Two pillars
Scholars who argue that The Red Chamber Dream is a self-expressive novel usually take pains to point out similarities between the author and the main protagonist Jiǎ Bǎoyù 賈寶玉.[1] Characters with whom it is less easy to feel sympathy, like Wáng Xīfèng 王熙鳳, are usually not thought to reflect the author’s (or anybody’s) self. Such an approach, however, is psychologically problematic. This chapter sees Bǎoyù and Xīfèng as two pillars around which the narrative of The Red Chamber Dream revolves and evolves, and looks at how the complex interplay between them provides a ground for self-expression and self-reflection. These two pillars constitute a complex psychological structure by which the novel explores a muliplicity of themes relating to love on the one hand and aggression on the other.
Beyond tears
In the first chapter of The Red Chamber Dream, the author describes his novel as an expression of his “hot and bitter tears” 一把辛酸淚. Commentators who were close to the author also see the novel this way, as in the following Red Inkstone 脂硯齋 commentary from the 1754 甲戌 edition:
Each time one closes this book without quite being able to bring oneself to read on and finish, the author must at this point have been weeping tears as big as beans.
每閱此本掩卷者，一有八九不忍下閱看完，想作者此時淚下如豆矣。
Chén Qìnghào 1986:514
One and a half century later, the late Qing scholar and novelist Liú È 劉鄂 also sees The Red Chamber Dream as giving expression to the author’s tearful feelings:
Cáo Xuěqín put his weeping into the Red Chamber Dream.
曹雪芹寄哭泣於《紅樓夢》。
Lǎo Cán yoújì 老殘遊記, author’s preface, p. 2.
This view acquired new relevance in 1921, when Hú Shì 胡適 argued that “The Red Chamber Dream is Cáo Xuěqín’s autobiography”,[2] and that “Zhen Bǎoyù and Jiǎ Bǎoyù are representations of the author himself”.[3] The fictional tragedy of The Red Chamber Dream was, according to Hú, a direct reflection of the real tragedy encountered by its author. Hú’s research laid the foundation for an enormous amount of immensely detailed scholarship on the relationship between the author and the novel. Although scholars today have widely diverging opinions concerning the extent to which The Red Chamber Dream is autobiographical, few scholars doubt that it contains substantial autobiographical elements.[4] This lends additional support to the idea that the tears of the novel are the tears of the author. The Red Chamber Dream, therefore, is often read as an authentic expression of the author’s heartfelt feelings of grief and sorrow, in line with heritage from The Songs of Chǔ and the late Ming cult of qíng.
However, a study of the expressive nature of The Red Chamber Dream must go beyond traditional Chinese ideas and ideals of literary expressiveness. Tears are not the only emotional expressions found in this novel, and they are hardly more authentic than the emotions associated with, for instance, Wáng Xīfèng’s lust for power or the sexual desires of Jiǎ Shè 賈赦, Jiǎ Zhēn 賈珍, Jiǎ Róng 賈蓉, Jiǎ Liǎn 賈璉 and Xuē Pán 薛蟠. As discussed in chapter 2, both sympathetic and less sympathetic characters belong to the same psychological universe.
In fact, the tendency to split the psychological world of The Red Chamber Dream in two is more pronounced in critics of the novel than in the novel itself. It has been reinforced by the idea that the lyrical descriptions of youthful innocence in the garden belong to late layers in a writing process that started with the much more direct descriptions of sex and violence in a draft called The Precious Mirror of Love 風月寶鑒.[5] Many scholars argue that the Prospect Garden chapters represent Cáo Xuěqín’s final artistic vision, while the so-called Precious Mirror chapters are but remnants of an earlier and less mature stage in the writing process. By assigning the lyrical emotionality of Bǎoyù on the one hand and the lust for power of Xīfèng and the sexual desires of many male characters to different stages in the writing process, however, one fails to see the complex and fascinating relationship between the two in the novel as it was left to us by the actual author.
If we move our focus from the feelings of the author to those of the reader, the novel’s moral indignation at improper behaviour provides not only the author, but also the reader with a permissible outlet for forbidden impulses. In this, The Red Chamber Dream is hardly unique. Rather, it belongs to a long series of semi-moralistic fiction with a strong focus on the spicy details of illicit behaviour, with Jīn Píng Méi 金瓶梅 as the most famous example. As argued in chapter 2, however, The Red Chamber Dream is unusual in the ways it manipulates the balance between sympathy and antipathy in a way that challenges the boundaries between points of identification and objects of projection. By making most characters ambiguous with regard to this distinction, by using an unreliable narrator whose sympathies and antipathies do not always conform to the text as a whole, and by creating intimate structural relations between characters that inspire sympathy and characters that provoke antipathy, the novel blurs the relation between its areas of sympathy and antipathy. This is one of the features that set The Red Chamber Dream apart from its predecessors in the history of Chinese fiction.
Psychologically speaking, characters (or aspects of characters) that inspire sympathy function as points of identification, while the ones that provoke antipathy function as objects of projection. The ambiguities regarding sympathy and antipathy so typical of The Red Chamber Dream provide bridges between these two areas. Strongly ambiguous characters like Wáng Xīfèng as well as sympathetic characters that are clearly related to less sympathetic ones, such as Jiǎ Bǎoyù, blur the distinctions and invite the reader to renegotiate the balance between sympathy and antipathy, between identification and projection.
From what has been said above, it is clear that Wáng Xīfèng is an important transitional character, providing some of the bridges between areas of sympathy and antipathy. So is, in a different way, Jiǎ Bǎoyù. The close structural relation between these two characters has been pointed out by several scholars during the past decade or two. In the following, I will look at this relation in some detail, in order to establish its thematic implications.
Beyond triangular love
First, we need to establish Wáng Xīfèng’s role as a central character within the novel. An understanding of her centrality is often hampered by a romantic view of The Red Chamber Dream as a story of the tragic triangular love relationship between Jiǎ Bǎoyù and his two female cousins Lín Dàiyù 林黛玉 and Xuē Bǎochāi 薛寶釵. These three, especially Bǎoyù and Dàiyù, are seen as the main protagonists.
In addition to a general tendency among the reading public to romanticise, this view is strongly influenced by the tear-dripping description of Dàiyù’s tragic death at the very same moment as Bǎoyù is tricked into marrying Bǎochāi in chapter 97. In the following, however, I will base my argumentation on the first 80 chapters of the novel, which can for the most part be reliably attributed to Cáo Xuěqín, as well as the little we know about drafts from Cáo Xuěqín’s hand to later chapters. While these drafts also let Dàiyù die and make Bǎoyù marry Bǎochāi, we have little inkling of exactly how this happens, and of the centrality of the triangular love relation after chapter 80.
The Red Chamber Dream is, anyway, much more than a triangular love story. In sheer numbers, Hú Wénwěi (1995:14ff.) has calculated that direct descriptions of the love relation between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù account for only ten percent of the novel, while passages without any reference to their love relation account for 80 percent. Luó Shūhuá (1998a:306) points out that direct descriptions of the love relation between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù are mainly concentrated in chapters 17-36, and Zhōu Sīyuán (1998) shows that the triangular love relation is not a central motif at all after chapter 45.
While there is no doubt that Jiǎ Bǎoyù is the main character of the novel,[6] there is good reason to doubt the common assumption that Lín Dàiyù is number two, and to argue that this place is in fact occupied by Wáng Xīfèng. Hú Wénwěi (1995) has calculated that 23 percent of the novel contains direct descriptions of Wáng Xīfèng, while only 20 percent of the novel contains direct descriptions of Lín Dàiyù, which fits well with the fact that Xīfèng’s various names[7] occur altogether 1319 times, while Dàiyù’s names[8] occur 1100 times in the relevant 80 chapters of the novel. Zhōu Wǔchún (1997:226f.) finds that 44 chapters have a text of more than 500 characters concerning Xīfèng, as opposed to only 37 chapters concerning Dàiyù. Zhōu Sīyuán (1998) points out that after chapter 45, Lín Dàiyù is in fact a quite peripheral character, and even Jiǎ Bǎoyù is much less central than Wáng Xīfèng.
More important than quantitative comparisons is the fact that Wáng Xīfèng is a highly autonomous character, whose role is in no way subordinated to that of Jiǎ Bǎoyù. She often acts as the main character in passages where Bǎoyù is peripheral or absent, or even in passages where he is present but less central, and she is clearly a driving force behind the progression of the narrative. As a character, she stands out as the one who shows the clearest development in the course of the novel, from a self-assured and power-oriented character to a fearful person with deteriorating health and diminishing power, and with an increasing propensity for self-reflection. In contrast, Dàiyù is largely a satellite circling around Bǎoyù. She plays virtually no independent role in bringing the narrative forward, and she hardly develops at all as a character. Her autonomy as a character is restricted to a few lyrical – and admittedly unforgettable – passages, such as her burial of flowers, or her reading of the Mǔdān tíng 牡丹亭. Apart from such passages, her relative centrality in the novel derives from her emotional intimacy and locational proximity to Bǎoyù.
Even the fact that Lín Dàiyù is our first window into Róngguó House 榮國府 in chapter 3 does not attest to her importance any more than the highly peripheral character Lěng Zǐxīng’s 冷子興 introduction to the Jiǎ family tree in chapter 2 attests to his importance. Like Lěng Zǐxīng, Lín Dàiyù provides a suitable window onto the Jiǎ family exactly because she comes in from the periphery, although unlike Lěng Zǐxīng, she is at the same time brought into the centre herself.
Dù Jǐnghuá (1982:17) shows how many of the numerous passages that do not make sense as parts of a triangular love story in fact have Wáng Xīfèng as their central character, such as the stories of Jiǎ Ruì 賈瑞, of Qín Kěqīng’s 秦可卿 funeral, of Xīfèng’s birthday, and of the Yóu 尤 sisters.
The Red Inkstone commentary is quite clear about Wáng Xīfèng’s central role in the novel:
Although on paper there may be a chapter or two in which one is not able to write about ? Fèng, ? Fèng will still be there with her busy hands and her busy mind.
紙上雖一回兩回中或有不能寫到阿鳳之事，然亦有阿鳳在彼處手忙心忙矣.
Chén Qìnghào 1986:170, 1754 edition
According to Angelina Yee (1986:33), Xīfèng “enjoys a unique status in the novel”, since unlike her “all the [other] major characters are seen and indeed illuminated in relation to the hero [Bǎoyù]”. In particular, the girls in the garden are clearly subordinate to Bǎoyù, while this is never the case with Wáng Xīfèng.
Two pillars
Dù Jǐnghuá (1982:16f.) has concluded that Wáng Xīfèng and Jiǎ Bǎoyù stand at the centre of two parallel lines of narrative. To a large extent, he argues, passages describing Wáng Xīfèng and passages describing Bǎoyù’s relation to Dàiyù and Bǎochāi alternate with each other, so that the novel develops simultaneously along two separate axes, one dominated by Wáng Xīfèng and the other by Jiǎ Bǎoyù. They are the two main protagonists of the novel, the two pillars around which the narrative revolves and evolves.
The fact that Wáng Xīfèng is a more autonomous character than any of the girls in the garden, however, does not mean that the relationship between her and Jiǎ Bǎoyù is not also extremely close and of great structural and symbolic importance. Their two parallel lines of narrative are often intertwined, at times even merging into one. In contrast to the subordinate relation between the girls and Bǎoyù, however, the relation between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù is much more symmetrical. They have many essential features in common, but they also often appear as antitheses in contrast with each other—much like a pair in binary opposition.
It must be admitted, though, that these two main protagonists are not quite on an equal footing. The symmetry is at times heavily tilted in Bǎoyù’s direction, who is clearly the single most central person in the novel. For instance, Bǎoyù’s various names[9] are mentioned more than twice as often as Xīfèng’s, altogether more than 2700 times. In the relevant 80 chapters of the novel, only two chapters fail to mention Bǎoyù (chapters 4 and 68), while eight chapters fail to mention Xīfèng (chapters 1, 2, 17, 26, 37, 48 and 80). These figures, as well as more qualitative differences between the two, show that the symmetry between the two is by no means perfect.
But this is exactly the way pairs, doubles, symmetries, parallels, opposites, echoes, mirror images, and counterpoise tend to work in The Red Chamber Dream. Nothing fits exactly, and no one character, thing or event corresponds exactly to any other character, thing or event. For instance, the symmetry between Dàiyù and Bǎochāi is heavily tilted in Dàiyù’s direction, and the symmetry between Róngguó House and Níngguó House 寧國府 is heavily tilted in the direction of Róngguó. The relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is just one of numerous examples of tilted parallelism, of skewed symmetries.
Two arrivals
The symmetry between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is evident from the very first presentation of the Jiǎ 賈 family in chapter 2. The first part of Lěng Zǐxīng’s presentation of the family tree is brought to a halt when he and Jiǎ Yǔcūn begin to discuss at considerable length the qualities of Jiǎ Bǎoyù. The second part of his presentation is brought to an end after a short, but vivid presentation of the qualities of Wáng Xīfèng.[10] By letting both characters conclude one part of the presentation, they are both structurally highlighted. Such structural parallelism is one of the means employed to underline the symmetric relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. By elaborating much more on the description of Bǎoyù than that of Xīfèng, the tiltedness of the symmetry is made clear.
In chapter 3, which for the first time brings us, through the eyes of Lín Dàiyù, into direct contact with the Jiǎ family, the paired structural highlighting of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is brought a good step further. The relevant part of the chapter is effectively divided into two: the parts before and after Dàiyù’s short visit to Jiǎ Shè’s quarters. The first of these parts is dominated by her meeting with Wáng Xīfèng, while the second part is dominated by her meeting with Jiǎ Bǎoyù.[11]
A number of small details link these two characters together.[12]
First, both arrive late and are thus singled out for special treatment. The Red Inkstone commentary says about Xīfèng’s late arrival:
Xīfèng alone is given special emphasis.
特獨出熙鳳一人。
Chén Qìnghào 1986:66, 1754 edition
And when Bǎoyù arrives late too, it comments:
[His arrival] mirrors the arrival of Afeng [= Xīfèng] without breaking with it.
與阿鳳之來相映而不相犯。
Chén Qìnghào 1986:81, 1754 edition
The latecoming of these two characters is noteworthy in several respects. As Red Inkstone noted, it gives special emphasis to both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù and thereby to the relation between them (structural parallelism). It also provides an occasion for the juxtaposition of two similar storylines, and such narrative parallelism also serves to forge the relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. In addition, as we shall see, the fact that both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù arrive late also contributes to the characterisation of both of them. It fits well with a personality trait they share: the disregard for rules of propriety (characterisational parallelism).
Second, Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are also singled out as the only persons of whom we are told that Dàiyù has heard her mother talk:
[Although Dàiyù did not know her], she remembered having heard her mother say that her elder uncle, Uncle Shè, had a son called Jiǎ Liǎn who was married to the niece of her Uncle Zhèng’s wife, Lady Wáng. She had been brought up from earliest childhood just like a boy, and had acquired in the schoolroom the … name of Wáng Xīfèng.
黛玉雖不識，也曾聽見母親說過，大舅賈赦之子賈璉，娶的就是二舅母王氏之內侄女，自幼假充男兒教養的，學名王熙鳳。
Dàiyù had long ago been told by her mother that she had a boy cousin who was born with a piece of jade in his mouth and who was exceptionally wild and naughty. He hated study and liked to spend all his time in the women’s apartments with the girls; but because Grandmother Jiǎ doted on him so much, no one ever dared to correct him.
黛玉亦常聽得母親說過，二舅母生的有個表兄，乃銜玉而誕，頑劣異常，極惡讀書，最喜在內幃廝混，外祖母又極溺愛，無人敢管。
Note the character-by-character correspondence between the introductory phrases:
也曾聽見母親說過
亦常聽得母親說過
Again and again, we shall see that in addition to narrative parallelism, such linguistic parallelism is used as a means to forge the structural relation between these two characters.
