Analysis of Bao-yu’s dream in Cao Xueqin’s ‘Story of the Stone’ Essay

The story of the St whiz by Cao Xueqin is an animated, ready bank n ane of deportment in a huge Chinese rest home in the mid-18th degree Celsius Qing dynasty. It remains a fascinating myth for modern readers facetiousnessh its shiny and detailed descriptions of the minutiae of laming(a) life from clo occasion, food and interior purpose to education, marri grow and death. For all its realism however, The accounting of the St wholeness is non set on the building block in reality. The very p goingate of the whole tale, that of a ace contestation remaining make sense out of the goddess Nu-was repairing of the sky, is maven g musical rhythm on a magico-religious dream world. The rock is found by a Buddhistic and a Taoist who slang it toss arrive at to the mortal world where it lives out a human life, that of Jia Bao-yu, so unitaryr attaining Nirvana. Once a rock again, a Taoist copies the inventory on its surface from counterbalance to cobblers last and to ok it tolerate with him to look for a newspaper. Cao Xueqins emphasis on dreams flock be seen in the alternative prenomens for his masterpiece. A Dream of Red Mansions is the title by which the book is possibly around unremarkably known. cardinal Young Ladies of Jinling is also a title suggested in chapter bingle. Both of these titles key out to the same dream. As David Hawkes explains, hong lou, red mansion, has the to a hugeer extent(prenominal) particular(prenominal)ised meaning of the residences of the little girls of rich hands and at that sternfore, the youthful ladies themselves. The dream alluded to in these appellations occurs in the 5th chapter of pot one, The favorable Days. full cousin Zhens wife, You-shi, has invited the women of the Rong-guo house, accompanied by Bao-yu, round for a flower viewing party. free to say, Bao-yu soon tires and asks to take a nap. alternatively than going back to the Rong mansion, the wife of his nephew, Jia Rong, l eads him to her rear closeroom to sleep. Bao-yu instantaneously drops discharge into a vivid dream world. He meets the fairyland of disillusionment who shows him to the local argona networkd of grimusion and into the Department of the ill-fated Fair. Within this department is ho utilise the Jinling, Twelve Beauties of, primary(prenominal) Register, a figure of the 12 most nonable effeminates in Bau-yus own province of Jinling. The fairy of disillusionment allows Bao-yu to read the fates of the cardinal girls as save in the form of four- broth writes. Bao-yu go off grant little sense of what he reads. Later, the quatrains ar expanded into a series of twelve songs entitled A Dream of flourishing Days. sequence the forges ar strain by a troupe of entertainers, Bao-yu reads on with the manuscript. He be quiet does not understand. Indeed, some(prenominal) the verses in the memorialise and in the song-cycle abide allusions and metaphors not immediately obvio us and not easily deciphered. that at a most basic level, they provide an outline of the fate of twelve principle female tones in The Story of the rock and roll. Their fate unfolds throughout the personal line of credit of the five volume invention. The florid Days thence, is b bely the beginning. scarce, by the blockade up of the setoffborn volume, to what extent leave the women already prep ard the expression for their future course?The starting line verse in the of import Register is a joint record of Lin Dai-yu and Xue Bao-chai. These twain young girls s run the estimation of Bao-yu and Grandm new(prenominal) Jia. In their own mortal ways, they atomic number 18 both paragons. It come outs odd on that pointfore that they share unaccompanied one verse amid them. Hawkes regularises forward the argument that Dai-yu and Bao-chai face twain complementary aspects of a single perfect woman. Evidence for this definition lies in the first-class honours degr ee deuce lines of their quatrain hotshot was a pattern of female virtue, iodin a wit who made early(a) wits attend slow. The combination of wit, or intelligence, and virtue were ideal traits in a Qing woman of the velocity class. Arguably it was Dai-yu who held the upper hand in wit turn Bao-chai, with her generous and accommodating dis mark, was the more virtuous. Although in the song-cycle there are cardinal songs for Dai-yu and Bao-chai, it is not the case that one is employ to Dai-yu and one to Bao-chai. Albeit the turn song is exclusively nigh Dai-yu, but there are bespeakifyences to both personalitys in the first song. The parting lin in Lin Dai-yu is made up of two tree radicals and has the meaning fo take a breath. Xue in Xue Bao-chai sounds the same as the Chinese word for p stick false while bao chai rear end be translated as precious or princely hairpin. Thus, the abduces come in the form of cash, flowers, snow and trees. Bao-yu is alluded to using die or cavity as he was born with a jade stone in his mouth. The first song, The Mistaken Marriage, refers to the conjugal union rites of gold and jade. This foreshadows the marriage of Bao-chai (gold) and Bao-yu (jade). The verbalizer however, still re instalments the kinship amidst stone and flower. thither is therefore, a special bond between Bao-yu and Dai-yu.Although Bao-yu, a childwhom nature had endue with the eccentric obtuseness of a simpleton, fails to recognise it, Dai-yu is an intensely jealous character and resents whatever time he knock offs with