an ending to be entirely too neat and throw away much of the novel’s complexity. While these final chapters wrap up the story, they do it in the same sort of strange and ethereal way that the rest of the novel plays out. It is not neat, and yet, when we explore the ways the ending reflects and expresses the recurrent themes of the novel, it ends up feeling cohesive and whole.

There’s no way for me to know who exactly wrote Dream of the Red Chamber. I can’t even be sure that Cao Xueqin wrote the first two volumes. It’s all too murky and shrouded in historical mystery to make much sense of. All I can say is that the book that I read, translated into English in the 20th century, feels cohesive. It feels like a complete work, and I see no other option than to treat it as a complete work. To speculate on what could have been different would be to speak of an imaginary novel, a novel which none of us can read or gain anything from at all. Dream of the Red Chamber is, at this current moment, the words we have on these pages, and in my eyes, regardless of who wrote what how, it is a beautiful novel, one of the great works of world literature.

A BRIEF PERSONAL INTERLUDE

We ended Part Two with the quote from our Taoist priest: “You should know that all good things in this world must end, and to make an end is good, for there is nothing good which does not end. My song is called All Good Things Must End.”

When I first read this book, I couldn’t help but feel betrayed by this final volume, like I had been given something beautiful only to have it so cruelly snatched from my hands. I wanted my time with Baoyu and Daiyu, Baochai, Xifeng, and many others who I couldn’t even fit into this series, to last forever. I didn’t want to see bad things happen to them. I somehow convinced myself that it would all work out.

But Dream of the Red Chamber is a tragedy. This is made clear from the very beginning. And yet, it somehow pulls off the trick of telling you explicitly that it’s going to be a tragedy, and then making you hope that somehow, or in some way, it was lying. As things go from bad to worse, you read on. You read on to find out what happens next, even knowing that it’s not going to make you happy.

To explore all the misfortunes that befall all the members of the Jia family during this volume would be exhausting, and beyond the scope of this examination. I would like, instead, to focus ourselves once again primarily on Baoyu, whose actions at the end of the novel elucidate much of the novel’s integral themes.

As non-Chinese readers of Dream of the Red Chamber, divorced from the long history of scholarship regarding the novel, we end up coming at it from a different perspective, free from many of the biases that may have built up over the centuries. We are free to read the novel as literature. What we will focus on and find noteworthy will likely be quite different from what a Chinese reader might notice, and this we can turn into a strength, in the same way that a Chinese reading of any English or North American novel has the potential to shine a new light on our understanding.

Dream of the Red Chamber is a huge novel, and there are many different ways one can look at it. As far as I can tell, the primary focus of Redology — the bizarre English term for the study of this book — has been biographical, historical, and political analysis. The edition I have, published in Beijing in 1980, contains not one but two quotes from Mao Zedong in its preface. I’m not an expert in Chinese history -- just a passionate learner-- and all I know about Chinese society in the 18th century comes from novels. In Part Two, I made something approaching an attempt to place the story in its historical and cultural context, but that is the limit of my abilities in that respect.

Thus, you must forgive me for passing over many notable events from this final volume that would be considered absolutely vital to other examinations. What’s important to us here is the mere fact that things do not go well. There is little levity in the third volume of The Dream of the Red Chamber. What little levity there is is shared between reprehensible men who gamble and drink away their lives. Eventually, these men get their comeuppance, but they’re not the only ones. The Ning Mansion is seized by the Emperor for their misdeeds, Jia Sheh is arrested, Jia Zheng is disgraced, Xue Pan gets convicted of murder, and Concubine Chao gets dragged straight to Hell.

The innocence of the Grand View Garden, where Baoyu and his friends wandered around among pleasant flowers, sipping tea and writing poetry, flying kites and playing games, is also destroyed. The Garden empties, and with no one taking care of it, it becomes overgrown and is infested by evil spirits and demons. Eventually, it becomes so bad that Taoist priests are called in to perform an elaborate ritual in an attempt to purify it. Even this is not enough, as soon after the entire mansion is ransacked by bandits, who make their entrance through the gates of the Garden.

This is but a brief summary of some of the goings-on in this third volume. But we must cast all this aside, treating it only as the backdrop for the story we wish to focus on: that is, the story of Baoyu and his search for Spiritual Understanding.