Third, both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are heard before they are seen:
She had scarcely finished speaking when someone could be heard talking and laughing in a very loud voice in the inner courtyard behind them.
一語未了，只聽後院中有人笑聲??
While they were speaking, a flurry of footsteps could be heard outside …”
一語未了，只聽外面一陣腳步響??
And in both cases, the sound of the arriving person prompts Dàiyù to think about them before actually seeing them:
Even as she wondered, a … woman entered from the room behind the one they were sitting in, surrounded by a bevy of serving women and maids.
心下想時，只見一群媳婦丫鬟圍擁著一個人從後房門進來。
Even as she wondered, and before the maids had finished announcing him, a young gentleman came rushing in … (my translation)
心中想著，忽見丫鬟話未報完，已進來了一位年輕的公子??
Again, the almost character-by-character correspondence of the introductory phrases is remarkable. Narrative parallelism is reinforced by linguistic parallelism. Note also that both persons are accompanied by or announced by maidservants.
Fourth, the clothing and appearance of both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are given extensive descriptions, in contrast to the short descriptions of the three girls Yíngchūn 迎春, Tànchūn 探春 and Xíchūn 惜春 and the lack of descriptions of the remaining characters.[13] The following is the description of Xīfèng:
Her chignon was enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls.
It was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains.
Her necklet was of red gold in the form of a coiling dragon.
Her dress had a fitted bodice and was made of dark red silk damask with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in raised gold thread.
Her jacket was lined with ermine. It was of a slate-blue stuff with woven insets in coloured silks.
her under-skirt was of a turquoise-coloured imported silk crêpe emboridered with flowers.
[She had, moreover,]
eyes like a painted phoenix,
eyebrows like willow-leaves,
a slender form,
seductive grace;
the ever-smiling summer face
of hidden thunders showed no trace;
the ever-bubbling laughter started
almost before the lips were parted.
頭上戴著金絲八寶攢珠髻，
綰著朝陽五鳳挂珠釵，
項上戴著赤金盤螭瓔珞圈；
裙邊繫著豆綠宮條，雙衡比目玫瑰佩，
身上穿著縷金百蝶穿花大紅洋緞窄褙襖，
外罩五彩刻絲石青銀鼠褂；
下著翡翠撒花洋縐裙。
一雙丹鳳三角眼，
兩彎柳葉吊梢眉，
身量苗條，
體格風騷，
粉面含春威不露，
丹唇未啟笑先聞。
And the following is the description of Bǎoyù:
[He] had a small jewel-encrusted gold coronet on the top of his head
and a golden headband low down over his brow in the form of two dragons playing wit a large pearl.
He was wearing a narow-sleeved, full-skirted robe of dark red material with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in two shades of gold.
It was confined at the waist with a court girlde of coloured silks braided at regular intervals into elaborate clusters of knotwork and terminating in long tassels.
Over the upper part of his robe he wore a jacket of slate-blue Japanese silk damask with a raised pattern of eight large medallions on the front and with tasselled borders.
On his feet he had half-length dress boots of black satin with thick white soles.
[As to his person, he had:]
a face like the moon of Mid-Autumn,
a complexion like flowers at dawn,
a hairline straight as a knife-cut,
eyebrows that might have been painted by an artist’s brush,
a shapely nose, and
eyes clear as limpid pools,
that even in anger seemed to smile,
and, as they glared, beamed tenderness the while.
頭上戴著束髮嵌寶紫金冠，
齊眉勒著二龍搶珠金抹額，
穿一件二色金百蝶穿花大紅箭袖，
束著五彩絲攢花結長穗宮條，
外罩石青起花八團倭緞排穗褂；
登著青緞粉底小朝靴。
面若中秋之月，
色如春曉之花，
鬢若刀裁，
眉如墨畫，
面如桃瓣，
目若秋波。
雖怒時而若笑，
即瞋視而有情。
In both cases, the descriptions begin with semi-parallel lines describing clothing, continue with fully parallel lines describing bodily and especially facial traits, and end up with a pair of parallel lines indicating traits that more or less directly reveal their personalities.[14] This mixture of structural, linguistic and characterisational parallelism underlines the symmetry between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng.
The tiltedness of the symmetry is made clear by the fact that as soon as Bǎoyù has changed clothes, we get a new and equally elaborate description of his clothing and appearance - according to Zēng Yánghuá (1981:191-92) more focused on his inner qualities:
… his side hair was dressed in a number of small braids plaited with red silk, which were drawn round to join the long hair at the back in a single large queue of glistening jet black, fastened at intervals from the nape downwards with four enormous pearls and ending in a jewelled gold clasp.
He [now wore] a rather more worn-looking rose-coloured gown, sprigged with flowers.
He [still] wore the gold torque and his jade, … a padlock-shaped amulet and a lucky charm.
A pair of ivy-coloured embroidered silk trosers were partially visible beneath his gown, thrust into black and white socks trimmed with brocade. … he was wearing thick-soled Hóngyù slippers. She was even more struck than before by his fresh complexion.
The cheeks might have been brushed with powder
and the lips touched with rouge …
His glance was soulful,
yet from his lips the laughter often leaped;
a world of charm upon that brow was heaped;
a world of feeling from those dark eyes peeped.
頭上周圍一轉的短髮，都結成小辮，紅絲結束，共攢至頂中胎髮，總編一根大辮，黑亮如漆，從頂至梢，一串四顆大珠，用金八寶墜角；
身上穿著銀紅撒花半舊大襖，仍舊帶著項圈、寶玉、寄名鎖、護身符等物；
下面半露松花撒花綾褲腿，錦邊彈墨襪，厚底大紅鞋。越顯得
面如敷粉，
唇若施脂；
轉盼多情，
語言常笑。
天然一段風騷，全在眉梢；
平生萬種情思，悉堆眼角。
Angelina Yee (1986:150) makes the symmetry appear less tilted by juxtaposing the presentations of Xīfèng and Bǎoyù in chapter 3 with similar presentations in other chapters:
Bǎoyù, appearing before Dàiyù in two different costumes ([chapter] 3), is described a third time when he meets the Prince of Běijìng ([chapter] 15). Xi-feng’s radiant beauty is also described three times, as seen by Dàiyù ([chapter] 3), Grannie Liú ([chapter] 6) and You Erjie ([chapter] 68).
As far as chapter 3 is concerned, however, there is no doubt that Bǎoyù is a stronger focus than Xīfèng. The same is true in chapter 2, and in the mythopoeic descriptions of chapter 1, only Bǎoyù and Dàiyù are represented in the mythical world, not Xīfèng.
Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are also highlighted by their behaviour, and parallels in the characterisations of the two abound. These two persons, in quite different ways, are singular in refusing to let their behaviour be restricted by lǐ 禮 ‘ritual propriety’. When Xīfèng arrives, Dàiyù is astonished:
Everyone else around here seems to go about with bated breath. … Who can this new arrival be who is so brash and unmannerly?
這些人個個皆斂聲屏氣，恭肅嚴整如此，這來者係誰，這樣放誕無禮？?
When Bǎoyù arrives, his grandmother reproaches him:
Fancy changing your clothes before you have welcomed the visitor! … Aren’t you going to pay your respects to your cousin?
外客未見，就脫了衣裳，還不去見你妹妹！
His subsequent behaviour, including making up purportedly classical references and hurling his jade to the floor, does not exactly suggest that he “go[es] about with bated breath”.
At the same time, the personality differences between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are also evident from the very first moment. The descriptions cited above reveal the difference between the dazzling external beauty of Xīfèng (while hinting at the existence of some darker force 威 within her personality) and the deeper (and more unequivocally benign) emotionality of Bǎoyù. The same difference is shown by their behaviour. While Xīfèng immediately acts as Dàiyù’s protector, holds her by the hand, weeps for her dead mother, pours tea for her instead of leaving that to the maids, asks her questions and urges her to tell if she has any problems, the reader is never quite sure if this is genuine or just a way of ingratiating herself with Grandmother Jiǎ 賈母. In the case of Bǎoyù, such suspicions are out of the question. He immediately establishes a close emotional rapport with Dàiyù, based on the fact that they somehow recognise each other from a previous existence in a mythological realm. That Bǎoyù is strongly affected by Dàiyù’s presence is also obvious when he throws his jade to the floor in a fit of disgust, since Dàiyù does not have such a jade. The contrast is between Xīfèng’s intense, but superficial charm and Bǎoyù’s deep and true emotionality.
Both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng immediately appear as fascinating and impressive personalities, and in chapter 3 the contrast between them is as yet all but imperceptible. Still, Bǎoyù comes through as a person who sometimes acts strangely, but who is never insincere, while Xīfèng leaves us with doubts. The novel’s idealisation of Bǎoyù’s sincerity and authenticity and its horror at Xīfèng’s deceitfulness begin here.
Apart from Dàiyù’s initial astonishment at her unmannerly behaviour, however, there are so far no words of criticism for Xīfèng. On the contrary, at this point all words of criticism seem to be reserved for Bǎoyù, who gets plenty of them. Before he has even arrived, his mother has called him a “monster of a son who tyrannizes over all the rest of this household” 孽根禍胎，是家裡的『混世魔王』, and Dàiyù has been told by her mother that he is “exceptionally wild and naughty” 頑劣異常. He is scorned by his half-sister Tànchūn for making up a classical reference, and he is scolded by his grandmother after having thrown his jade to the floor. Before that, two cí 詞 poems offer strongly critical views of Bǎoyù, snarling that “for uselessness the world’s prize he might bear; his gracelessness in history has no peer” 天下無能第一，古今不肖無雙. There is a contrast, therefore, between the narrator’s explicit attitude, which is critical of Bǎoyù but not of Xīfèng, and the underlying attitude of the text, which idealises Bǎoyù while leaving doubts concerning Xīfèng. This use of irony introduces a complexity in the attitude towards the sincerity and authenticity of Bǎoyù and the cunning duplicity of Xīfèng and gives the reader, as well as the self-expressive author, wider scope for identification.[15]
Relation to Níngguó House
Starting in chapter 7, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng repeatedly operate together in Níngguó House, establishing a special relation to the members of the Níngguó line of the family, especially the in-laws Qín Kěqīng 秦可卿 and her younger brother Qín Zhōng 秦鐘. This part of the novel ends with the death of Qín Zhōng in chapter 16, Kěqīng having already died in chapter 13. In addition to the types of parallelism described above, this part of the novel makes use of what we might call relational parallelism to underline the symmetry between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù.
During their visit to Níngguó House in chapter 7, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are introduced to Qín Zhōng. The difference between Xīfèng’s and Bǎoyù’s responses is quite parallel to their different responses to Dàiyù in chapter 3. Xīfèng takes Qín Zhōng by the hand, lets him sit beside her, and asks him questions to show her care. The immediate emotional intimacy between Bǎoyù and Qín Zhōng goes much deeper, and in a fit almost as bizarre as the jade incident, Bǎoyù’s admiration for the other makes him loathe himself:
Who would have believed there could be such perfection? Now that I have seen him I know that I am just a pig wallowing in the mud, a mangy dog!
天下竟有這等人物！如今看來，我竟成了泥豬癩狗了。
In later chapters, there are strong hints—though they are never verified—that Bǎoyù and Qín Zhōng have a sexual or at least an erotic relation, thus constituting a homoerotic parallel to Bǎoyù’s heteroerotic (and unconsumed) love relation to Dàiyù.
Later in chapter 7, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng watch and listen to the uproarious old servant Jiāodà 焦大, who curses the whole family, and who indicates that there are several incestuous sexual relations going on within the family:
They spend all their time on dirty love affairs, some poking in the ashes [having sex with a daughter-in-law], others carrying on with a brother-in-law. (my translation)
每日家偷狗戲雞，爬灰的爬灰，養小叔子的養小叔子，我什麼不知道？?
It is commonly agreed that “poking in the ashes” 爬灰 refers to a relation between Qín Kěqīng and her father-in-law Jiǎ Zhēn, while it is less certain who “carrying on with a brother-in-law” refers to. The exact meaning of the term xiǎo shūzi 小叔子 is “younger brother [or cousin] of one’s husband”. In the novel as it exists today, the most obvious candidate is Bǎoyù, who is Xīfèng’s xiǎo shūzi. Most scholars have found it hard to believe that Xīfèng has a sexual relation to a young boy like Bǎoyù, and the novel by no means explicitly says that this is so. What the novel does seem to do, however, is to subtly suggest that there is an eroticised relation between them.
It has been argued that the relation referred to is not between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù, but between Xīfèng and Jiǎ Róng, who is, however, not Xīfèng’s xiǎo shūzi, but her (i.e. her husband’s) nephew. This interpretation lies behind Hawkes’s translation “auntie has it off with nevvy”. The assumption is that Jiǎ Róng was indeed Xīfèng’s xiǎo shūzi in an earlier version of the novel, and that this passage is one of the many remnants of earlier stages in the writing process. This assumption is, however, not well-founded, and it presupposes that Jiǎ Róng had a different name, since the grass radical in the character Róng 蓉 makes it clear that he belongs to a younger generation than Xīfèng and Bǎoyù. Zhōu Sīyuán (1998:278f.) argues that in the purported earlier version Jiǎ Róng is not Jiǎ Zhēn’s son and Qín Kěqīng’s husband. But how can a character with a different name, a different father and a different wife (if any) still be the “same” character, especially when the present Jiǎ Róng derives so much of his importance in the novel precisely from his relations to Jiǎ Zhēn and Qín Kěqīng? I find this argument utterly unconvincing.
Apart from a romanticising wish to keep Bǎoyù clean and untainted by this kind of ugly eroticism, the idea that xiǎo shūzi refers to Jiǎ Róng rather than Bǎoyù is often connected to other hints of an eroticised relation between Jiǎ Róng and Xīfèng, especially the famous scene in chapter 6 where Jiǎ Róng wants to borrow a glass screen from Xīfèng and Xīfèng’s comments about an alliance with Jiǎ Róng and Jiǎ Qiang in chapter 12. There are, however, similar hints of an eroticised relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. In chapter 21, Jiǎ Liǎn’s comments suggest a frivolous relation between Xīfèng and both Bǎoyù and Jiǎ Róng:
She watches me like a bloody thief. She can talk to men when she likes, but I’m not supposed to talk to women, oh no! If I’m talking to a woman and just happen to get a bit close, whe immediately starts suspecting something. But if she wants to go chattering and larking around with Bao[yu] and Rong or any other bloody male on the premises, that’s supposed to be all right! You wait! One day I’ll stop her seeing anyone at all!
他防我像防賊的，只許他同男人說話，不許我和女人說話；我和女人略近些，他就疑惑，他不論小叔子侄兒，大的小的，說說笑笑，就不怕我吃醋了。以後我也不許他見人！
The passage in chapter 25 where Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are victims of sorcery also has erotic undertones, see below. There seems to be no reason, therefore, to attempt to explain away the implications of Jiāodà’s drunken talk in chapter 7.[16]
It has also been argued that xiǎo shūzi should not be taken to mean “younger brother [or cousin] of one’s husband”, but ”young uncle”, and that the comment refers to the clearly eroticised relation between Bǎoyù and Qín Kěqīng, which started when he took an afternoon nap in her bedroom in chapter 5. This is indeed a current meaning of the word. However, it does not seem to be the meaning of the word as used in The Red Chamber Dream, where it also occurs in chapters 21, 52, 65, and (by another author) 91, always in the meaning “younger brother [or cousin] of one’s husband”. There seems to be no way to explain away the intended meaning of Jiāodà’s comment.
