Dream of the Red Chamber

"The Story of the Stone" redirects here. For other uses, see The Story of the Stone (disambiguation).

Dream of the Red Chamber

Author	Cáo Xuěqín
Original title	紅樓夢
Language	Chinese
Genre	Novel
Publication date	18th century
Publication place	China
Media type	Print (Hardback)

Dream of the Red Chamber (Traditional Chinese: 紅樓夢; Simplified Chinese: 红楼梦; pinyin: Hónglóu mèng), also known as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, or Chronicles of the Stone (Traditional Chinese: 石頭記; Simplified Chinese: 石头记; pinyin: Shítóu jì) is one of the masterpieces of Chinese fiction. It was composed sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. Its authorship is attributed to Cáo Xuěqín (Cao Zhan).

The novel is usually grouped with three other pre-modern Chinese works of fiction, collectively known as the Four Great Classical Novels. Of these, Dream of the Red Chamber is often taken to be the zenith of Chinese classical fiction. The novel has been translated into 20 different languages either in abridged version, such as German, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, or in complete version, such as Japanese, Korean, English, French, Spanish and Russian.

There are two craters on asteroid 433 Eros named after the novel's fictional characters, Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler It is believed that the novel is semi-autobiographical, mirroring the fortunes of Cao Xueqin's own family. It was intended to be a memorial to the women Cao knew in his youth: friends, relatives, and servants, as the author details in the first chapter.

The novel itself is a detailed, episodic record of the lives of the extended Jia Clan, made up of two branches, the Ning-guo and Rong-guo houses, which occupies two large adjacent family compounds in the Qing capital, Beijing. Their ancestors were made Dukes, and at the novel's start the two houses were still one of the most illustrious families in the capital. Originally extremely wealthy and influential, with a female member made an Imperial Concubine, the family eventually fell into disfavour with the Emperor, and had their mansions raided and confiscated. The novel is a charting of their fall after the height of their prestige centering around some 20 main characters and over 400 minor ones.

A scene from the story, painted by Xu Bao (born 1810)
Other scenes

The story is prefaced with supernatural Taoist and Buddhist overtones. A sentient Stone, abandoned by the Goddess Nüwa when she mended the heavens, enters the mortal realm after begging a Taoist priest and Buddhist monk to bring it to see the world.

The main character, Jia Baoyu, is the adolescent heir of the family, apparently the reincarnation of the Stone (the most reliable Jiaxu manuscript however has the Stone and Jia Baoyu as two separate, though related, entities). In that previous life he had a relationship with a flower, who is incarnated now as Baoyu's sickly cousin, the emotional Lin Daiyu. However, he is predestined in this life, despite his love for Daiyu, to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai. The novel follows this love triangle against the backdrop of the family's declining fortunes.

The novel is remarkable not only in its huge cast of characters — over 400 in all, most of whom are female — and its psychological scope, but also in its precise and detailed observations of the life and social structures of 18th-century China.

Language and Characters

The novel, written in Vernacular Chinese and not Classical Chinese, is one of works which establishes the legitimacy of the vernacular idiom. Its author is well versed in Classical Chinese – with tracts written in erudite semi-wenyan – and Chinese poetry. The novel's conversations are written in a vivid Beijing Mandarin dialect which was to become the basis of modern spoken Chinese, with influences from Nanjing Mandarin (where Cao's family lived in the early 1700s).

The novel contains nearly 30 characters which could be considered major, and hundreds of minor ones. Cao centers the novel on Jia Baoyu, the male protagonist, and the female relations around him, at one point intending to call the book The Twelfth Beauties of Jinling. Females in this novel take centerstage and are frequently shown to be more capable than its male counterparts. They are also very learned literarily, unlike the Qing maidens of their time.

Main Character

Jia Baoyu - the main protagonist. He is the adolescent son of Jia Zheng and his wife, Lady Wang. Born with a piece of jade in his mouth (the Stone of the title), he is the male heir to the Rongguo line. Much to his strict Confucian father's displeasure, he prefers literature to the Four Books, and though highly intelligent, hates the company of bureaucrats and most males. Sensitive and compassionate, he famously said "girls are bone and flesh made of water and men of mud".