RENUNCIATION I: DAIYU & XICHUN

Among all these disastrous and distressing events, the most striking and impactful element of this tragedy is the resolution of the question of whom Baoyu will marry. Lin Daiyu, the frail and sickly other-worldly poet, with whom Baoyu shares an intense spiritual connection; or Xue Baochai, whose beauty and prudence promises a happy and stable life in this world. This is not a question posed to Baoyu, for this is a world in which the parties being married don’t have much of a say in the matter. This question is instead posed to the World, and it is only fitting that the World opts for the most worldly option.

This can only come as a surprise to the most deluded of readers, a group which includes myself. As a young man who spent years clinging to his own impossible loves, piling them one atop the other until the whole world seemed impossible, I needed Daiyu and Baoyu to end up together. I needed my incessant yearnings vindicated, to be shown that, at least within the comfortable realms of fiction, such yearnings were justified. However, Dream of the Red Mansions is not about the comfortable realm of fiction; it is about the deeply uncomfortable and distressing realm that is our real Earth.

Xue Baochai is, in her own right, not someone many people would be unhappy to be married to. She is beautiful, she is intelligent, and she is capable. She not only understands literature and poetry, but also how to run a household and how to get along with other people. It is one of the great ironies of the novel that marriage to Baochai, who in any other situation would be the ideal partner, is the bad ending.

And it is tragic for her, also, because she has to be married to a man who will always see it as such. Baoyu has nothing against Baochai, but he clearly does not love her, for all he respects her. Beyond having a husband who does not love her, she has to understand that her marriage was a sham, and a trick.

First, let’s understand how this trick came about. Baoyu mysteriously loses his Jade of Spiritual Understanding, and this causes him to falls into a stupor, half-insane and barely aware of the world around him. Every word he speaks is even more nonsensical than normal, and he often zones out for hours at a time. His family can only conclude that he is deeply ill, and that something must be done to help him. Since it’s been said that a connection between Gold and Jade will bring good luck, they conclude that a marriage to Baochai, with her golden locket, will help mediate whatever evil influence is working itself on Baoyu.

However, there remains the problem of Daiyu. Xiren, Baoyu's maid, reveals to Lady Wang, Baoyu’s mother, the extent of the love between Baoyu and Daiyu, and that it’s unlikely he would willingly go along with such a match, even in his addled state. Xifeng, clever as she is, comes up with a trick. While they arrange the wedding between Baoyu and Baochai, they convince Baoyu that he is instead marrying Daiyu, a prospect which pleases him a great deal.

Upon first hearing of Baoyu losing his Jade, Daiyu wonders if this is an omen, showing that she had gotten in the way of the prophesied match between Gold and Jade. When a careless maid accidentally reveals the truth of the marriage between Baoyu and Baochai, Daiyu goes into a daze. She wanders over to Baoyu’s quarters before anyone can stop her, and in a horrifying scene, the two just sit on the bed and stare at each other, smiling and laughing, their minds completely empty, just two hollow shells enjoying each other’s company.

Daiyu was always sickly and often ill, tormented as she was by her loneliness and her lack of a home. She was kept afloat by the love and generosity of those around her, and particularly by Baoyu. Although they didn’t know how to express it to each other, they both understood each other’s love, and Daiyu was propped up by Baoyu’s constant generosity.

Knowing that this relationship they had is now gone forever; that Baoyu will never be there for her as he has in the past, kills Daiyu. She dies at the precise moment of Baoyu’s wedding, his name being the last words to escape her lips. In her final hours, she understands that she’s been betrayed, and she departs from this world, not exactly alone -- at least not wholly alone -- but without that most important presence that kept her alive all these years.

We already knew that their love was impossible; we knew it from the very beginning. But to see its impossibility emphasized so dramatically, shoved so emphatically in our face, is almost too much. It certainly seems that way to Baoyu, who once he recovers his Jade and returns to his senses, goes searching for Daiyu in another world. I will return to that scene specifically later, but for now I’d like to discuss Baoyu’s broader reaction. But to do so properly, we need to first talk about Xichun.

Xichun is Baoyu’s cousin from the Ning Household; Jia Zhen’s sister. Although she is from the other household, she grows up in the Garden alongside Baoyu, Daiyu, and all the others. She is a gifted painter, and is tasked with painting a portrait of the Gardens, which she never ends up finishing. Most importantly, Xichun is principled and strong-willed. She insists on following her ideals, and will not allow anyone to talk her out of it.