In chapter 11, when they visit the bed-ridden Qín Kěqīng together, it becomes clear that both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng have a special relationship to Kěqīng. In the case of Bǎoyù, this relation has an erotic undertone, already established with his wet dream while having an afternoon nap in Kěqīng’s bed in chapter 5, an experience he is reminded of as soon as he enters her bedroom and sees the vaguely erotic calligraphy and painting on the wall. In the case of Xīfèng, there is no indication of an erotic undertone, but their conversation leaves no doubt about their intimate and genuine friendship. As early as chapter 7 we were told that Xīfèng was close to Qín Kěqīng 鳳姐與秦氏厚密.
In chapter 13, the descriptions of Xīfèng and Bǎoyù on the night of Qín Kěqīng’s death follow the same structural pattern:
1. boredom due to the absence of one’s beloved, Jiǎ Liǎn and Dàiyù both being in Yangzhou.[17]
2. falling asleep
3. dreaming
4. waking up to the news of Qín Kěqīng’s death
5. physical reaction
6. joining the mourning family
While Xīfèng’s dream, which is described in detail, is directly related to Kěqīng’s death, we do not know the contents of Bǎoyù’s dream. And while Bǎoyù’s physical reaction upon hearing the news of Kěqīng’s death is strong and remarkable, spitting a mouthful of blood, Xīfèng’s only physical reaction is a cold sweat. Nonetheless, both characters are described according to the same pattern, in some cases even using very similar formulations:
After Jiǎ Liǎn’s departure for Yangchow Xīfèng felt bored and uhappy, particularly in the evenings when, apart from chatting with Píng’ér, there seemed little to do but sleep.
話說鳳姐兒自賈璉送黛玉往揚州去後，心中實在無趣，每到晚間，不過和平兒說笑一回，就胡亂睡了。
During the last few days, since Dàiyù’s return to her father had deprived him of her companionship, Bǎoyù, far from seeking diversion in the company of others, had kept to himself, going to bed early every night …
卻說寶玉因近日林黛玉回去，剩得自己孤悽，也不和人頑耍，每到晚間便索然睡了。
This combination of structural, narrative and linguistic parallelism further underlines the strong relationship between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù as well as their common relationship to Qín Kěqīng. The same triangular relationship is emphasised later in the chapter, when Bǎoyù proposes to Jiǎ Zhēn that Xīfèng be given the responsibility for Kěqīng’s funeral, and when Bǎoyù physically hands the necessary tallies from Jiǎ Zhēn to Xīfèng. It is also emphasised by the fact pointed out by Yee (1990:642) that Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are the only characters in the novel who, in their dreams, are given prophetic glimpses into the future of the family, Qín Kěqīng playing a central role in both dreams.
After Qín Kěqīng is dead, her relationship to Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is largely taken over by Qín Zhōng. While Xīfèng is busy administering the funeral in chapter 14, Qín Zhōng and Bǎoyù visit her together and are in fact the only persons who are able to make her show a human face instead of acting as a strict administrator. They are also the only persons left with her as she stays behind for an extra day at the Water Moon Priory 水月庵 in chapter 15. This, however, proves fatal for Qín Zhōng, whose love for a young nun is the main cause of his death in chapter 16.
It has often been pointed out that Qín Zhōng is one of Bǎoyù’s doubles in the novel, sharing with the latter both youthful age, good looks, an effeminate personality and anti-conventional values. In the same vein, Qín Kěqīng may be seen as a double of Xīfèng. Though they (like Bǎoyù and Qín Zhōng) belong to different generations, both are daughters-in-law of the elder male in their respective line of the family.[18] Kěqīng is referred to as dà nǎinai 大奶奶 “first mistress” (being the only daughter-in-law of her generation), while Xīfèng is referred to as èr nǎinai 二奶奶 “second mistress” (since in her generation Ms. Yóu 尤氏 is “first mistress”). Both are beautiful and intelligent women, who are, however, mistakenly trusted by Grandmother Jiǎ, since both are also prone to excess, Kěqīng in carrying on an affair with her father-in-law, Xīfèng in utilising her position to pursue economic self-interest. The two are the only characters whose prophetic verses in chapter 5 link their fate to the fate of the whole family. Both are sonless and experience problems with their menstruation that might have to do with pregnancy, Kěqīng bleeding too little (making many doctors believe she is pregnant), Xīfèng bleeding too much (after having aborted a male foetus). Both of them are said to worry too much and thereby ruining their own health. Thus, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng both have their doubles in the Qín family:
Bǎoyù - Qín Zhōng
Xīfèng - Qín Kěqīng
In both cases, their doubles are more explicitly lascivious than Bǎoyù and Xīfèng themselves. By associating Bǎoyù and Xīfèng so strongly with the Qín siblings, they are also vaguely implicated in the lasciviousness that is seen, in the prophetic verses in chapter 5, to cause not only the death of individual characters, but in the end the fall of the whole family. As we have seen, there are also intimations of an erotic theme in the relation between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù, though they are never verified.
At the moment of their death, both Qín Zhōng and Qín Kěqīng enter into new roles as defenders of orthodox views on (in the case of Qín Zhōng) personal behaviour and (in the case of Qín Kěqīng) the administration of family affairs. Both refuse to leave the world of the living without first offering advice to Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, respectively. Apparently, neither Bǎoyù nor Xīfèng pays any heed to the exhortions of their dying friends.
After their death, Qín Zhōng and Qín Kěqīng are, with few exceptions, hardly ever mentioned again throughout the novel. However, Bǎoyù’s and Xīfèng’s close relation to Níngguó House is reactualised as Ms. Yóu’s lascivious step-sisters, Yóu Èrjiě 尤二姐 and Yóu Sānjiě 尤三姐, enter the scene from chapter 63 onwards. The Yóu sisters have only been mentioned once before, in connection with Qín Kěqīng’s funeral, and the only time after her death that Qín Kěqīng’s name is mentioned is shortly after the appearance of the Yóu sisters. In many ways, the story of the Yóu sisters is a repetition of the story of Qín Kěqīng, and the vivid accounts of their lasciviousness spell out in detail what in Kěqīng’s case is only subtly suggested. Like Kěqīng, both sisters have a sexual relation to Jiǎ Zhēn as well as Jiǎ Róng.
The narrative contains no direct descriptions of meetings between Bǎoyù and the Yóu sisters, but more than once the dialogue reveals that they not only met, but are even filled with admiration for each other. Bǎoyù’s statement (to Liǔ Xiānglián 柳湘蓮) that he “saw her practically every day for a month” 在那裡和他們混了一個月 (chapter 66) is ambiguous enough to leave behind a certain doubt as to the propriety of his relation to the sisters, especially since he ends the conversation with a retort to Xiānglián’s accusations against Níngguó House: “Perhaps I’m none too clean myself” 連我也未必乾淨了. Bǎoyù is full of praise for the Yóu sisters (“ravishingly beautiful” 真真一對尤物), especially for Yóu Sānjiě:
She is a peerless beauty, really ravishing. (my translation)
難得這個標緻人，果然是個古今絕色
Yóu Èrjiě and especially Yóu Sānjiě are also full of praise for Bǎoyù, and while Sānjiě is at first offended when Èrjiě guesses that Bǎoyù is the man she is secretly hoping to marry (chapter 65), she later asks a servant in detail about Bǎoyù (chapter 66), leading Èrjiě to suggest once more:
To hear you speak, it sounds as if the two of you would get on very well together … I think we ought to betroth you to him. Why not?
你兩個已是情投意合了，竟把你許了他，豈不好？
Being embarrassed by the presence of a servant, Sānjiě “merely looked down and occupied herself by cracking a melon-seed between her teeth” 只低頭磕瓜子. After Sānjiě is dead, Xīfèng snarls sarcastically that if she had not died, she would have gone on to marry either Bǎoyù or his half-brother Jiǎ Huán 若是不死，將來不是嫁寶玉，就是嫁環哥兒呢 (chapter 67). All in all, there are quite a few intimations of an erotically laden relation between Bǎoyù and the Yóu sisters, especially Yóu Sānjiě.
Xīfèng’s relation to the Yóu sisters is, on the surface at least, very different from her relation to Qín Kěqīng. She has, as far as we can see, no relation at all to Sānjiě, while Èrjiě, by secretly becoming Jiǎ Liǎn’s second wife, thoroughly enters into Xīfèng’s life and is in effect tortured to death by her, after first—like Xīfèng herself—aborting a male foetus. Xīfèng’s hostility towards Èrjiě seems to be the opposite of her strong and intimate sympathy for Kěqīng. Though she takes pains to treat Èrjiě with much the same intense affection, this is just part of a scheme to get her out of the way. (The contrast between their superficial affection and actual enmity might, however, provoke the reader to rethink Xīfèng’s feelings for Kěqīng as well. How genuine was her affection after all?) The account of Xīfèng’s campaign against Èrjiě spans two and a half chapters and is more intensely dramatic than any other part of the novel. The intensity of their relation is beyond doubt. Note that Èrjiě’s way into Xīfèng’s life goes via Níngguó House—through her step-sister Ms. Yóu and her step-sister’s husband Jiǎ Zhēn and their son Jiǎ Róng—and is directly related to her lasciviousness. In this case, however, there are no indications of lasciviousness on Xīfèng’s side. As in the cases of Jiǎ Ruì’s 賈瑞 attempt to seduce her (chapter 12) and Bāo Èr’s 鮑二 wife’s affair with her husband (chapter 44), the lasciviousness of others provokes in her murderous hatred and cunning vengefulness.
Bǎoyù’s and Xīfèng’s close relation to Níngguó House indicates that they, and especially Bǎoyù, are more thoroughly affected by the theme of lasciviousness than the author can afford to spell out directly. There are no clear indications that Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are actually acting out their improper sexual impulses. On the contrary, Bǎoyù’s lust is explicitly designated, by the fairy Jǐnghuàn 警幻仙子, a “lust of the mind” 意淫, as opposed to the “shallow, promiscuous kind of lust” 皮膚淫濫 of others (chapter 5). But even if the theme in his (and Xīfèng’s) case is entirely psychological, the more or less veiled suggestions of impropriety show an uneasiness in dealing with the problem and possibly a fear that a lust of the mind may all too easily become one of the flesh, that Disenchantment’s distinction is idealised and will in fact prove difficult to uphold. To the extent that the novel is self-expressive, this may indicate a similar uneasiness on the part of the author. To a large extent, the sexual villains of Níngguó House act as objects of projection, allowing both the author and the reader to largely externalise impulses that are difficult to identify with and sympathise with. The novel sometimes delights in exposing the lasciviousness of characters like Jiǎ Zhēn and Jiǎ Róng and reacts with horror at their transgressions. But obviously this delight may reflect a displaced sense of lust, while the horror represents a fear of lustful impulses threatening to break through the defence. By associating Bǎoyù (and Xīfèng) with the same lustfulness, the novel cautiously attempts to break down the forces of externalisation and to start a process of integration of unwanted impulses. It is as if the author is saying, with Bǎoyù: “Perhaps I’m none too clean myself!”
Jealousy and sorcery
In chapters 20 and 25, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng act together as the objects of jealousy and resentment from Bǎoyù’s half-brother Jiǎ Huán 賈環 and his mother the concubine Aunt Zhào 趙姨娘. The jealousy and resentment begin as soon as Jiǎ Huán enters the novel in chapter 20,[19] return a few times in the following chapters, and culminate in the attempt at doing away with Bǎoyù and Xīfèng by means of sorcery in chapter 25. Again, we have a clear instance of relational parallelism.
For Jiǎ Huán, Bǎoyù is the main object of resentment. Bǎoyù is the son of a first wife and older, more handsome and intelligent, and much more popular among the maidservants than the ugly, sulking and largely unpopular Jiǎ Huán. Even their father Jiǎ Zhèng, who is famous for his ill will against Bǎoyù, has to admit that Bǎoyù’s “lively intelligence that [shines] in the boy’s every feature, his almost breath-taking beauty of countenance” 神彩飄逸，秀色奪人 provides a striking contrast to Jiǎ Huán’s “cringing, hang-dog looks and loutish demeanour” 人物委瑣，舉止荒疏 (chapter 23).
The first jealousy episode, in chapter 20, begins after Jiǎ Huán has tried to cheat money from a maidservant in a play of go, provoking the maidservant to compare him unfavourably to Bǎoyù, who by chance enters, and, seeing Jiǎ Huán cry, asks him to leave. When he returns home, his mother Aunt Zhào starts abusing him just as Xīfèng by chance passes by outside their window and begins to scold Aunt Zhào, takes Jiǎ Huán with her and scolds him as well.
In this episode, the parallel between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is supported by details in language and narrative form. Though the wording used is not the same, both of them are said to come in or pass by “by chance”:
Just at that moment Bǎoyù walked in …
正值寶玉走來??
Just at that moment Xi-feng happened to be passing by outside …
正說著，可巧鳳姐在窗外過??
And both Bǎoyù’s complaint against Jiǎ Huán and Xīfèng’s complaint against Aunt Zhào begin with each of them criticising the other for letting out his or her feelings in the open:
What are you crying for in the middle of the New Year holiday? (my translation)
大正月裡哭什麼？
What’s the problem in the middle of the New Year holiday? (my translation)
大正月又怎麼了？
Both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng can be partly blamed for provoking jealousy, Bǎoyù by asking Jiǎ Huán to leave and Xīfèng for sticking her nose into something she could just as well have chosen to overlook. But while Xīfèng’s scolding of Aunt Zhào is clearly a deliberate provocation and a result of ill will, Bǎoyù’s provocation of Jiǎ Huán is unintentional, a result of his closeness to the maids and his unorthodox thoughts on the male gender rather than ill will. His apparent lack of intentionality does not, however, make his provocations less painful.
Jiǎ Huán’s jealousy is also a minor theme in chapter 22, when his older half-sister the Imperial Concubine sends gifts to everybody except Yíngchūn and him:
Yíngchūn treated the matter as a joke and rapidly dismissed it from her mind, but Jiǎ Huán was very much put out.
迎春自為玩笑小事，並不介意，賈環便覺得沒趣。
In this case, however, the objects of jealousy are not restricted to Bǎoyù and Xīfèng.
Jiǎ Huán’s jealousy towards Bǎoyù again becomes a minor theme in chapter 24. With his nephew Jiǎ Lán he pays a visit to his aunt Lady Xíng, but on “seeing Bǎoyù up on the kang with Lady Xíng and sharing her cushion, and observing how she fondled and petted him, Jiǎ Huán soon began to feel uncomfortable” 見寶玉同邢夫人坐在一個坐褥上，邢夫人又百般摩挲撫弄他，早已心中不自在了 and decides to leave. Xīfèng is not present, reminding us that the symmetry between her and Bǎoyù is tilted in Bǎoyù’s direction.
Then, in chapter 25, jealousy and its consequences dominate the whole chapter. First, as Lady Wáng’s maidservant Cǎixiá 彩霞[20] (with whom Jiǎ Huán is on intimate terms) urges Jiǎ Huán to behave more properly, Jiǎ Huán accuses her of having turned her attention away from him and towards Bǎoyù. Next, Bǎoyù arrives, and Lady Wáng orders Cǎixiá to massage Bǎoyù, who tries to joke with her and then, when she fails to respond, grasps her hand, which she hurriedly snatches away, all the time keeping her eyes at Jiǎ Huán, who realises what is going on and, seeking revenge, pretends to lose a candle with molten wax straight onto Bǎoyù’s face, burning the whole left side of his face badly. Lady Wáng and Xīfèng scold Jiǎ Huán and, even more, his mother Aunt Zhào. Again we see how Bǎoyù’s provocations are unintentional — he behaves towards Cǎixiá the way he would behave towards any maidservant, and he may not even have known of the warm feelings between Jiǎ Huán and Cǎixiá—while Xīfèng’s provocations are intentionally directed at Aunt Zhào.