Lin Daiyu - Jia Baoyu's female orphaned cousin and his love interest. She is the daughter of a Jinling scholar official Lin Ruhai and Jia Min, Jia Zheng's sister. The novel proper starts in Chapter 3 with her departure for the Rongguo house. Emotional, consumptive, prone to fits of jealousy, she is nevertheless highly talented literarily.

Xue Baochai - Jia Baoyu's other female cousin and his eventual wife. The only daughter of Aunt Xue, sister to Baoyu's mother, and Xue Pan's sister, she is a foil to Lin Daiyu and a classic Chinese feudal maiden. While Daiyu is unconventional and oversensitive, Baochai is sensible, tactful and a favorite of the family. Baochai's golden locket and Baoyu's jade are thought to indicate a bond of an ideal marriage.

Grandmother Jia, nee Shi - also called the Matriarch or the Dowager. Baoyu and Daiyu's grandmother, she is the highest living authority in the Ningguo house and Jia Zheng's mother, a doting figure.

Shi Xiangyun - Jia Baoyu's second cousin by Grandmother Jia. Orphaned since infancy, she grew up under his maternal uncle and aunt. She is opened-hearted and cheerful but as well read literarily as either Baochai or Daiyu.

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Themes

Fiction / Reality

The name of the main family, "賈" looks similar to the author's surname 曹 and has the same pronunciation in Mandarin as another Chinese character "假", which means fake or sham. Thus Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹) suggests that the novel's family is both a reflection of his own family, and simultaneously fictional - or a "dream"-version of his family. (Baoyu occasionally dreams of another Baoyu, whose surname is "Zhen", which puns on "real".)

The novel is normally called Hong Lou Meng (紅樓夢) - literally "Red Mansion Dream". "Red Mansion" was an idiom for the chambers where the daughters of rich men live; thus the title can be understood as a "dream of rich young women". It can also be understood as referring to a dream that Baoyu has - in a "Red Mansion" - at Chapter 5 of the novel, where the fates of many of the female characters are foreshadowed. "Red" also suggests the Buddhist idea that the whole world is "red dust" (紅塵) - merely illusory and to be shunned. Thus the novel fits in perfectly with Buddhist (佛) and Taoist (道) beliefs that to find enlightenment, one must realize that the world is but a dream from which we must awake.

Textual Problems

The textual problem of the novel is extremely complex and has been the subject of much critical scrutiny and conjecture in modern times. Cao did not lived to publish his novel, and only hand-copied manuscripts exists after his death until 1791, when the first printed version was published. This version, known as the Chenggao edition, contains edits and revisions not authorised by the author.

Early manuscript versions

The novel, published up till the 20th century, was anonymous. Since the twentieth century, after Hu Shi's analyses, it is generally agreed the first 80 chapters of the novel is written by Cao Xueqin.

Early hand-copied versions — many of which are 80 chapters, all incomplete — have comments and annotations written on them in red ink. These commentators clearly knew the author in person, and some are believed to be members of Cao Xueqin's own family. The most prominent commentator is Red Inkstone (脂砚斋). These MS are the most textually reliable versions, known amongst scholars as "Rouge versions" (脂本). Even amongst the some 11 independent surviving manuscripts, small differences in some characters used, rearrangements and possible rewritings made each of them vary a little from another.

According to novel's first chapter, Cao Xueqin revised his novel five times, and died before he had finished the fifth version. To compound this problem, parts of the latter chapters of the book were lost, so we only have 80 chapters that are definitively written by the author.

The early 80 chapters brim with prophecies and dramatic foreshadowings which also give hints as to how the book would continue. For example, it is obvious that Lin Daiyu will eventually die; that Baoyu will become a monk; various characters will suffer in the snow; and that the whole estate will finally be consumed by flames.

Most modern critical editions have the first 80 chapters based on the Rouge versions.

Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120-chapter version

In 1791, Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E brought together the novel's first movable type edition. This was also the first "complete" edition of The Story of the Stone, which they reprinted as Dream of the Red Chamber. The original Rouge manuscripts have up till 80 chapters, ending three-quarters into the plot and clearly incomplete. The 1791 movable type edition had 120 chapters. This first 80 chapter was edited from the Rouge versions, but the next 40 was newly published.