When she finds the Ning Household to be morally bankrupt, she cuts herself off from them completely in order to remain pure. This is just the first step in her search for purity. Xichun is good friends with a girl named Miaoyu, a Buddhist nun living in the Monastery on the Mansion’s grounds. This is likely the source of her belief in the corruption of the world. Over time, Xichun becomes more and more radical in her denouncement of the Worldly World; from renouncing her family specifically, she moves on to renouncing the entirety of worldly life.

When she announces her intention to shave her head and join the monastery, she is admonished for her recklessness. Not only is it a ridiculous sort of thing to throw away a life of luxury, it’s also bad for the family’s reputation for a girl of high society to lower herself in this way. Most nuns, it seems, are girls of lower class, or girls with nowhere else to go. Xichun’s family does not recognize the depth of her convictions, brought on by the calamities she’s recently experienced, particularly the sacking of the mansion by burglars, during which Miaoyu is kidnapped by bandits. This event seems to be the final nail in the coffin for Xichun’s connection to our world.

When Xichun is announcing her intention to renounce the world and become a nun, Baoyu’s utters, “How sublime!” and recites a poem:

She sees through the transience of spring.
Dark Buddhist robes replace her garments fine;
Pity this child of a wealthy house
Who now sleeps alone by the dimly lit old shrine.

This quote is taken directly from the Register of the Twelve Beauties that Baoyu read during his first dream, all the way back in Chapter Five. Back then, he was unable to connect what he was reading to anything in the real world; it was all just nonsense, and thus slipped away from his memory. Now, he is able to look at Xichun and immediately understand her fate.

RENUNCIATION II: BAOYU

This is because, ever since Daiyu’s death, Baoyu has been on his own path toward renunciation. Baoyu has always seemed to be somewhat distant from the goings on down here, treating much of life as if it was a game or a distraction from more important things. He recognized that striving in business or politics was mere vanity, but he couldn’t tie this indifference into any broader philosophical framework. Instead, he simply chased after other worldly things: namely, girls, poetry, and literature.

The first dream that Baoyu dreams in the novel is a warning. The Goddess of Disenchantment explicitly says that she was asked by Baoyu’s ancestors to steer him away from his amorous pursuits. Baoyu has clearly recognized the divine qualities of the girls around him — they are, after all, spirits descended from Heaven — but, unaware of their true nature, instead has become attached to their earthly presences, in the form of lust and passion. This is not necessarily sexual lust — the Goddess calls it a “lust of the mind” — but it is equally misplaced.

However, advice is nothing without experience. No one really believes advice, whether coming from Goddesses or their parents, until it is corroborated by their own experiences. Thus, Baoyu is unable or unwilling to follow what the Goddess says until her premonitions start to come true. One by one, the girls are swept away by their fates, and although it’s not explicitly stated, we can say that, with each one, Baoyu becomes closer and closer to True Understanding.

The death of Daiyu, the loss of Baoyu’s strongest attachment, is the shock that precipitates the final leg of Baoyu’s journey.

As the affairs of his family fall apart around him, Baoyu is paid a visit by another Baoyu. Much earlier, it was hinted that there exists another young boy named Baoyu, from a different family, who looks like an exact double of our Baoyu, and even behaves in much the same impetuous manner. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll just refer to him as Baoyu’s double.

This double makes an appearance at the Jia mansion on a visit to the capital. He has also heard of Baoyu and their supposed similarities, and wants to make his acquaintance. This excites Baoyu, who has also been enthusiastic to meet his double, even going so far as to dream about him. However, at their meeting, they don’t see as eye-to-eye as they expected.

As it turns out, Baoyu’s double has lived a much different life than Baoyu. While they shared the same irreverence and enjoyment of female company as youths, they have matured in quite different ways. Baoyu’s double has put away his youthful folly, and turned toward a responsible life, focusing on his studies in order to get a government position. He is keen to participate actively in civil life, and greatly reveres those civil servants who bring honour to their family.

Baoyu, of course, is sickened by such vulgar talk. In his eyes, his double has simply acquiesced to the pressures of his father and wider society, parroting the Confucian principles of order and honour that Baoyu continues to actively reject. Instead of coming to terms with the meaning of this rejection, like Baoyu is attempting to do, his double has, in a sense, given up and accepted them.