Aunt Zhào, we are told, was often jealous and resentful of Xīfèng and Bǎoyù 常懷嫉妒之心，不忿鳳姐寶玉兩個, and she hires a Daoist sorceress (who happens to be Bǎoyù’s “godmother” 寄名的乾娘) to perform sorcery on them, and at more or less the same time, Xīfèng and Bǎoyù begin to behave madly and aggressively. Gradually they become sicker and sicker until they almost stop breathing, and the family starts preparing their coffins. In the end they are saved by a passing Daoist priest and Buddhist monk.
The sorcery passage is remarkable. There is nothing similar in the rest of the novel. It is also very complex, and I have yet to see a thorough analysis of it.
After they part with each other in chapter 1, this is the first and only time in the novel that the monk and the Daoist appear together. In fact, the role of the Daoist in this incident is very minor, as he has but a single line of dialogue, which occurs in the midst of a dialogue between the monk and Jiǎ Zhèng and might just as well have been uttered by the monk:[21]
You already possess in your own house a precious object capable of curing them. What other charm is necessary?
你家現放著希世奇珍，如何倒還問我們要符水？
It is as if the presence of the Daoist needed to be justified, and so he was given this line. By including the Daoist, the novel underlines that just as the monk and the Daoist constitute a pair in the transcendental realm, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng constitute a pair on earth.[22]
This is also the only time in the relevant eighty chapters of the novel that the curative effect of the jade comes to use, though this effect was mentioned in chapter 8, and Grandmother Jiǎ considers the jade to be a “precious thing that [Bǎoyù’s] very life depends on” 命根子 (chapter 3). The role of the jade heavily tilts the symmetry between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng in Bǎoyù’s direction, and he is clearly the main character of this whole passage. In fact, almost all details in the narrative point to Bǎoyù rather than Xīfèng, who appears almost as superfluous as the Daoist. But the fact that her inclusion seems almost redundant only increases its significance. Xīfèng is clearly there for a purpose. Properly analysed, the sorcery passage has much to tell us about the relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng.
The aim of the sorcery is to kill off Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, and the whole passage may be read as their ritual death. As soon as the sorcery begins to work on him, Bǎoyù exclaims:
I am dying! (my translation)
我要死！
He then wants to kill himself with swords and sticks 寶玉越發拿刀弄杖，尋死覓活的. Later, in a trance-like state, he tells Grandmother Jiǎ:
From now on I can no longer stay in this family. You must get my things ready and let me go.
從今以後，我可不在你家了！快些收拾打發我走罷。
In the end, most family members believe that both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are going to die, and message arrives that their coffins have been prepared just before the monk and the Daoist appear. Note, incidentally, that when the monk and the Daoist parted with each other in chapter 1, they promised to meet again at Beimangshan 北邙山, a place name used to refer to a graveyard.
A ritual death is a death from something. What is it that Xīfèng and Bǎoyù have to die from? It has to do with karma, with “sins carried over from earlier lives” 冤孽, conceived as a debt that has to be “repaid in full” 償清. The term yuānniè 冤孽 (and its variant yuānyè 冤業), used twice in this short passage, is regularly associated with love, as indeed it is in its other occurrences in the novel (chapters 1, 4, 5, and 12). Love and desire are seen as results of karmic retribution for sins in earlier lives. The inscription on the jade with which Bǎoyù was born tells us that it is able to “cure lovesickness” 療冤疾 (chapter 8, my translation). This is also more or less what the monk and the Buddhist in this chapter profess to do when they promise “relief from yuānniè” 解冤孽. The monk explains the jade’s lack of ability to protect against sorcery as a result of its being confused by what Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang translate literally as “music, beauty, riches and lust for gain”, or simply, in David Hawkes’s less literal, but more suggestive translation, “the world and its temptations” 被聲色貨利所迷. Upon seeing the jade again, the monk recites a verse alluding to the negative effects of love:
Powder and rouge [girls or women] have dulled your precious lustre;
Days and nights within silk chambers entrap your heart [in love]”[23]
粉漬脂痕污寶光，綺櫳晝夜困鴛鴦。
When the monk rubs the stone to give it back its efficacy, he is in effect cleansing it from the pollution incurred by “the world and its temptations”. Though Bǎoyù himself may not yet be ready to part with the confusions of love, at least the jade, a symbol of the core of his existence, is. From this point of view, Bǎoyù’s and Xīfèng’s ritual death is a first (but certainly not the last) attempt at making them wake up from the vanity of “the world and its temptations”.
The theme of love is less obviously associated with Xīfèng than Bǎoyù, and one might see this as another instance of the tiltedness of the symmetry between the two. On the other hand, she is the only married woman in the novel whose love-making with her husband is mentioned several times (most notably in chapters 7 and 23). Moreover, as already mentioned, there are unverified suggestions of an eroticised relation between her and some of the younger men in the family, including Bǎoyù.
It is even possible to read the sorcery passage as containing further indications that the relation between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù contains erotic elements. At the beginning of their fits of madness, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are placed in different chambers, Bǎoyù in his bed and Xīfèng in hers, but even at this stage the descriptions of them seem to merge into one, as if they were a couple lying together:
But the cousins continued delirious and lay on [their] bed[s] burning [with fever] and babbling incomprehensibly.[24]
他叔嫂二人愈發糊塗，不省人事，睡在床上，渾身火炭一般，口內無般不說。
In the Chinese original, the babbling is not so much incomprehensible as reckless, using a syntactic pattern that, both in this novel and elsewhere, often indicates improper behaviour: 無X不V. When night comes, the two are carried into one of Lady Wáng’s principal rooms (上房) and placed there side by side for three nights. Then the monk asks that they be placed in one and the same room 將他二人安在一屋之內 (which they already are!), whereupon they are moved to Lady Wáng’s own bedroom. Thus, the two are moved from their own quarters to those of Lady Wáng and then from an ordinary room to a bedroom, all the while babbling recklessly. The indications of impropriety are not strong, but suggestive.
The fact that all the male and female members of the family simultaneously rush into the garden also indicates that the sorcery incident threatens to destroy the borderline between proper and improper behaviour. At this point, the garden is usually reserved for girls or women, with Bǎoyù and his young male servants (and Jiǎ Lán, who is still small) as notable exceptions. Although it is hardly against ritual propriety for genders to mix within the same family, the garden is usually well protected against male intrusion. Even at this point, no male servants are seen to enter the garden, only female ones. This is the only occasion in the novel that such a large number of male family members enters the garden.
The mixing of genders provides a piece of comic relief when Xuē Pán 薛蟠 begins to worry about the consequences:[25]
Most remarkable, perhaps, was the spectacle of Xuē Pán fussing over his womenfolk, one moment afraid that his mother would be jostled in the crush, the next that Bǎochāi might be ogled or Xiānglíng glad-eyed by some wanton male. Cousin Zhēn, he knew for a fact, was a notorious womanizer. Then he caught sight of Dàiyù … and forgot his anxiety in gawping admiration of that ethereal beauty.
獨有薛蟠更比諸人忙到十分去：又恐薛姨媽被人擠倒，又恐薛寶釵被人瞧見，又恐香菱被人臊皮，－－知道賈珍等是在女人身上做功夫的，因此忙得不堪。忽一眼瞥見了林黛玉風流婉轉，已酥倒在那裡。
Having once committed murder in order to procure a concubine of his liking, and being known as an incurable womaniser himself, Xuē Pán is not exactly a credible guardian of chastity.
Besides eroticism, another theme coming to the surface as soon as Bǎoyù and Xīfèng turn mad is the theme of aggression, symbolised by the wielding of weapons. Before they are reined in by others, both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng wield (or try to wield) weapons, but there is an important difference: Bǎoyù is looking for a sword or a stick in order to take his own life, while Xīfèng is brandishing a bright gleaming knife (or sword 刀) in order to kill chicken, dogs and people along her way. In other words, Bǎoyù’s aggression is primarily directed at himself, while Xīfèng’s aggression is directed outwards. This reflects a difference that runs through the whole novel, where Bǎoyù is almost never openly aggressive (with some notable exceptions, see below), while Xīfèng can hardly say or do anything without exposing her aggression, which ranges from good-hearted teasing to murderous sadism. As we have already seen and will have occasion to discuss again, however, Bǎoyù’s lack of open aggression does not prevent his actions from having, in many cases, consequences that are just as disastrous as Xīfèng’s directly aggressive behaviour. Note also that Xīfèng is heading for Bǎoyù’s quarters. She, like Bǎoyù himself, seems to be bent on killing him.
In addition to looking at the sorcery passage itself, however, we should also take note of its immediate context. First of all, the passage begins and ends with Lín Dàiyù invoking the name of Amitabha Buddha 阿彌陀佛, almost as if she is a priestess presiding over the rites. Second, when Bǎoyù suddenly complains of a headache just as the sorcery begins to work, Dàiyù exclaims “serves you right” (該！), as if cursing him. Immediately before this, Bǎoyù has asked her to stay behind when others have left his home, and he smiles and takes her by the hand without saying anything, until she blushes and tries to break away. Both before and after the sorcery passage, Dàiyù is being teased for her relation to Bǎoyù, first by Xīfèng and then by Bǎochāi.
The sorcery passage, therefore, is concerned with more than just the relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. It is also concerned with the relation between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù (and, to some extent, the triangular relation between these two and Bǎochāi). If the near-death of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is a ritual death, then Dàiyù is, symbolically, in charge of their death ritual.
The placement of the whole passage at the very beginning of life in the Prospect Garden is significant. Bǎoyù, Dàiyù and the other girls have just moved into the garden, and the whole sorcery passage may be read as an opening ceremony for the garden, a transition from one type of life (from which Bǎoyù and Xīfèng have to die) to another, or even a handing over of Bǎoyù from Xīfèng to Dàiyù.
In this light, the purification of the jade symbolises the sublimation of desire that is necessary for the seemingly innocent life in the garden to take place. The erotically laden relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng and their common relation to the lascivious Níngguó House is gradually replaced by the superficially much more innocent, though at least as strongly erotic, relation between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù.
The sorcery passage is the last important passage in the novel where Xīfèng and Bǎoyù spend much time together. Martin Huang (1995:90) points out that “in the novel, Xīfèng spends little time in Bǎoyù’s presence”. Their tendency to occupy separate worlds starts already in chapter 3, where Xīfèng and some other women leave the scene just before Bǎoyù enters. Later, however, their common relation to Níngguó House and the Qín siblings repeatedly bring them together, and they often appear together in passages of great thematic importance, such as the first meeting with Qín Zhōng, Jiāodà’s drunken talk, and Qín Kěqīng’s illness and funeral arrangements. After chapter 25, they are still occasionally seen and heard together, but not much, and rarely in passages of great importance. On the contrary, they sometimes fail to appear in contexts where both are expected to be present, as in each other’s birthday parties (see below). From now on, Bǎoyù’s world is primarily that of the girls, where Xīfèng’s role is peripheral.
The transition from the Precious Mirror chapters to the Prospect Garden chapters also implies a shift in psychological mode. The deaths of Jiǎ Ruì, Qín Kěqīng, and Qín Zhōng represent the suppression or repression of the kind of eroticism associated with the Precious Mirror chapters. Through the ritual deaths of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng in the sorcery passage, it is as if the author makes a final attempt at subduing a type of eroticism that must not be seen to exist within the apparently pure and innocent life of the Prospect Garden. The repeated attempts at killing off untamed desire is reflected in the aggressive and violent madness of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng at the beginning of the sorcery passage.
Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù
Like the sorcery passage, the much longer, but less dramatic story of Jiǎ Yún 賈芸 and Hóngyù 紅玉 (or 小紅) also marks the transition from the Precious Mirror chapters to the Prospect Garden chapters, by tying Bǎoyù both to Xīfèng and to Dàiyù. The story starts in chapter 23 and ends in chapter 28, thus in fact enveloping the sorcery passage.
Simply speaking, the story displays two types of relational parallelism. On the one hand, the ambitions of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù place both in contact with Bǎoyù as well as Xīfèng:
Jiǎ Yún Hóngyù
On the other hand, the love story between Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù reflects on the relation between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù:[26]
The first type of parallelism has been observed by modern critics, while the second type has been pointed out by traditional commentators. To my knowledge, however, neither traditional nor modern scholarship has analysed this story with a view of the combination of the two types of relational parallelism.
Jiǎ Yún’s ambition is first touched upon in chapter 23, when Jiǎ Liǎn mentions to Xīfèng that Jiǎ Yún is looking for a job in the newly built Prospect Garden, and she promises to give him the job of planting trees and flowers. In chapter 24, Jiǎ Yún borrows money to buy costly gifts to Xīfèng and spends much energy consciously flattering her, and in the end is told he will be given the job he is looking for. In the same chapter, he meets Bǎoyù, who is impressed with his good looks and glib tongue and invites him to visit him, which Jiǎ Yún tries two consecutive days without finding Bǎoyù home. In chapter 25, Jiǎ Yún is set to watch over both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng while they are in bed possessed with sorcery. In chapter 26, Bǎoyù invites him to visit again, but only chats about inconsequential matters, and when Jiǎ Yún takes his leave, Bǎoyù does not ask him to stay behind. In sum, although Jiǎ Yún actively uses his relation to both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, both of whom enable him to become one of the few males of the family who regularly enter the garden, only Xīfèng is of any substantial help to his career.
Hóngyù’s ambition is first seen in chapter 24. If we look away from elements of ambition in her infatuation with Jiǎ Yún, the first clear sign of her attempts to climb the social ladder comes when all the other maids are away and she has a chance to come close to Bǎoyù by serving him tea. When discovered by other maids, she is scorned and in effect asked to stay away, and when Bǎoyù later (chapter 25) gazes at her with fascination, one of the other maids makes sure to distract him by asking him to wash his face. In chapter 27, she is by chance asked to do an odd job for Xīfèng, provoking once more the scorn of Bǎoyù’s other maids. Xīfèng likes her so much that she proposes that Hóngyù be transferred to her own chambers, and in chapter 28 Bǎoyù agrees to this and she is transferred. Again, it seems that a good relation to Xīfèng is much more effective than a good relation to Bǎoyù, who by chapter 28 seems to have completely forgotten how much he cared for her a little earlier.
The important roles of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng in the lives of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù are emphasised by the fact that Bǎoyù calls Jiǎ Yún his “son” (chapter 24), and Xīfèng calls Hóngyù her “daughter” (chapter 27). The 19th century commentator Zhāng Xīnzhī 張新之 notes:
Bǎoyù calls Jiǎ Yún his son, and Xīfèng calls Hongyu her daughter - a symmetry between distant elements.
寶玉認賈芸為子，鳳姐認小紅為女，遙遙相對。
Bā jiā píngpī Hónglóumèng p. 624
Actually, both cases of “adoption” are seen as inappropriate. When Bǎoyù wants to adopt Jiǎ Yún as his “son”, he is chastised by Jiǎ Liǎn, because Jiǎ Yún is four or five years his elder. When Xīfèng wants to adopt Hóngyù as her “daughter”, Hóngyù starts laughing, because Xīfèng has already adopted her mother. The inappropriateness of both adoptions serves to forge the connection between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng and to remind the reader of their common lack of regard for ritual propriety.
While the ambitions of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù place them in contact with Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, the love affair between Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù reflects on Bǎoyù’s relation to Dàiyù. It comes at a point in the novel where Bǎoyù is repeatedly on the verge of professing his love for Dàiyù, at times too embarrassed to say a word, at other times plumply quoting poetic or dramatic lines with an erotic undertone, making Dàiyù, in spite of her love for Bǎoyù, feel both embarrassed, humiliated, and very angry.