In 1792, they published a second edition correcting many typographical and editorial errors of the 1791 version. In the 1792 preface, the two editors claimed to have put together an ending based on the author's working manuscripts, which they bought from a vendor.

The debate over the last 40 chapters still rages. Most modern scholars believe these chapters were a later addition, with inferior plotting and prose quality to the earlier 80 chapters. Hu Shih argued that the ending were forged by Gao E; he cited as support the ending of the 1791 Chenggao version, which does not coincide with the various foreshadowings of the chief characters' fates in Chapter 5.

Other critics suggest Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan may be duped into taking someone else's forgery as an original work. A few scholars believe that the last 40 chapters do contain Cao's own work; these are the minority view however.

The book, though, is still normally published and read in Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120-chapter complete version. Some critical editions move these last 40 chapters to an appendix to indicate they were by another's hand.

Family trees of the main characters

The Jia clan

                                                             (You-shi)──────┐
                                                               X            ├── Rong
                                                          ┌─ Zhen ──────────┘     X
         ┌─ Yan ──────── Dai-hua ──────────── Jing ───────┤                     (Qin-shi)
         │ Duke of                                        └─ (Xi-chun)
         │ Ning-guo
         │                                                   (Wang Xi-feng)─┐
common  ─┤                                    (Lady Xing)      X            ├── (Qiao-jie) 
ancestor │                                      X         ┌─ Lian* ─────────┘   'Baby'
         │                                 ┌─ She ────────┤
         │                                 │              └─ Ying-chun*
         │                                 │ 
         │                                 │                  (Li Wan) ─────┐
         │                                 │                    X           ├── Lan
         │                                 │               ┌─ Zhu ──────────┘
         │                                 │               │
         └─ Yuan ─────── Dai-shan ────────┐├─ Zheng ──────┐├─ (Yuan-chun)
           Duke of         X              ├┤   X          ├┤
           Rong-guo      (Grandmother Jia)┘│  (Lady Wang)─┘├─ Bao-yu
                           (née Shi)       │               │
                                           │               ├─ (Tan-chun*)
                                           │               │
                                           │               └─ Huan*
                                           └─ (Min) ──────┐
                                                X         ├── (Lin Dai-yu)
                                              Lin Ru-hai ─┘

• * denotes a child by a concubine.
• ( ) denotes a female character.

The Wang family

          ┌── Wang Xi-feng's   ┌─ Ren
          │   father         ──┤
          │                    └─ (Xi-feng)
          │                        X
          ├── Zi-teng             Jia Lian
common  ──┤                    
ancestor  │                    ┌─ Zhu
          ├── (Lady Wang) ────┐│
          │     X             ├┼─ (Yuan-chun)
          │   Jia Zheng ──────┘│  
          │                    └─ Jia Bao-yu ─┐
          │                                   │
          │                                   X
          └── (Aunt Xue) ─────┐┌─ Pan         │
                X             ├┤              │
              Uncle Xue ──────┘└─ (Bao-chai) ─┘

() denotes female character.

See also

• Redology

References

• Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, ISBN 0-393-30780-8
• Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 1, The Golden Days. trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044293-6.
• Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 2, The Crab-flower Club. trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044326-6.
• Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 3, The Warning Voice. trans. David Hawkes. ISBN 0-14-044370-3.
• Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 4, The Debt of Tears. trans. John Minford. ISBN 0-14-044371-1.
• Cao, Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: a Chinese Novel: Vol 5, The Dreamer Wakes. trans. John Minford. ISBN 0-14-044372-X.
• Tsao Hsueh-Chin (Cao Xueqin), Dream of the Red Chamber, Translated & abridged by Chi-Chen Wang, Doubleday Anchor, 1958. ISBN 0-38-509379-9

External links

• An Introduction to Editions of the Red Chamber, David L. Steelman, The Scholar, 1981
• Outline of Dream of the Red Chamber
• Red on Gold: Teaching Honglou meng in California
• Article on China Central Television Program about Red Chamber - China Daily. Raymond Zhou. November 12, 2005.
• H. Bencraft Joly's English translation from Project Gutenberg--Vol. 1, Vol. 2
• Paintings of characters in Dream of the Red Chamber, by An Ho
• illustrations for Dreams of Red Chamber by Manhua