There is a certain irony to the names of these two characters. Of course, they’re both named Baoyu, but our Baoyu is Jia Baoyu, while his double is named Zhen Baoyu. As mentioned in Part One, Jia is a homophone for “false,” while Zhen is a homophone for “true.” Zhen Baoyu is the type of Baoyu we are more likely to come across in our daily life; he is more attuned to what society in general considers “true,” whereas Jia Baoyu, our Baoyu, recognizes these principles as “false” or misleading.

Regardless, we see during this conversation that whatever maturity Baoyu is going to attain by the end of the novel is not going to adhere to whatever common notions we may have of the word. Baoyu is as vehemently opposed to this sort of maturity now as he was as a child. He’s looking for some other way; some other sense of meaning.

He attains this when his Jade of Spiritual Understanding is finally returned to him. A monk mysteriously appears at the mansion, declaring that he will return the Jade in exchange for a large sum of money. At the time, Baoyu is once again bed-ridden, still not quite recovered from the mental and physical illness that has been tormenting him since the Jade was first lost.

Upon the Jade being returned, Baoyu falls into his final dream. In it, Baoyu is once more transported to the Illusory Land of Great Void, now known as the Happy Land of Truth. This name-change is joined with a new couplet:

When false gives way to true, true surpasses false
Though nothingness exists, being differs from nothingness

Now, it seems that what was once false is now true, in that the Illusory Land is now the Land of Truth. The dreamworld, which seemed false at first, has now been revealed as the true world. Here, Baoyu runs into many of the women who have passed away throughout the story: Yuanyang, Daiyu, and even Qin Keqing from his first dream. However, none of them recognize him. They look like the people he knew, but they’re somehow different.

Once again, he comes across the Register of the Twelve Beauties, and begins to read. Now, he is able to recognize that all these premonitions were tied to women from his family, and all of them have either come true or are in the midst of coming true. This is the meaning of the Illusory Land becoming the Land of Truth. It only seemed illusory because Baoyu was so attached to the material world; now that his attachments are being severed, he is able to understand this Heavenly realm as the truth. As the monk says at the end of the dream, “All earthly ties of affection are bewitchments.”

Baoyu at this point recognizes that what he was after all this time wasn’t girls, but what the girls represent. He sees that the women of his family, who he knew on Earth as individuals, were but manifestations of something more eternal. This is why the women in Heaven look like the girls he knew, but don’t have any of the individual emotions or attachments that they had on Earth — thus, they don’t recognize Baoyu, being still in his mortal state. Each represents a certain form of love and beauty, but this love and beauty can only reside in Heaven; as we have seen, on Earth it is either destroyed or corrupted.

After this dream, Baoyu loses his attachment to girls. We witness a conversation in which a newer maid laments the fact that she had deliberately tried to enter Baoyu’s service after hearing how nice he was to girls, only to find that he doesn’t even look at her. In fact, he’s stopped joking around with Xiren and all the others as well.

The monk returns, and Baoyu and him have a conversation which we only witness through snippets relayed by a page to Lady Wang, which include the phrases “Blue Ridge Peak” and “Land of Great Void”. From this, we can tell that the monk has revealed to Baoyu the origin of the Jade of Spiritual Understanding, and the nature of the story itself. At this point, Baoyu understands precisely the nature of the relationship between the material and the divine world. This is, in essence, the goal of all attempts at religious understanding. Thus, we could say that after this conversation, Baoyu has reached enlightenment.

It’s interesting that Baoyu’s story doesn’t end here. It would make a certain amount of sense for Baoyu to simply renounce the world at this exact moment. If this were the case, then our take-away from Baoyu’s story would be that this world is false, and the other world is true. This would, of course, negate much of the impact of the story — we have to remember that Baoyu, while the main character, is but one of many characters. Such an ending would encourage a sort of solipsism that prevents any real understanding.

Instead, Baoyu sticks around, and it is what happens after he sticks around that I think sheds the most light on this novel’s philosophical outlook.

When we next see Baoyu, he is sitting in his study reading the Zhuangzhi, a foundational Daoist text. Specifically, he is reading the chapter Autumn Floods. In this chapter, the spiritual guardian of the He River travels to the North Sea, and realizes that the river he prides himself over so much, is as nothing compared to the grandness of the Ocean. The lord of the Northern Sea tells him, “A frog in a well cannot be talked with about the sea -- he is confined to the limits of his hole. An insect of the summer cannot be talked with about ice -- it knows nothing beyond its own season.”