One of the things that link Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù to Bǎoyù and Dàiyù is their names. Like Bǎoyù, Jiǎ Yún is repeatedly referred to as “second master” 二爺, and as in the case of Bǎoyù, this is in spite of the fact that he seems to have no living elder brother. Like Dàiyù, Hóngyù has the family name Lín 林 and a personal name ending in yù 玉:
Lín Dàiyù 林黛玉
Lín Hóngyù 林紅玉
In both names, the middle character is a colour term, dài 黛 originally referring to a black pigment used by women to paint their eyebrows and thus reminding us of Dàiyù’s habit of knitting her brows, and hóng 紅 ‘red’ being the colour of desire. Since both Bǎoyù and Dàiyù have yù 玉 as part of their names, Hóngyù is usually (though in fact quite inconsistently) referred to as Xiǎohóng 小紅 rather than Hóngyù 紅玉, to avoid breaking the taboo against mentioning one’s master’s name. This actually highlights her relation to both Bǎoyù and Dàiyù rather than doing the opposite.
Hóngyù’s and Dàiyù’s shared family name Lín 林 ‘wood; forest’ associates both with the element “wood” 木. There is a parallel between Bǎoyù’s predecessor in the heavenly realm Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting 神英侍者 watering Dàiyù’s predecessor Crimson Pearl Flower 絳珠草 and Jiǎ Yún entering the garden (where Hóngyù lives) to plant trees. Jiǎ Yún’s propensity for working with wood is emphasised later in the novel when he offers a gift of two white crabapples 白海棠 to Bǎoyù, prompting him to call the newly established poetry club the Crab-flower Club 海棠社 (chapter 37), and when Bǎoyù even later compares the girls in the garden to these flowers (chapter 51).
The use of old handkerchiefs to convey messages of love is common to both pairs. Jiǎ Yún finds Hóngyù’s lost handkerchief, but instead of returning it to her, he gives her one of his own, an unmistakable sign of warm feelings, which she returns. Not long after, Dàiyù first throws her handkerchief in Bǎoyù’s eyes after having put it in her mouth (chapter 28), then throws her handkerchief to Bǎoyù after having dried her own tears with it (chapter 30), and is finally given Bǎoyù’s old handkerchief as an unmistakable token of his feelings (chapter 34). When Hóngyù’s handkerchief is first mentioned in chapter 24, Zhāng Xīnzhī comments:
The handkerchief belongs to the case of Bǎoyù and Dàiyù; this story is a reflection of theirs.
手帕是寶黛公案，此乃影傳。
Bā jiā píngpī Hónglóumèng p. 556
Like Dàiyù, Hóngyù is (or is at least assumed to be) sick, and the maid Jiāhuì 佳蕙 proposes that Hóngyù asks Dàiyù for some of her medicine, since that would be “equally” well 也是一樣. Zhāng Xīnzhī comments:
She says directly [that they are] “equal”. The author speaks both directly and in hidden suggestions, as though he fears the reader will not realise that Hóngyù is a reflection of Dàiyù.
明說「也是一樣」，作者明說暗點，惟恐觀者不知小紅為黛玉影身如此。
Bā jiā píngpī Hónglóumèng p. 588
Like Dàiyù, Hóngyù is also the object of Bǎoyù’s infatuation. At the beginning of chapter 25, Hóngyù and Bǎoyù even behave in similar ways, he being filled with thoughts about her, and she being filled with thoughts about Jiǎ Yún. Both of them are described as getting up in the morning without combing and washing 也不梳洗, and both of them are lost in thought 出神 before being interrupted by other maids.
When Xīfèng asks for Hóngyù to be transferred to her service in chapter 28, however, Bǎoyù seems to have completely forgotten about his earlier infatuation and not only willingly accedes, but does so with an untypical lack of regard for the maid in question:
There are so many girls in my room … Please take any you have a fancy to. You really don’t need to ask me about it.
我屋裡的人也多得很，姐姐喜歡誰，只管叫了來，何必問我。
Jiǎ Yún’s feelings for Hóngyù appear to be more stable, though his fascination with Xírén during his visit to Bǎoyù in chapter 26 also seems to indicate a certain fickleness. Xírén is also mixed into the picture because she apparently has some traits of appearance in common with both Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù. Jiǎ Yún has a thin, handsome face and is long and thin 容長臉，長挑身材 (chapter 24), Hóngyù has a thin, handsome face and is small and thin 容長臉面，細巧身材 (chapter 24), and Xírén is small and thin, with a thin, handsome face 細挑身材，容長臉面 (chapter 26).
Like the sorcery passage, the story of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù provides a link between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng and between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù. It marks the novel’s transition from the Precious Mirror chapters to the Prospect Garden chapters. As we are entering the garden, the link between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is weakened, while the link between Bǎoyù and Dàiyù is strengthened.
More remarkably, the story of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù provides an alternative vision of two of the main themes in the novel, that of ambition and that of love. These are problematic themes for which neither the Precious Mirror chapters nor the Prospect Garden chapters has found satisfactory solutions. The story of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù, while hardly providing a solution, seems to suggest the possibility of a more positive view.
First, Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù are the only ambitious characters in the novel who are almost consistently looked upon with sympathetic eyes. Even Jiǎ Yún’s flattery and bribery of Xīfèng does not seem to detract from the narrator’s sympathy, and everybody who comes in contact with him seems to like him. Hóngyù is less fortunate, being strongly disliked by a bunch of jealous maidservants, and even Bǎochāi sees her as an arrogant person. But Jiǎ Yún, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng all like her, as does the maidservant Jiāhuì. The narrator also basically looks upon her with sympathy. In a novel where ambition is usually linked to ugly violence and scary deceitfulness, they represent a much more positive vision of the will to rise above their starting points. As such, they provide a pointed contrast to Xīfèng.
Second, the love story between Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù is also unusually straightforward for this novel. Although both are very careful, and Hóngyù is clearly too embarrassed to show her interest directly, their gradual rapprochement seems very natural. This provides a clear contrast to the endless conflicts caused by the problems Bǎoyù and Dàiyù have expressing their love for each other.
The story of Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù is one of the many stories in The Red Chamber Dream that have no end. After chapter 27, it is never referred to again. Hóngyù is briefly mentioned in chapters 28, 29 and 60, and Jiǎ Yún is mentioned in chapters 29, 37 and 51, but the two no longer appear together and play very minor roles. Thus, if their story is meant to provide an alternative vision of ambition and love, this vision seems, at first glance at least, to be shortlived.
According to the Red Inkstone commentary, however, both Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù have more significant roles towards the end of the novel, in draft manuscripts that the commentators claim to have read, but that are no longer extant. In these drafts, Jiǎ Yún is clearly seen as a hero:
A filial son worthy of respect! This person will be of good help after the fall of Róngguó House.
孝子可敬。此人後來榮府事敗，必有一番作為。
(Chén Qìnghào 1986:468, 1760 edition)
This foreshadows the passage where brother Yún stands up for righteousness and visits the monastery.
伏芸哥仗義探菴。
(Chén Qìnghào 1986:460, Jìng 靖 edition)
In drafts that were lost already during the writing process, Hóngyù seems to be of great importance for Bǎoyù when he ends up in the Temple of the Prison God:
The chapter about the Temple of the Prison God has a long passage [chapter?] about Qiànxuě and Hóngyù, but unfortunately it has been lost.
獄神廟回有茜雪紅玉一大回文字，惜迷失無稿。
(Chén Qìnghào 1986:499, 1760 and, somewhat differently, 1754 editions)
Only now Hóngyù’s hopes are answered. This foreshadows [what happens to] Bǎoyù later.
紅玉今日方遂心如意，卻為寶玉後伏線。
(Chen 1986:523, 1754 edition)
Later Hóngyù is of great help to Bǎoyù, this foreshadows what happens much later in the novel.
且紅玉後有寶玉大得力處，此於千里外伏線也。
(Chen 1986:531, 1754 edition)
Some scholars have concluded that Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù do find each other and go together to the Temple of the Prison God to save Bǎoyù. Unfortunately, the term ān 菴 (or the more standard 庵) in one of the comments on Jiǎ Yún above refers to a monastery (usually a nunnery) and cannot be used to refer to the Temple of the Prison God. The only thing we know is that both Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù play more major roles in these final drafts, and we have no indication that they end up as a couple. It is impossible to tell, therefore, whether the more positive vision of love and ambition was ever meant to return towards the end of the novel.
Gender reversal
There are connections and symmetries between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù that go across more or less the whole novel, including the parts where they seldom appear together. The most conspicuous and much-discussed[27] of these is the fact that Bǎoyù is a male with feminine traits, while Xīfèng is a female with masculine traits. The gender identity of each of them is repeatedly commented upon throughout the novel.
Starting with Xīfèng, her very name sounds boyish. The use of masculine names for girls is sometimes seen as a sign of good taste,[28] but the use of the character fèng 鳳 ‘male phoenix’ strongly indicates that her family had wanted a male child when she was born. The masculinity of her name is underlined by the fact that a story-teller at a Mid-Autumn party in chapter 54 tells about a male hero with the name Wáng Xīfèng. Furthermore, Xīfèng is her “schoolroom name” 學名, and, as Red Inkstone notes, it is quite peculiar for a woman to have a schoolroom name at all, and even more so for a woman who does not know how to read and write 女子曰學名固奇，然此偏有學名的反到不識字 (Chén Qìnghào 1986:68). Xīfèng’s “childhood name” 小名 is even more explicitly masculine: Brother Fèng 鳳哥(兒).[29]
As was often the case with daughters of parents who had wanted a son, Xīfèng “had been brought up from earliest childhood just like a boy” 假充男兒教養的 (chapter 3), and we are told that “even in her childhood games, [she] had the decisiveness of a little general” 從小兒大妹妹頑笑著就有殺伐決斷 (chapter 13).
As a grown-up, she compares well with males in most respects. Lěng Zǐxīng remarks:
[She] has a very ready tongue and a very good head—more than a match for most men”
言談又爽利，心機又極深細，竟是個男人萬不及一的。
(chapter 2)
Similar comments are made by Zhōu Ruì’s wife 周瑞家的 in chapter 6, and by the soul of the dying Qín Kěqīng in chapter 13. Unlike the other women of the family, she does not try to hide when a male member of the family appears (chapter 13), and she does not have the inability or inhibitions typical of the family’s women (chapter 14). She is a great drinker 善飲 (chapter 16). At one point, she jokes about herself being reborn as a man in her next life, so that she can ask for the hand of Faithful 鴛鴦, Grandmother Jiǎ’s principal maid (chapter 46).
Bǎoyù’s femininity is even more explicitly discussed in the novel than Xīfèng’s masculinity. To judge from his beautiful appearance and from his choice of rouge, powder, combs and bracelets as favorite objects when he is only one year old, his effeminate traits are innate. But these traits are given ample opportunity to unfold because he is allowed to live in such proximity to his sisters and female cousins, and because his father’s attempts at making him study are always in the end thwarted by Grandmother Jiǎ.
Bǎoyù is twice mistaken for a girl, once by the opera-singer Língguān 齡官 (chapter 30) and once by Grandmother Jiǎ (chapter 50). In addition, Xīfèng asks which of the young ladies Hóngyù works for when she in fact works for Bǎoyù (chapter 27), and Grannie Liú 劉姥姥 mistakes Bǎoyù’s quarters for those of a young lady (chapter 41), as does the medical doctor called in to examine Bǎoyù’s maid Qíngwén 晴雯 (chapter 51). Bǎoyù’s timid personality, his almost complete lack of aggressive behaviour (with some notable exceptions), and his delicate constitution also contribute to the impression of unmanliness. In contrast to most other men in the novel, he is more interested in emotional communion with the girls than in carnal love. Grandmother Jiǎ speculates that Bǎoyù is a girl’s soul who by mistake was incarnated as a boy (chapter 78). And only a few chapters before Xīfèng makes jokes about being reborn as a man in her next life, Bǎoyù’s page Míngyān 茗煙 prays that Bǎoyù will be reborn in his next life as a girl (chapter 43).
Gender reversal is a common topos in Ming-Qing fiction, and even in The Red Chamber Dream, it is by no means restricted to Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. To my knowledge, however, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng constitute the only literary pair of gender-reversed opposites.
On the one hand, gender reversal is seen as something perverse, a sign that the social and even cosmic order is falling apart. On the other hand, unorthodox gender identity is also often admired. Many of the characters in The Red Chamber Dream admire Xīfèng for being even more able than men, and even the ultra-orthodox Jiǎ Zhèng admires the loyal woman warrior Lǐ Shíniáng 李十娘. The beauty of effeminate men like Bǎoyù, Qín Zhōng, the Prince of Běijìng 北靜王, Qíguān 棋官 and Liǔ Xiānglián is also generally admired, and especially so by two groups: male lechers (like Xuē Pán) and male aesthetes (like Bǎoyù).
The contrast between Xīfèng’s sexual encounter with Jiǎ Ruì and Bǎoyù’s sexual encounter with Qíngwén’s cousin’s wife Miss Dēng 燈姑娘 is telling (cf. Huang 1995:92). When punishing Jiǎ Ruì for his attempts at getting close to her, Xīfèng acts like a military commander, “muster[ing] her forces [and] brief[ing] her officers” 點兵派將, in effect eventually killing him (chapter 12). In sharp contrast to Xīfèng’s role as aggressor, Bǎoyù becomes the victim of Miss Dēng’s aggressive sexual advances, from which he barely escapes (chapter 77).[30] The reversal of gender also reverses the conventional roles of aggressor and victim. In general, Xīfèng’s role as aggressor and Bǎoyù’s role as victim makes it easier to feel sympathy for the latter.
Xīfèng never sees herself as a victim. After aborting a male foetus in chapter 55, she repeatedly discusses the consequences of her own actions with her maidservant Píng’ér:
Because of all the economies I’ve introduced during these last few years there’s hardly anyone in this household who doesn’t secretly hate me. But it’s like riding a tiger: I daren’t relax my grip a single moment for fear of being eaten.
你知道我這幾年生了多少省儉的法子，一家子大約也沒個不背地裡恨我的。我如今也是騎上老虎了。
(chapter 55)
Last time I ignored your advice and had someone punished, I not only offended Lady Xíng but also ended up by making myself ill.
我因聽不進去，果然應了些，先把太太得罪了，而且自己反賺了一場病。
(chapter 74)
In contrast, Bǎoyù and the girls in the garden consistently perceive their own fate as resulting from forces beyond their control.
For all her masculine traits, Xīfèng has more than her share of feminine charm and beauty. On one point, she is even more conventionally feminine than any of the girls in the garden: She is illiterate. As so often, the image of her is a mixed one. However, since the novel clearly favours talented women (especially poetic talent), Xīfèng’s illiteracy earns her contempt rather than respect. Interestingly, Dàiyù, who like Xīfèng has been brought up as a boy 假充養子之意 (chapter 2), has become an emblem of femininity, but is an avid reader and a talented writer.
Number two
Another symmetry between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng running through the whole novel has been much less discussed and is much more poorly understood: the fact that both of them are referred to as “number two”. Bǎoyù is referred to as “second master” 二爺, “second brother” 二哥哥, or “second uncle” 二叔叔, while Xīfèng is referred to as “second mistress” 二奶奶, “second sister” 二姐姐, “second sister-in-law” 二嫂子 or “second aunt” 二嬸子. Once again, linguistic parallelism has the effect of underlining the symmetry between these two characters.
By referring to Xīfèng as number two, one indicates that her husband Jiǎ Liǎn is son number two, despite the fact that in chapter 2, he is explicitly introduced as Jiǎ Shè’s oldest son 長子. This is usually explained by assuming that in the numbering of sons, cousins are counted as brothers, so that Jiǎ Zhēn in Níngguó House is son number one.[31] This would fit well with the fact that among the girls of the same generation, paternal cousins are numbered together. The problem is that Bǎoyù (whose older brother Jiǎ Zhū 賈珠 is dead) is also referred to as number two. If all male paternal cousins are numbered together, Bǎoyù ought to be number four. If only brothers are numbered together, Jiǎ Liǎn and, by implication, Xīfèng ought to be number one.[32] The fact that both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng (and, perhaps less significantly, Jiǎ Liǎn) are referred to as number two is clearly a deliberate move.