However, the lord of the North Sea then tells the guardian of the He River that, despite the immensity of the Sea which he lords over, he doesn’t think too highly of himself, because he recognizes that compared to the Heaven and Earth, this Sea is as minuscule as the He River when compared to the North Sea. He goes on to say that scale doesn’t mean anything; that the smallest and the greatest things are not of lesser or greater importance, but all have their own qualities that can’t be compared.

The point here is that one shouldn’t dwell too much on matters of perspective, on what appears more or less important, but should equally value all things. One should not overly pride one’s self what one has or does, nor should one overly denigrate others for what they have or do. He says,

“While [a great man] does not strive after property and wealth, he does not plume himself on declining them; while he does not borrow the help of others to accomplish his affairs, he does not plume himself on supporting himself by his own strength, nor does he despise those who in their greed do what is mean.”

He ends by saying: “following and honouring Heaven and taking no account of Earth; it is like following and honouring the Yin and taking no account of the Yang.”

I dwell on this so extensively because all of these sentiments are vital to understanding what Baoyu chooses to do next. His wife Baochai comes in and finds him reading the book. Baochai, who represents the worldly, tries to convince Baoyu that true wisdom is to be found in participating in the government and helping the people, rather than renouncing the world and becoming a hermit. She argues that hermits are those who run away from declining governments, but that in Baoyu’s time, “We live under a sage emperor, [and] our family is deeply indebted to the State.” She then says,

“Since your childhood, you’ve been treasured by the old lady while she was alive and by your parents… My advice to you is to take a grip on yourself and study hard; because if you can pass the… examination, even if you stop at that, you’ll be paying back your debt of gratitude for your sovereign’s favour and your ancestor’s virtue.”

Baochai’s argument here is based on Confucian values: filial piety and a respect for benevolent authority, both of which carry with them certain responsibilities towards one’s elders and superiors. And there’s really no sense here in which Baochai is incorrect. It is good to try to use one’s learning to help others, especially when one has been helped so much. The emphasis here is on good government and a good upbringing; if Baoyu lived in despotic times, or in a disrespectful family, his responsibilities would be different.

Interestingly, Baoyu actually listens to Baochai here, and agrees with what she’s said. Particularly the part about repaying his debts to his family. And so, Baoyu begins to study in earnest for the examination, even going so far as to burn all his books about Daoism and Zen Buddhism. However, Baochai overhears him chanting as they burn,

“Buddha’s nature is not to be found in sacred canons
The fairy barque sails beyond the realm of alchemy”

On the day of the examination, when taking leave of his family, Baoyu kowtows to his mother and says, “I can never repay the mother who gave birth to me. But I shall do as well as I can in the examination, to obtain a good […] degree and make you happy […]Then, I shall have done my duty as a son and atoned for all my faults.”

We can see that Baoyu has not had a change of heart. He is not undertaking the examination in the hopes of achieving a government position and supporting his family, because he has not made the simple turn-around that Zhen Baoyu, his double, made in suddenly coming to revere such worldly things. What he is doing, instead, is preparing himself for his final renunciation by tying up his loose ends here on Earth.

He is not “following Heaven and taking no account of the Earth;” instead, he has recognized that both Heaven and Earth have their own qualities, and that if Heaven was enough in itself, there’d be no reason for an Earth at all. The reason we are brought down here is to attain virtue by learning how to achieve goodness even in the face of suffering and evil. In the novel’s frame story, the priest speaks of the Vermillion Pearl Plant, aka Daiyu, repaying her debt of gratitude to Shen Ying, aka Baoyu, by shedding as many tears as she can in a lifetime. Clearly, this idea of repaying kindness in some manner or another is part of Heavenly Virtue.

Baoyu has been raised and doted on by his family. His erratic behaviour has been accepted and tolerated, for the most part. He has been given love unconditionally, and, even when they were acting against his wishes, his family were acting in accord with what they they thought was his best interest. Therefore, Baoyu recognizes that he needs to do something in return, to put their interests first for once, and he does so by undertaking the mostly symbolic act of going through and passing the examinations, even knowing that he has no intention of using this new status for anything.

After he passes the examination with honours, and is even recognized by the Emperor himself, Baoyu disappears. We last see him, accompanied by the Taoist priest and Buddhist monk from the novel’s beginning, appearing before his father, who is returning home from burying the Lady Dowager, as well as Daiyu, in their ancestral graveyard. At first, his father doesn’t recognize him with his shaved head and bare feet. As Baoyu kowtows to him, his father finally understands what is happening. Before the two can share any words, the priest and monk tell Baoyu that he has fulfilled his worldly obligations, and that they may now depart.

Unlike Xichun, who is repulsed by her family’s sins, Baoyu does not choose to renounce the world out of anger. In fact, his final acts are indicative of the love he still feels for his family, a love not based on mere attachment or fear but a love that is willing to let go. A love that is outside of, or beyond this world; the love of a man who recognizes that it’s his time to leave.

Optimism or Pessimism?

At the end, Baoyu has fulfilled the will of both Heaven and Earth, and in this way proven that our attempt to distinguish which is True and which is False has all been folly. They are both equally true, but true in different ways. Cao Xueqin uses this binary distinction of Truth or Falsehood to show the inadequacy of separating such poles. In our logic, something can not possibly be True and False at the same time; however, the teachings of Daoism, with the symbol of the Yin and Yang, show that such a binary is truly impossible. Through paradox, misdirection, and irony, Xueqin attempts to show us that the true and the false are part of one another.

This book is not cruel for cruelty’s sake, and it does not delight in exposing the evils of the world. Yes, it is a book about suffering, and it’s a book about being born into a world that differs greatly from our ideals, a world of heartbreak and anguish. It is a world where both the evil and the good are punished, where even the protection of the powerful is not enough. The Jia family have the favour of the Emperor; wealth and status; access to the greatest knowledge and the most exciting entertainment, but they can not escape this suffering.

However, Dream of the Red Mansions offers us a light, and it does so through the means of religion, and through metaphysics. It does so by accepting that this suffering is but one part, and that to focus on it exclusively is to become imbalanced and to ignore much of human existence. The innocent frivolity of the novel’s first volume is not erased by the tragedies of the final volume. The novel is atemporal; we, as the reader, can always return to that time. It will always be a part of our world.

This is the Heavenly, the Divine. The Eternal Good.

The poetry meetings that the young Jia women hold in the first half of the book are more than fun parties; they are an opportunity for the children of the Garden to reach higher, to participate in something beyond themselves. The style of poetry they write is heavily indebted to the past; the structures, the rhymes, and even the images are pulled straight from earlier canonical works. This is in a certain sense a hearkening for the past, an idea that that which is ancient is somehow better or more pure. However, beneath this, or hidden within this, is an acknowledgement that these traditions need never die; that the world the Jia family inhabits is that same world that the ancient poets lived in. Baochai and Daiyu, two teenage girls, can write poetry in which they communicate directly with poets from hundreds of years prior.

This connection through time jumps over all the events and misfortunes of all those people who lived all their lives in between. Thus, the Garden never dies; it passes away in one place, at one time, and reappears in another place, during another time. The girls themselves: their intelligence, their artistry, and their innocence, also never pass. These girls are Earthly representations of eternal spirits. They are emanations of all that we value, such as love and beauty, but also that which comes along with love and beauty: yearning and loss.

We can not make the mistake of considering only the evil real, and not the good. Although the events of the book primarily run in a negative direction, with things turning from good to bad to worse, we must remember that the good does not simply disappear when it leaves a certain time or a certain place. It always returns. That’s the nature of the Illusory Land of Great Void, aka the Holy Land of Truth; it is the eternal place where the good resides, from where it can enter our world at any time, and in any place. Thus, it can’t be destroyed, and in fact, it might even outlive our topsy-turvy material world.

The nature of Heaven and Hell in Dream of Red Mansions is not necessarily the same as our popular idea. After Daiyu’s death, Baoyu slips into a dream, where he meets a spirit on its way to Hell. He’s looking for Daiyu, trying to find some way to be with her again. He is still constrained by his attachments to the material world, in the form of individuals. The spirit tells Baoyu that Daiyu is gone; that after death, human souls cease to have form, and thus can’t be found like they can on Earth.

Baoyu asks the spirit how, if this is the case, Hell can exist. The spirit tells him that it doesn’t, really. It is a dream cooked up by people to scare each other into being good. Hell only exists for those who believe in it. He says that the only way for Baoyu to see Daiyu again is to cultivate virtue and reach Heaven.

Now, Baoyu doesn’t question this assertion at the time because the spirit follows up this statement by throwing a rock at his face, but it’s clear that the same argument made here against Hell could also easily apply to Heaven. If spirits dissipate after death and have no form, how can Baoyu and Daiyu possibly meet again, even in Heaven?