On two occasions, the author gives special emphasis to the number two, once in the case of Bǎoyù and once in the case of Xīfèng. In chapter 20, Shǐ Xiāngyún 史湘雲 is being made fun of for calling Bǎoyù “love brother” ài gēge 愛哥哥 instead of “second brother” èr gēge 二哥哥, due to her southern accent. In chapter 25, Aunt Zhào refers to Xīfèng simply by raising two fingers in the air. Again, this may indicate a deliberate use of linguistic parallelism in the number two.
Within the Jiǎ mansion, the novel clearly tends to favour second son over first son and, almost by consequence, second daughter-in-law over first daughter-in-law. Róngguó House is less corrupt than Níngguó House, Jiǎ Zhèng is less depraved than Jiǎ Shè, and Lady Wáng is less useless than Lady Xíng. Within Níngguó House, three generations of first sons (Jiǎ Jìng, Jiǎ Zhēn and Jiǎ Róng) all display an extreme egotism presumably typical of first sons.[33] Within the Xuē family, the contrast between the utterly disgusting Xuē Pán (first son) and his much more sympathetic cousin Xuē Kē 薛蝌 (second son) is a good illustration, as is the contrast between their wives: the murderous Xià Jīnguì 夏金桂 vs. the sympathetic Xíng Xiùyān 邢岫煙. This must be seen in the context of the novel’s reversal of traditional values. The wealth and power that follow from being a first son have, in this novel, a corrupting influence.
Note that the novel’s strong favouring of number two only seems to apply to sons and daughter-in-laws in the most central families living within the Jiǎ mansion. Even within the Jiǎ family, a second daughter like Yíngchūn, who is repeatedly referred to as “second young lady” 二小姐, “second sister” 二姐姐, “second girl” 二姑娘 or 二丫頭, and even “second woodblock” 二木頭 (due to her lack of reaction to external stimuli), does not seem to be preferred over her elder female cousin Yuánchūn 元春. The use of number two may have other symbolic meanings in peripheral family members like Jiǎ Yún (芸二爺) and Yóu Èrjiě 尤二姐, servants like Bāo Èr 鮑二 (and his two wives), Zhào Èr’s wife 趙二家的, Second Master Lín 林二爺 and Liǔ Èr’s wife 柳二媳婦, fantasy characters like the “second son” 二兒子 of Ms. Yóu’s joke in chapter 76, as well as a number of individual cases: the “second girl” 二丫頭 in whom Bǎoyù takes an obvious interest in chapter 15, the “second brother” 二哥 of Jiǎ Huán’s riddle in chapter 22, the moneylending drunkard Ní Èr 倪二, Jiǎ Zhèng’s scholar protegé Fù Shì (傅試, Second Master Fù 傅二爺), and the beautiful actor Liǔ Xiānglián (柳二弟, 柳二爺).
Note also that contrary to the assumptions of Ping-leung Chan (1980:168), the number two is only significant if it is explicit, i.e. if it reflects actual usage in the Chinese pái háng 排行 tradition. Chan argues that “each of the important characters [in the novel] is the second child in his or her family”, and he mentions specifically the Duke of Róngguó Jiǎ Yuán 賈源, Jiǎ Zhèng, Jiǎ Liǎn, Jiǎ Bǎoyù, Qín Zhōng, Liǔ Xiānglián, Lady Wáng, Lín Dàiyù, Xuē Bǎochāi, Xírén 襲人 and Qíngwén.[34] He overlooks the fact that in the novel’s actual usage of the number èr 二 ‘two’ in referring to characters, boys and girls are always counted separately, while siblings and cousins are sometimes counted together, especially in female family members. For instance, Bǎochāi is never referred to as number two, her older sibling Xuē Pán being male, while Bǎochāi’s younger female cousin Bǎoqín 寶琴 is: 薛二姑娘. Among the second children mentioned by Chan, Bǎochāi, Qín Zhōng, Dàiyù, Xírén and Qíngwén are never called “second brother” or “second sister” in the novel. They should therefore be left out of the discussion.
When discussing the favouring of number two, therefore, we are only talking about sons and daughter-in-laws of the most central families of the novel, and the number two always takes the actual numbering of Chinese family members into account.
The case of Xīfèng and her husband Jiǎ Liǎn is complex. Jiǎ Liǎn is in fact the first son of Jiǎ Shè, who is the first son of the Duke of Róngguó. Jiǎ Liǎn and Jiǎ Shè both behave in the same reckless way as the lascivious Jiǎ Zhēn and Jiǎ Róng, who are both first sons. Zhāng Jǐnchí (1981) argues that the reason for their licentiousness is that Jiǎ Zhēn and Jiǎ Róng belong to Níngguó House, which is the elder line of the Jiǎ family, while Jiǎ Shè and Jiǎ Liǎn belong to the elder line of Róngguó House. The wealth and power that follow from such a position, he argues, “are the sources of their sinfulness and the roots of their depravity”. However, by referring to Jiǎ Liǎn and Xīfèng as number two instead of number one, the novel creates an ambiguity. On the one hand, this implies counting Jiǎ Liǎn and Jiǎ Zhēn together and therefore draws Jiǎ Liǎn and Xīfèng closer to the perverted Níngguó line of the family. On the other hand, it places them in the more favoured category of second sons and daughter-in-laws. More specifically, it places them in a symmetric relation to Bǎoyù. Both of them, and especially Xīfèng, seem to hover freely between the novel’s spheres of sympathy and antipathy.
In fact, Bǎoyù’s position is also ambiguous. While he is a second son and a fourth cousin, he is in reality the one who is poised to take over the whole family fortune, probably due to his poetic talents, his good looks and the mysterious jade with which he was born. More than any other family member, therefore, he has the role of a first son, and he is certainly treated like one. In many ways, he also behaves just as recklessly and irresponsibly as the real first sons, not caring a dot about the gigantic tasks awaiting him. Although his sensitivity and empathy with the girls in the garden make the reader feel sympathy with him, the novel often hints at his uselessness. For instance, when asked what would happen if she were a man who had to keep the household in order, his female cousin Yíngchūn complains:
There are plenty of men who … are no better at dealing with things than I.
多少男人尚如此，何況我哉！
(chapter 73)
At that moment, Bǎoyù enters the room, making it clear to the reader of whom she is talking.[35]
While the novel’s almost constant sympathy for Bǎoyù is in line with his appellation as “number two”, his self-centredness is more in line with his actual role as inheritor of the family fortunes, as “number one”. While I noted above that the narrator’s critical attitude towards Bǎoyù is ironic, and that the underlying attitude of the text is one of sympathy, there may be yet another layer of irony here, making the narrator look, in the end, more realistic than the voices of sympathy.
In spite of her designation as “number two”, Xīfèng’s role in the family is of course also that of a “number one”. This is due to a number of abdications. Her father-in-law Jiǎ Shè, who ought to be the head of the family, has left these powers to his younger brother Jiǎ Zhèng, leaving Jiǎ Zhèng’s wife Lady Wáng in charge of household matters. Lady Wáng, in turn, has turned most of her powers over to Xīfèng, who is both her carnal and in-law niece. Since the men in the family, including the nominal head Jiǎ Zhèng, have little interest in household matters, Xīfèng’s powers grow by the day. And because no-one in Níngguó House is able to take charge of the funeral arrangements for Qín Kěqīng, Xīfèng is asked to do so (at the suggestion of Bǎoyù), thus extending her power to both lines of the family.
Both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, therefore, though nominally “number two”, are in fact “number one”. To a very large extent, they owe their position to the fact that both are the eyestones of Grandmother Jiǎ 賈母, who still has the last word in family matters. This enables both of them to behave according to their own agenda without being restrained by others, much in line with what has been said above about the reasons for the recklessness of elder sons and their wives. In the case of Bǎoyù, this is stated plainly:
… because Grandmother Jiǎ doted on him so much, no one ever dared to correct him.
外祖母又極溺愛，無人敢管。
(chapter 3)
… he is Her Old Ladyship’s darling … Sir Zhèng used to try and do something with him, but [now he no longer dares to].
老太太的寶貝，老爺先還管，如今也不敢管了。
(chapter 66)
In the case of Xīfèng, her being spoiled by Grandmother Jiǎ and therefore unrestrained in her behaviour and comments is mentioned several times, though always in a humorous way:
[You’re an over-indulged] monkey! Make fun of me, would you? I’d like to tear that wicked mouth of yours!
這猴兒慣的了不得了，只管拿我取笑起來，恨的我撕你那油嘴。
(chapter 38)
It’s because you indulge her so much that she is so cheeky, Mother … By saying things like that to her you will make her even worse.
老太太因為喜歡他，才慣的他這樣，還這樣說，他明兒越發無禮了。
(chapter 38)
It’s because Grandmother spoils her so much that she has become the way she is, [even yelling at me!]
都是老太太慣的他，他才這樣，連我也罵起來了！
(chapter 44)
While Grandmother Jiǎ seems to be at least half aware that Bǎoyù is not the kind of responsible person his role as future inheritor requires (though most of the time she turns a blind eye), she seems completely blind to Xīfèng’s excesses. She insists that Xīfèng is not the kind of reckless young person 不是那不知高低的孩子 (chapter 38), and that she has a good sense of propriety (最有禮 chapter 44; 知禮 chapter 71). It is Grandmother Jiǎ’s blindness and protection that enable both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng to disregard normal rules of propriety to such an extent. Hence, Dàiyù’s observation in chapter 3 about both of them being less than well-behaved is more significant than the reader realises so early in the novel.
Both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are unusually beautiful and talented, and both are duly admired for this. But while it seems that this admiration is an obvious thing to Bǎoyù, something that he can afford not to care about, to Xīfèng it is something for which she has to constantly fight and be on her guard. Here lies the root to many of the personality differences between the two.
Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are, of course, not the only characters in the novel referred to as “number two”, but they are the only characters in which the contrast between this designation and their actual position as “number one” is so obvious.
Love, lust and death
The parallel importance of Xīfèng and Bǎoyù is also shown by the fact that the eight characters in the first 80 chapters of the novel who die for or from or at least partly because of love, all have a special relation to one or both of them. In most of these cases, either Xīfèng or Bǎoyù can actually be seen as partly guilty of their deaths.[36]
Let us start with the two male characters, Jiǎ Ruì and Qín Zhōng. In chapter 12, Jiǎ Ruì, who has fallen in love with Xīfèng, is tricked by her a number of times and in the end falls sick and dies. In chapter 16, Qín Zhōng falls ill and dies after an erotic encounter with the young nun Zhìnéng 智能 during a stay at Wheat-cake Priory 饅頭庵. Both stories go beyond a purely realistic mode of description. On a realistic level, however, Jiǎ Ruì’s illness is caused by his having twice been left out in the cold during the night as well as by the various pressures caused by his grandfather’s strictness, his monetary debts, his longing for Xīfèng, and probably also the – in the common view of the time – unhealthy habit of masturbation; while Qín Zhōng’s illness is caused by a cold incurred during the outing to the Wheat-cake Priory as well as the physical disharmony incurred by his affair with Zhìnéng. In the case of Jiǎ Ruì, Xīfèng comes very close to being directly responsible for his death, since it is her tricks that leave him out in the cold during the night, and since she refuses to provide him with the ginseng that people believe might have cured him. In the case of Qín Zhōng, neither Xīfèng nor his best friend Bǎoyù are directly responsible for his death, but by bringing him out to the Wheat-cake Priory, they provide him with the opportunity to come close to Zhìnéng and thereby to death.
Qín Kěqīng’s death in chapter 13, which also goes beyond a purely realistic mode of description, is either due to an illness with pregnancy-like symptoms (and thus somehow sexually related) or to her own suicide due to the shame incurred by her incestuous relation to her father-in-law. As we have seen above, both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng have a special relationship to her, and on the night of her death, we get detailed descriptions of the reactions of both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng. Bǎoyù’s relationship to Kěqīng is unusually erotically charged (and thus psychologically and symbolically related to her death), while Xīfèng’s relationship to Kěqīng is unusually intimate and friendly.
In chapter 32, the maid Jīnchuàn 金釧 kills herself by jumping into a well after having been sent away for having uttered flirtatious words to Bǎoyù. In fact, Bǎoyù was the one who started the flirt. When it turns out that his mother, who was sleeping beside them, had in fact heard all they said, he runs away and lets Jīnchuàn alone take the consequences. She later appears in his dream telling him that she jumped into the well because of him.
In chapter 44, the servant Bāo Èr’s wife hangs herself after Xīfèng discovers her sexual relation to Jiǎ Liǎn.
In chapter 66, Yóu Sānjiě kills herself with one of the two swords Liǔ Xiānglián has given her as a pledge of marriage, after he wants to break the relation mainly because his close friend Bǎoyù has inadvertently made him realise that she has in the past had sexual encounters with Jiǎ Zhēn.
In chapter 69, her sister Yóu Èrjiě kills herself by swallowing gold after her love for Jiǎ Liǎn has brought her into the same household as his first wife Wáng Xīfèng, who in effect tortures her to death.
In chapter 77, Qíngwén, who is already sick, becomes even sicker and eventually dies after her pretty looks and close relation to Bǎoyù make Bǎoyù’s mother dismiss her for fear that Bǎoyù “were to be corrupted by a little harpy like that” 叫這蹄子勾引壞了 (chapter 74). While this is hardly Bǎoyù’s fault, his early threats to dismiss Qíngwén and his prediction that ”??” 將來有散的日子 (chapter 31) link his own behaviour inextricably to her sad fate.
In spite of some suggestions of erotically laden relations to Jiǎ Róng and Bǎoyù, the novel contains no conclusive evidence that Xīfèng ever has extramarital sexual relations. Her principal vice is her greed for power and wealth rather than carnal lust or, for that matter, romantic love. Superficially, Bǎoyù is quite different. He is the romantic lover par excellence and is often carried away by his attachment to his many objects of infatuation. In fact, he seems no less guilty of improper romantic attachment than, for instance, Jīnchuàn or Qíngwén. In contrast to them, however, he does not die. The reason is probably that his lust is a very special lust of the mind rather than one of the flesh, and in spite of his extreme infatuation with the girls in the garden and a few boys as well, the novel contains no conclusive evidence that his romantic feelings ever develop into consummated carnal love, except in the episode with Xírén, where a sexual relation is not conceived to be beyond propriety. In the words of the fairy Jǐnghuàn, he belongs to the few fated ones 有緣者 who are able to cross over the Ford of Error 迷津 without falling into it. In relation to the dangers of love and lust, therefore, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are more closely related than usually realised. Both of them are able throughout the novel to keep their distance from the dangers that lead to the deaths of Jiǎ Ruì, Qín Zhōng, Qín Kěqīng, Jīnchuàn, Bāo Èr’s wife, Yóu Sānjiě, Yóu Èrjiě, and Qíngwén.
From a psychological point of view, the fictional description of illicit love is most plausibly seen as a means to attain vicarious satisfaction of desire. When, as in the cases discussed here, love leads to death, this satisfaction is combined with the suppression of the very same desire. The reader is invited to satisfy his desire and kill it almost simultaneously.
By having an ambiguous relation to illicit desire, one that must never lead to explicit sexuality, both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are somehow required to suppress, or in other words kill, their desire. They do so by helping to kill some of the lustful characters of the novel. Both Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are killers, the difference being that Xīfèng actively and intentionally drives lustful people to death, while Bǎoyù does so without even realising it himself. The deaths of Jiǎ Ruì, Bāo Èr’s wife and Yóu Èrjiě are direct results of Xīfèng’s actions, though with varying degrees of intentionality, while the deaths of Jīnchuàn, Yóu Sānjiě and Qíngwén are largely brought about because of Bǎoyù’s carelessness, though there is no sign that he ever himself feels responsible. Although the reader tends to feel sympathy for Bǎoyù and antipathy towards Xīfèng, the novel indicates that the affinity between them is much stronger than usually assumed, one difference being that Xīfèng takes responsibility for her actions while Bǎoyù does not.
Growing apart
It is primarily in the section describing their relation to Níngguó House (chapters 7-16) and in the sorcery passage (chapter 25) that Bǎoyù and Xīfèng operate together. In the rest of the novel, they do see each other now and then, but basically belong to different worlds, that of the garden and that of the larger mansion.
One of most conspicuous signs that Bǎoyù and Xīfèng have come to belong to different worlds is their absence in each other’s birthday parties. When Xīfèng’s birthday party commences in chapter 43, Bǎoyù has secretly gone to the Temple of the Water Spirit 水仙庵 to mark the anniversary of Jīnchuàn’s death instead. When Bǎoyù’s birthday party is celebrated in chapters 62-63, Xīfèng is absent due to her illness. Bǎoyù’s birthday party is in some ways a mirror image of the earlier party for Xīfèng, though on a smaller and less formal scale. As in her party, the bill is split between the participants. And like the party for Xīfèng, the one for Bǎoyù marks both a climax and the onset of decline for the person celebrated. Xīfèng’s party is not yet over when she discovers her husband in bed with another woman, and after the party one problem after another heaps up in her life. Bǎoyù’s celebrations are still going on when the message of Jiǎ Jìng’s death arrives, preparing the ground for the events that eventually destroy the illusion of innocence in the garden.
Although their absence in each other’s birthday party marks the growing personal distance between them, the structural relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng continues to exist throughout the novel. For instance, when Bǎoyù finally arrives at Xīfèng’s birthday party, one of the maids exclaims:
The phoenix has arrived. (my translation)
鳳凰來了。
And the narrator confirms:
Everybody looked as if a phoenix really had come to visit. (my translation)
眾人真如得了鳳凰一般。
By referring to Bǎoyù as a phoenix 鳳凰 in the context of the birthday party of Xīfèng 熙鳳, the structural link between the two is emphasised.
Similar indications of a structural relation between the two exist in many parts of the novel where they do not even appear in the same plots. For instance, during the building of the Prospect Garden and the reception of the Imperial Concubine, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are not closely linked plot-wise, and in chapter 19, only Bǎoyù is a central person, while Xīfèng has no role at all. Still, at the very beginning of the chapter, a short description of Xīfèng is included, seemingly for no other reason than to provide a structural parallel to Bǎoyù:
Xīfèng’s duties and responsibilities were so many that she could not evade them and seek recuperation in rest and quiet as the others did. At the same time, however, the anxiety to be thought well of and the shrinking fear of criticism that were a part of her nature made her take pains, even when she was at her busiest, to appear outwardly as idle and unoccupied as the rest. Of those idle and unoccupied rest, the idlest and most unoccupied was Bǎoyù.
第一個鳳姐事多任重，別人或可偷安躲靜，獨他是不能脫得的；二則本性要強，不肯落人褒貶，只扎掙著與無事的人一樣。第一個寶玉是極無事最閑暇的。
Linguistically, the repetition of 第一個 sounds strange almost to the point of ungrammaticality, but exactly because of its awkwardness, it directs our attention to the parallel between Xīfèng and Bǎoyù and to the contrast between their opposite personalities.
Another example occurs in chapter 49, at the very peak of the boisterous life in the garden. After a number of new girls have arrived and joined the garden’s original inhabitants, we are again reminded of the special relation between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng and their special role in the garden:
The Garden’s society was now larger and livelier than it had ever been before. Headed by Lǐ Wán, it included Yíngchūn, Tànchūn, Xíchūn, Bǎochāi, Dàiyù, Xiāngyún, Lǐ Wén, Lǐ Qǐ, Bǎoqín, Xíng Xiùyān, and then Xīfèng and Bǎoyù, altogether thirteen people. (my translation)
此時大觀園中比先更熱鬧了多少。李紈為首，餘者迎春、探春、惜春、寶釵、黛玉、湘雲、李紋、李綺、寶琴、邢岫煙，再添上鳳姐兒和寶玉，一共十三個。
This enumeration is remarkable in two ways. First of all, Xīfèng does not live in the garden and should not have been included at all.[37] Second, if included, her status as a married and responsible woman should place her at the beginning, along with the responsible widow Lǐ Wán 李紈. Instead, she and Bǎoyù are mentioned together at the very end of the passage. In fact, of course, it is they and not Lǐ Wán who stand at the head of life in the garden, Bǎoyù being the centre around which life in the garden revolves and Xīfèng being the one who provides the economic and practical basis for life in the garden to flourish.
The parallel importance of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng is also evident when Tànchūn takes over the management of the garden during Xīfèng’s illness. In chapter 62, Bǎoyù complains that Tànchūn singles out him and Xīfèng for particularly strict treatment:
And she cut down on a lot of things too – mostly things that Fèng or I had asked for, as an awful example to the others.
又觸了幾件事，單拿我和鳳姐姐作筏子禁別人。
In order to make clear that she is not going to tolerate any deviances—not even from the most influential persons—Tànchūn finds ways to reprimand both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng.
During Jiǎ Jìng’s funeral in chapter 64, Xīfèng and Bǎoyù are often mentioned together:
Throughout this period Bǎoyù too was expected to put on mourning and go over every day to Ning-guo House to spend the whole day there beside the coffin. Xi-feng was not well enough to go over daily, but on days when there were sūtra-readings and the callers were numerous, she would drag herself over and lend Yóu-shi a hand in entertaining the wives.
寶玉亦每日在寧府穿孝，至晚人散，方回園裡。鳳姐身體未愈，雖不能時常在此，或遇開壇誦經，親友打祭之日，亦扎掙過來，相幫尤氏料理。
In the same chapter, Bǎoyù first pays a visit to Xīfèng, before visiting Dàiyù, where he is joined by Bǎochāi. It is as if the novel wants to remind us of its most important structural and personal relations: Bǎoyù—Xīfèng and Bǎoyù—Dàiyù—Bǎochāi.
Thus, although they appear less often together, Bǎoyù and Xīfèng continue to act as the two pillars of The Red Chamber Dream, at least in the first 80 chapters.
What about the now lost drafts to parts of the novel following after chapter 80? There is a remote possibility that both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, in a manuscript that was lost during the writing process, spend time together in the Temple of the Prison God and thus constitute a structural pair until close to the end of the novel.
In the case of Bǎoyù, the Red Inkstone commentary refers to a passage about a maid “comforting Bǎoyù in the Temple of the Prison God” 獄神廟慰寶玉.[38] There is little doubt that he spends time there, though the implication of this is uncertain.[39]
In the case of Xīfèng, however, it is not at all certain that she ever spends time in the Temple of the Prison God. The fact that her maid Hóngyù is there, might be taken to indicate that Xīfèng is also there, but Xīfèng herself is not mentioned, and Hóngyù’s presence is mainly seen as an advantage to Bǎoyù, not to Xīfèng. The fact that Xīfèng’s daughter is there,[40] might also be taken to indicate the presence of Xīfèng, but again she is not mentioned. Since she has been ill for a long time and has repeatedly been predicted to be shortlived, she might be dead before the chapter relating the events in the Temple of the Prison God.
If both Bǎoyù and Xīfèng spend time in the Temple of the Prison God, this means that they constitute a structural pair until very close to the end of the novel. It seems just as likely, however, that Xīfèng is dead, and that Bǎoyù’s role as main character is by now uncontested.
Love and aggression
As he appears in the famous introductory passage in chapter 1,[41] the author shares many traits with Bǎoyù: growing up in a protected environment (?? 錦衣紈袴之時,飫甘饜肥之日), failing to heed the advice of more orthodox voices (?? 背父兄教育之恩，負師友規談之德), feeling admiration for young and innocent girls (?? 覺其行止見識,皆出於我之上) and, in comparison, contempt for his own masculinity (“for all my masculine dignity, [I] fell short of the gentler sex” 何我堂堂鬚眉，誠不若此裙釵哉？), and later ending up in impoverished conditions (in “a thatched cottage with matting windows, earthen stove and rope-bed” 茅椽蓬牖、瓦灶繩床). It is natural to conclude, as many scholars have done, that Bǎoyù is at least a partial representation of the author, his main channel of self-expression.
This chapter has attempted to take the notion of self-expression one step further, by insisting that even characters for whom the novel expresses less sympathy, and who are, on the surface, very different from both Bǎoyù and the author, may still be fruitfully analysed as expressions of the same self. As in the psychoanalytic approach to dreams, what appears to be the other is in fact a representation of the self. The complex relationship between spheres of sympathy and spheres of antipathy may be seen as an expression of inner discord, a dissonance within that self.
The two pillars Bǎoyù and Xīfèng are leading figures in what Yu Ying-shih (1978) has called “the two worlds of The Red Chamber Dream”, worlds, however, that turn out to be much more intimately connected than what seems to be the case at first sight. On the surface, for instance, the world of Bǎoyù and the girls is built on romantic ideals of purity, to which the ubiquity of pollution and filthiness (including both the lustfulness of male lechers and Xīfèng’s greed for power) outside the garden constitutes an external threat. As Yu points out, however, the seeds of destruction are already present in the garden itself, since it is built on “dirty” ground, the old gardens of the Níngguó and Róngguó houses, where many acts of licentiousness have been performed. This ties in well with Bǎoyù’s admission that “perhaps I’m none too clean myself” 連我也未必乾淨了.
I have primarily wanted to investigate the various psychological layers of the text. Presumably, these layers are reflections of the author’s mind, and they are also the foundation on which the reader’s reactions to the novel are built. My focus, however, has been on the text itself, and external evidence about the author or his readers plays no major role in my argument.
In particular, this chapter has looked into the role of Wáng Xīfèng and the tilted symmetry between her and Bǎoyù. Formally, their relation is emphasised by the use of different forms of parallelism: linguistic, structural, narrative, characterisational and relational. But these formal features underline the deeper thematic and, in our context most importantly, psychological significance of their relation.
Bǎoyù stands at the head of the theme of love, clearly conceptualised in the novel as qíng 情, and its dangerous association with lust. His close relation to Níngguó House, the Qín siblings and the Yóu sisters forces us to ask whether his “love of the mind” is not in fact less innocent than it first seems. His love is clearly related to the transgressive lust of the Qín siblings, the Yóu sisters and other characters who die from the combination of love and lust, as well as to loveless lechers like Jiǎ Zhēn, Jiǎ Róng, Jiǎ Shè, Jiǎ Liǎn and Xuē Pán, for whom the novel offers little sympathy. The ambiguities of Bǎoyù’s relation to love and lust provide a bridge between the spheres of sympathy and antipathy.
In the life of Xīfèng, love is not a dominant theme, though present in an almost quotidian way. Her feelings for her husband seem genuine enough (even if partly motivated by the fact that her position in the family depends on him), and the two are the only married couple into whose love life the novel gives us a tiny glimpse. However, while she may have erotically laden relations to several young men in the family, and while her close relation to Níngguó House and especially Qín Kěqīng brings her dangerously close to the theme of lust, there is no hard evidence that she ever has an extra-marital affair. On the contrary, the way she tackles Jiǎ Ruì’s improper advances probably shows that in her case, the dangers of lust are usually fought off with fierce and cunning violence.[42]
Instead, Xīfèng stands at the head of another less well-defined, but almost equally important theme, that of aggression. I use the word aggression in a wide sense, covering everything from friendly teasing, ambitious enterprise, and the courage to cut through, to malicious manipulation, mad outbursts of jealousy, and murderous brutality. To my knowledge, no single Chinese concept covers this range of meaning, but in creating the character Xīfèng, the author clearly sees a link between her endearing qualities and her terrifying ones. The reader is at times taken in by her intense charm, at other times disgusted with her callous cruelty, but in both cases, her aggression plays a crucial role. The theme of aggression, therefore, stands right in between the spheres of sympathy and antipathy, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other.
In most parts of the novel, Bǎoyù is a remarkably unaggressive person, so much that some of the older women in the household find him ridiculous:
And he’s as soft as a baby. Even the little maids can do what they like with him.
連一點剛性也沒有，連那些毛丫頭的氣都受得。
(chapter 35)
There are, however, a couple of notable exceptions. In chapter 30, he kicks and hurts his principal maid Xírén (without knowing it is her) when she fails to open the door for him (without knowing it is him) during the rain, and in chapter 31, he yells at and threatens to expel his favorite maid Qíngwén from the household for her rude comments. These reactions seem strangely out of character and are reminders of deeper layers of unrecognised aggression. Significantly, this happens at more or less the same time as one of the incidents in which he unintentionally causes another person’s death. By flirting with Jīnchuàn, he provokes his mother to expel her in chapter 30, eventually leading Jīnchuàn to commit suicide in chapter 32. As is often the case, Bǎoyù’s unintentional provocations prove just as disastrous as Xīfèng’s intentional aggressive behaviour.
Although Bǎoyù is devastated when Qíngwén is expelled and dies in chapter 77, his earlier threats towards her point to a usually well-hidden destructive streak in his personality. Qíngwén’s expulsion and death may be seen as a repetition of Jīnchuàn’s expulsion and death, which is more directly caused by Bǎoyù’s careless behaviour. In both cases, Lady Wáng’s almost uncontrollable anger is provoked by what she conceives as a maidservant’s attempt at seducing Bǎoyù. The text even states twice that Qíngwén’s case “reminds [Lady Wáng] of things in the past” 觸動往事; 勾起往事 (chapter 74), and this over-explicit reference to the past most plausibly refers to the case of Jīnchuàn.[43] The parallel between the two incidents is underlined by the fact that Bǎoyù arranges his own private mourning ceremonies for both Jīnchuàn (chapter 43) and Qíngwén (chapter 78). Most notably, Bǎoyù’s role in both relations is much more active than either Lady Wáng or Bǎoyù himself seems to recognise. It is he who begins to flirt with Jīnchuàn in chapter 30, and his advances to Qíngwén in chapter 31 are so improper that she feels compelled to reprimand him. In both cases, therefore, it is arguably Bǎoyù who intiates the chain of events that leads to the death of the maids.
The two themes of love/lust and aggression/violence are connected. As noted above, stories of illicit love and its deadly consequences may act as a means to attain vicarious satisfaction of desire and the simultaneous suppression or repression of the very same desire. The way Xīfèng fights off the dangers of lust with fierce and cunning violence in the story of Jiǎ Ruì is a case in point. While Bǎoyù appears to be a much milder sort of person, his threats towards Qíngwén and his implication in the deaths of her and Jīnchuàn point to a more sinister aspect of his character as well. The seemingly innocent love characteristic of his relation to the girls in the garden is built upon a denial (rather than harsh repression, as in the case of Xīfèng) of carnal lust. The role of Jīnchuàn and Qíngwén in Bǎoyù’s life is parallel to the role of Jiǎ Ruì in the life of Xīfèng, only that Bǎoyù’s own contribution to their deaths is never recognised by himself.