Later in the story, Baoyu has another dream in which he returns to the Illusory Land of Great Void, now also known as the Happy Land of Truth. He runs into many characters he knows, but they all insist that they’ve never met him, and that the names he knows them by are not their true names. He sees Yuanyang, Ching-wen, and Yingchun, and he even sees Qin Keqing, just like in his first dream all the way back in Chapter 5. What this reveals to us is that Qin Keqing, along with all the other girls in the mansion are embodiments of some Spirit, and that they represent some form or some aspect of love and suffering. The Twelve Beauties of Qinling that Baoyu reads about in the register are their archetypes; on Earth, they take the form of individuals with individual characteristics, but in Heaven, they are simply Ideas.

This has much in common with Western conceptions of eternal Ideas, such as Plato’s, where each object on earth, such as a flower, is but an imperfect representation of some ideal of flower-ness that exists in some immaterial realm. The point of these sorts of metaphysical conceptions is to develop an understanding of the abstract and the way it relates to the particular.

In Dream of the Red Chamber, specifically, its metaphysics is key to understanding whether the book is fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic in its depiction of human suffering. If the story was only its material elements; i.e. the sufferings of the Jia family and those around them, then the outlook would be almost unrelentingly pessimistic. It would be a story of childlike innocence being crushed by the so-called Real World.

However, our brief glimpses into the Heavenly Realm — which, just by the way, importantly can’t be written off as a delusion or dream of Baoyu’s, since it is witnessed by multiple characters in the book — offer an alternative way of looking at reality; a way that elevates us above the material. Love and beauty are eternal; whereas cruelty, greed, and torment are worldly, and therefore impermanent. This is crucially important for our reading of the novel; without this aspect, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by the tribulations and the suffering.

We must remember the love and joy: the friendship between Granny Liu and the Lady Dowager, and between Baochai and Daiyu; the loyalty of Yuanyang; the carefree generosity of Baoyu; the poetry meetings where the family bond over expressions of beauty; among much, much more. These are in no way negated by disappearing with time, as their individual manifestations pass away. We must remember that, in a way, these moments last forever. In the book, they last forever in Heaven, but you don’t have to believe this Heaven literally exists to recognize what the book is trying to tell us: which is that nothing can destroy Love and Beauty, not even the confusion and chaos of our world. Not even hatred and cruelty and pure random misfortune. Love and beauty are always present, in some sense, always ready to be reborn into this world. And knowing this, we can face with new strength whatever suffering and confusion may await us in this topsy-turvy world.

CONCLUSION

All good things in this world must end, and to make an end is good, for there is nothing good which does not end. And this essay is no exception.

I have attempted, over the course of this essay, to explain, as far as my ability allows, Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. There is much that I don’t understand about the book, and there is much that I had to ignore in order to keep this series at least somewhat focused. But what I hope to have done is to either introduce the book to you if you didn’t know about it before, or offer some new ways of thinking about it if you have already read it. While re-reading the book and working on this series, I developed an appreciation for this novel that dwarves even the high, high estimation I had of it after my first reading.

I understand the reasons why this book might often be overlooked by Western audiences. There is the issue of translation, which is more significant when it comes to languages as disparate as Chinese and most European languages. There is the issue of cultural understanding; there are relationships and beliefs in this novel that won’t immediately make sense to someone unfamiliar with Chinese culture. However, this latter “issue” is also an opportunity to learn, and if you make an effort to understand the characters as people, the other elements will fall into place eventually.

This book, like all works of literature that we like to call Great, or Classic, delves into human life in a way that is equally personal and universal. It introduces us to characters that we love because they are unique, and yet understand because they are just like us. Their way of life may be foreign and strange, and their relationships determined by traditions that are unfamiliar, but at the same time, we can recognize what they’re feeling: we’ve been in love, we’ve been hurt, we’ve lost people, we’ve suffered, we’ve laughed with our friends, we’ve told each other stupid jokes or had stupid misunderstandings, we’ve been afraid and we’ve been comforted.

What this book offers as well is a way of conceptualizing these myriad emotions; a philosophy that allows us to reconcile ourselves to the changing tides of joy and suffering, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. It does not offer us a simple answer, or a simple explanation, but instead merely offers a hint, and leaves us to come to our own conclusions.