After a number of unfortunate incidents culminating in her abortion of a male foetus and her ensuing illness in chapter 55, there are signs that Xīfèng begins a slow process of self-reflection, as witnessed by her comments to Píng’ér about riding a tiger and about her own responsibility for her illness. In chapter 55, she seeks to look through the emptiness of her vain struggle, and she actually uses the Buddhist term kàn pò 看破:
Even if I look through the emptiness of this, there is no way to immediately relax my grip. (my translation)
雖然看破些，無奈一時也難寬放。
In chapter 72, Píng’ér uses the same term in complaining that Xīfèng has failed to reform:
She is unwilling to look through things and take care of her health instead. (my translation)
自己再不肯看破些且養身子 。
Once again, Xīfèng uses the same term when, two chapters later, proclaiming that she is ready to give up her former life:
By now I have looked through things. Let them quarrel. Anyway, there are many other people who can put things in order. (my translation)
如今我也看破了，隨他們鬧去罷，橫豎還有許多人呢。
When Lady Wáng begins the search of the garden and the purge of Qíngwén, Xīfèng is clearly against it, though she feels compelled to participate. The violence she has directed towards others is now dangerously close to being directed at her, both because she is, for a while, suspected of being the owner of a purse with a pornographic illustration found in the garden and because she sees herself as the protector of the girls in the garden, who are now under scrutiny. Unfortunately, it seems her self-reflection comes too late to save her from disaster.
Bǎoyù’s propensity for psychological denial is not a good basis for self-reflection. He is, for instance, loath to admit his own partial responsibility for the tragic fate of a girl like Jīnchuàn. In his lack of self-reproach, he is in sharp contrast with his mother, who feels guilt (罪過; 心不安) for the death of Jīnchuàn. Even when Jīnchuàn enters his dream and gives him a tearful account of how she drowned herself for his sake, Bǎoyù “in his half-dreaming, half-awake state did not care” 半夢半醒，都不在意 (chapter 34, part in italics translated by me). Throughout the whole novel, Bǎoyù never expresses a sense of guilt or self-reproach. He is simply oblivious to his own contribution to other people’s tragedies.
There is only one single exception. It comes in chapter 77, after a number of maids and actresses have been driven out of the garden by Lady Wáng. In what he says, Bǎoyù’s focus is on Qíngwén, and he seems to suggest that Xírén is to blame for Qíngwén’s fate. But in the heat of the argument, he makes a rare confession when he admits partial responsibility for Lady Wáng’s purge of the maidservant Sì’ér 四兒:
Sì’ér’s unpopularity I blame myself for. It dates from that time when you and I had quarrelled about something and I allowed her to wait on me in your place. The others must have resented my giving her special treatment, and that, ultimately, must be the reason for what has happened to her today.
四兒是我誤了他，還是那年我和你拌嘴的那日起，叫上來作些細活，未免奪占了地位，故有今日。
This is the only instance in which Bǎoyù expresses at least a tiny little tinge of self-reproach. Perhaps he is, like Xīfèng, taking his first step towards self-reflection.
The author’s words of self-criticism at the very beginning of the novel have prompted Yú Píngbó (1988:182) to conclude that “The Red Chamber Dream was written as a confessional repenting a life of romantic love” 《紅樓夢》是情場懺悔而作的. This conclusion is based on the assumption that the romantic Bǎoyù is a representation of the author. It seems to be partly shared by Red Inkstone, who repeatedly refers to the novel as a book about remorse 自悔 or embarrassment at oneself 自愧 (Chén Qìnghào 1986:228). The element of self-reproach arguably so manifest in the author, however, has been almost clinically erased in Bǎoyù, the only exception being his remark about Sì’ér.
If, as I have suggested, an analysis of The Red Chamber Dream as a novel of self-expression must go beyond Bǎoyù and other immediately sympathetic characters, this is even more true if the work is seen as a novel of self-reflection. Self-reflection implies the acknowledgement of aspects of oneself that are not immediately pleasant and do not necessarily inspire sympathy. The role of Wáng Xīfèng is interesting primarily because it links features inspiring deep sympathy and intense admiration with features provoking disgust and horror. The tilted symmetry between her and Jiǎ Bǎoyù produce an even more complex web of relations between areas of sympathy and antipathy.
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[1] See, for instance, the work of the pioneers in the field, Hú Shì 胡適 (1988:75-120) and Yú Píngbó 俞平伯 (1988:69-324).
[2] ?《紅樓夢》這部書是曹雪芹的自敘傳? (Hú Shì 1988:98).
[3] ?甄、賈兩寶玉，即是曹雪芹自己的化身? (Hú Shì 1988:108).
[4] This is in line with the observation made by Martin Huang (1995:6) that “the age that witnessed the decline of formal autobiographical writings [starting in the late 17th century] also saw a steady rise of autobiographical tendencies in the novel”.
[5] See, for instance, Zhū Dànwén (1992:195-259), Chén Qìnghào (1994), Zhōu Sīyuán (1998), Martin Huang (2001:271-314), Maram Epstein (2001:174).
[6] Luó Shūhuá (1998a:297) is the only one I know of to claim that “in the whole book, more ink is perhaps spent describing Fèngjiě [i.e. Wáng Xīfèng] than Bǎoyù”, and Luó does not substantiate this claim.
[7] (Wáng) Xīfèng (王)熙鳳, Fèngjiě(r) 鳳姐(兒), Fènggē(r) 鳳哥(兒), Fèng làzi 鳳辣子, Fèng gūniang 鳳姑娘, Fèng yātou 鳳丫頭, Fèng ér 鳳兒, Liǎn èr nǎinai 璉二奶奶. Instances in which she is referred to as just nǎinai 奶奶, èr nǎinai 二奶奶 or other less individualised expressions are not counted.
[8] (Lín) Dàiyù (林)黛玉, Lín mèimei 林妹妹, Lín gūniang 林姑娘, Lín yātou 林丫頭, Xiāoxiāng fēizǐ 瀟湘妃子, Pín’ér 顰兒, Pín-pín 顰顰, Pín yātou 顰丫頭, Pín qīng 顰卿. Instances in which she is referred to as just mèimei 妹妹 or other less individualised expressions are not counted.
[9] (Jiǎ) Bǎoyù (賈)寶玉, Bǎo èryé 寶二爺, Bǎo gēge 寶哥哥, Bǎo xiōngdì.
[10] Cf. Yee 1990:638; Luó Shūhuá 1998a:297f.
[11] For a thorough analysis of this chapter, see Zēng Yánghuá (1981).
[12] Cf. Luó Shūhuá 1998a:298.
[13] We also get a description of Dàiyù as seen through Bǎoyù’s eyes:
Her mist-wreathed brows at first seemed to frown, yet were not frowning;
Her passionate eyes at first seemed to smile, yet were not merry.
Habit had given a melancholy cast to her tender face;
Nature had bestowed a sickly constitution on her delicate frame.
Often the eyes swam with glistening tears;
Often the breath came in gentle gasps.
In stillness she made one think of a graceful flower reflected in the water;
In motion she called to mind tender willow shoots caressed by the wind.
She had more chambers in her heart than the martyred Bǐ Gān;
And suffered a tithe more pain than the beautiful Xī Shī.
兩彎似蹙非蹙罥煙眉，
一雙似喜非喜含露目。
態生兩靨之愁，
嬌襲一身之病。
淚光點點，
嬌喘微微。
閑靜時，如姣花照水；
行動處，似弱柳扶風。
心較比干多一竅，
病如西子勝三分。
In Dàiyù’s case, however, there is no description of clothing or jewellery, as if to emphasise that she is pure spirit. In addition to the characters mentioned, the chapter also gives a very brief description of Grandmother Jiǎ: a silver-haired old lady 一位鬢髮如銀的老母.
[14] On descriptions of facial features in The Story of the Stone, see Eifring (1999).
[15] Note that in the language of Red Inkstone, creating ironic contrasts is regularly referred to as “deceiving the reader” 瞞(過)看官. On many occasions, the commentator delights in pointing out how the author deceives the reader and in warning the reader against being deceived:
Once again he uses illusory writing to deceive the reader.
又用幻筆瞞過看官
Chén Qìnghào 1986:419, 1760 庚辰 edition
The reader should not be deceived by the author!
觀者萬不可被作者瞞弊(蔽)了去
Chén Qìnghào 1986:12, 1754 edition
While playful literary deceit is something quite different from Xīfèng’s cunning and often cruel trickery, it is also at odds with Bǎoyù’s naīve and at times self-important sincerity. The novel’s use of irony, therefore, adds to the complexity of its attitude towards the opposition between authenticity and duplicity.
[16] Píng’ér, who is both Xīfèng’s chambermaid and Jiǎ Liǎn’s concubine, insists that Xīfèng, as opposed to Jiǎ Liǎn, is faithful:
She’s every right to watch you … and you’ve no right at all to be jealous of her. She’s always been perfectly straight and above board where men are concerned; but you - whatever you do you’ve got something nasty in mind! You make even me worried, never mind about her!
他醋你使得，你醋他使不得。他原行的正走的正；你行動便有個壞心，連我也不放心，別說他了。
[17] Cf. Yee (1986:164).
[18] On daughters-in-law as motifs of decay and the parallellism between Xīfèng and Kěqīng, see Edwards (1994:82f. and 86).
[19] He is also mentioned twice in chapter 18, and without name in chapter 2.
[20] Sometimes called 彩雲, though at other times the two names are used for different characters, see Féng Qíyōng & Lǐ Xīfán (1990:736f.)
[21] In his translation, David Hawkes actually puts this remark in the mouth of the Buddhist monk, but there is no textual basis for this.
[22] After they part with each other in chapter 1, the monk and the Daoist seem to practise a rough division of labour, the monk mainly offering cures (to Dàiyù in chapter 3, Bǎochāi in chapter 8 and Bǎoyù/Xīfèng in the chapter under discussion here), the Daoist mainly offering company to those who are ready to break with the world of dust (Zhēn Shìyǐn 甄士隱 in chapter 1 and Liǔ Xiānglián in chapter 66, though in chapter 12 he offers Jiǎ Ruì a cure), and the monk being chiefly concerned with the triangular love affair between Bǎoyù, Dàiyù and Bǎochāi, while the Daoist is chiefly concerned with Precious Mirror themes (except Zhēn Shìyǐn). A Red Inkstone commentary to chapter 25 states:
The monk goes with Xīfèng, the Daoist with Bǎoyù.
僧因鳳姐，道因寶玉
Chén Qìnghào 1986:492
This, however, carries this division of labour a bit too far, and the main point seems to be that the cooccurrence of the monk and the Daoist underlines the pairing of Bǎoyù and Xīfèng, no matter who goes with whom.
[23] Translation by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang; bracketed additions by me.
[24] The Chinese sentence, of course, does not distinguish between singular and plural of the word “bed”, nor does it say explicitly that they were lying in their own beds, or that their burning bodies were actually hot due to fever.
[25] For an interpretation of this little incident, see Huang (2001:290f.).
[26] On the relationship between Bǎoyù and Xīfèng on the one hand and Jiǎ Yún and Hóngyù on the other, see also Luó Shūhuá (1998a:310-11) and Yee (1990:644f.).
[27] See Yee 1986 and 1990; Edwards 1997:37ff. and 68ff.; Luó Shūhuá 1998a; Epstein 2001; Huang 1995:88ff.
[28] See the novel’s chapter 2 and Yú Píngbó (1988:1019).
[29] Used in chapters 6, 7, 35, 39, 57, 75. While in Xīfèng’s case, this childhood name adds to the impression of masculinity, however, the novel often uses the character(s) 哥(兒) (lit. ‘elder brother’) in childhood names and maidservant names without any obvious implication of masculinity: 金哥 (ch. 15), 巧哥兒 (ch. 42), 鸚哥(兒) (ch. 3 et passim), 彩哥兒 (ch. 45).
[30] Note, though, that Miss Dēng’s sexuality is much more explicitly aggressive in the printed 1791 edition 程甲本, where the whole scene has been completely rewritten, presumably by Gāo È 高鶚. Both David Hawkes’ translation and Martin Huang’s treatment of this scene are based on the 1791 edition rather than Cáo Xuěqín’s original text.
[31] See, e.g., under 二哥哥 in Zhōu Dìngyī (1995:220).
[32] Jiǎ Zhū’s widow Lǐ Wán 李紈 is referred to as “first mistress” 大奶奶 (chapter 44). This is consistent with the fact that Bǎoyù is number two, but again inconsistent with the assumption that male paternal cousins are numbered together, since Jiǎ Zhū’s male paternal cousin Jiǎ Zhēn is also number one, and his wife Ms. Yóu is consequently referred to as “first mistress” 大奶奶 just like Lǐ Wán.
[33] Qín Kěqīng seems to provide an exception to the rule that first daughter-in-laws are useless, though there are many ambiguities surrounding her person.
[34] Chan proposes that “the author seems to suggest that every thing must have its counterpart”.
[35] Cf. Huang (1995:93f.).
[36] Three additional deaths have not been included in the discussion, since we do not meet the characters involved directly, but only hear of them through others. This applies to Féng Yuān 馮淵, whose death has nothing to do with either Bǎoyù or Xīfèng, and Jīn-gē 金哥 and her fiancé, who kill themselves after Xīfèng has wielded her power to make Jīn-gē’s parents break the engagement.
[37] In his translation, David Hawkes has clearly been uneasy about including Xīfèng among the garden inhabitants, and has made his own little addition with no basis in the original text, saying that the garden numbered thirteen people “if you counted Xi-feng as an honorary member”. Part of the reason why Xīfèng is included is probably the desire to make the garden consist of Bǎoyù plus twelve female characters, as a structural reflection of the Twelve Beauties of Jīnlíng 金陵十二釵 introduced in chapter 5. Apart from the four new arrivals, all the females mentioned belong to the Main Register 正冊, while the new arrivals, according to Red Inkstone, belong to Supplementary Register No. 1 副冊:
Later Bǎoqín, Xiùyan, Lǐ Wén and Lǐ Qǐ are all visitors. These are the so-called Twelve Supplementary Beauties of The Red Chamber Dream.
後寶琴、岫煙、李紋、李綺皆客也，紅樓夢中所謂副十二釵是也。
(Chén Qìnghào 1986: 330)
[38] Chén Qìnghào 1986:393, 1760 edition.
[39] There are varying opinions as to whether or not this implies that he was actually jailed (and if so, how serious it was) or just stayed in the temple for a while. Liáng Guīzhī (1992:278) even thinks that 獄神廟 has nothing to do with the Prison God, but that 獄 is a simplified form of 嶽 ‘peak’ (partly supported by the occurrence of 嶽 in one location in one manuscript; in Liáng’s book, written in modern simplified characters, 嶽 is written 岳), and that 嶽神廟 ‘Temple of the God of the Holy Peak’ refers to the same temple as the Tiānqí Temple 天齊廟 visited by Bǎoyù in chapter 80, a temple for offerings to Mount Tài. Zhōu Lǐng (1985:405-06) argues against this view.
[40] When Grannie Liú gives an auspicious name to Xīfèng’s daughter, Red Inkstone comments:
Only when meeting at the Prison Temple it becomes clear that misfortune is turned to good luck and adversity to opportunity.
獄廟相逢之日，始知遇難成祥、逢凶化吉。
The Prison Temple 獄廟 must be the same as the Temple of the Prison God 獄神廟, and the term 相逢 ‘meet’ most likely refers to a meeting between Xīfèng’s daughter and Grannie Liú or her grandson.
[41] In the 1754 edition, this passage is included in the prefatory material rather than the novel itself; though in all other extant versions it is part of chapter 1.
[42] Luó Shūhuá (1998a:302) argues that while Bǎoyù represents qíng, Xīfèng represents yù 欲 (or 慾) ‘desire’. However, unless we accept Wáng Guówéi’s 王國維 (1904) interesting, but hardly well-founded suggestion that the jade (yù 玉) that plays such a central role in the novel is in fact a homophonous representation of desire (yù 欲), the notion of yù ’desire’ is not very central to the novel at all. Furthermore, since the concept usually has strong sexual connotations, it does not seem to fit the descriptions of Xīfèng, whose most obvious excesses are not directly related to sexuality.
[43] I find this interpretation much more plausible than the one underlying the translations by both Hawkes and Yang & Yang, who believe Lady Wáng has only been reminded of an earlier incident with Qíngwén.