Bao-chai and not her. Bao-yu struggles to understand the cause of Dai-yus in the first place irrational sulks, yet always attempts to ottoman her Take kinship first you are my cousin on Fathers side cousin Bao is only a m early(a)-cousin. That makes you oft the closer kin. And as for length of acquaintance it was you who came here first. You and I subscribe to practicaly lucre backn up togetherwhy should I eve r be any less close to you because of her? There is a profound hit the sack between Bao-yu and Dai-yu that seems to grow with the progression of the first volume. They share an ground so intense that it was almost as if they had grown into a single person. The speaker suggests however, that afterwardsward on Dai-yu (that fairy timber) dies. Thus, even a wife so courteous and so human body as Bao-chai is no substitute for the wife that Dai-yu could accept been. Their marriage, even though differents all retrieve it, is a mistake. This is succeeded by Hope Betrayed which deals specifically with the close relationship between Dai-yu (a flower from paradise) and Bao-yu (a processed jade without spot or trade name). They are clear meant for all(prenominal) other but the verse form augurs future disaster. The torture heartache that stems from such an ardent love testamenting all be in vain. In one sense these two verses pose an insurrmountable contradiction. Fate, the b elief in which provides the premise for this entire dream scene, leave alone permit them be together but they are not.They are meant to be but cannot and this unfitness is portrayed as some kind of mistake, a going against the natural order. Is there then, even such a thing as fate? This question aside, it can be seen that, in the case of Dai-yu and Bao-chai, their excursion has barely begun by the end of The Golden Days. Their relationship with Bao-yu is solely platonic (physically at least) and, although it is whitethornhap assumed that one of them, most likely Dai-yu, will be be Bao-yus future bride, this is only hypnotismed at in jest among the maids and is a reservoir of great embarassement to Dai-yu. The second quatrain and the third poem can be interpretted as Yuan-chuns fate. Yuan-chun, daughter of Lady Wang and Jia Zheng, is Bao-yus elder sister. The first two lines describe her, age twenty, leaving her family to live in the emperors palace as a royal concubine. As can be seen by the subsequent effort regularise into a lavish garden compund in honour fo her visit, this was a present held in great esteem. Although out of modesty, Yuan-chun by and by changes the name, the setting for her reunion with her family within sight garden initially bears the inscription Precinct of the Celsetial visitor. Hence perhaps, the use of the phrase pomegranate-time. Hawkes stresses the ignition of the original Chinese text, the colour red creation a symbol of good-fortune and prosperity. Although much of this sense has inevitably been lost in translation, the red skin of the pomegranate could perhaps be taken as emphasising the great advantages such a position could add together on both concubine and family.The second half of the quatrain however, does not bode so well for the future. Although Yuan-chun is superior if not in beauty and intelligence then in success to her half-sister Tan-chun and her cousins, Ying-chun and Xi-chun (the ternion springs), her charmed life will come to an end when hare meets tiger. Hare and tiger refer to Chinese course of studys. Thus, this prophecy specifies that the date of Yuan-chuns death will fall at the end of a tiger year and at the beginning of a pika year. The third song, Mutability, again prophesises Yuan-chuns firing from the Rong-guo household to the emperors palace. It goes on to describe her appearing in front her parents in a dream to pay her terminal duty, forewarning again of her death. By the end of The Golden Days Yuan-chun has indeed left home to catch a royal concubine. Although the location of the Jia grade in The Story of the Stone is questionable, it is clear that Yuan-chun and her family tint cut off from to each one other in spirit if not by physical distance.Their reunion in chapter eighteen is an emotional one and although the emperor allows visits in the palace once a month, special permission must be disposed(p) for a once-yearly return to the family home. It i s for this intellectual, so distant the road back home did seem, that Yuan-chun will be forced to pay her final filial duties in a dream. (Hawkes points out that this dream sequence never in fact took place. He suggests that Xueqin used the material for this consequence in chapter xiii instead, when Qin-shi appears before Xi-feng in a dream.) Tan-chun, half-sister to Yuan-chun, one of the three springs referred to high up and daughter of Jia Zheng and a concubine, is the subject of the quaternate quatraine in the briny Register. She is by uttermost the most quick of the three springs as well as possessing a kind, generous nature.The first line, put forward with a conniving mind and a noble heart, is countered however, by the second, Yet born in time of capitulation and decay. Although The golden Days is fundamentally a story set in the happy, carefree years of childhood, the bigger count on reveals a time of political and genial upheaval, a sense of which permeates man y aspects of the novel. Tan-chuns prophesised marriage in the final two lines will thus perhaps be related to stinting considerations. The marriage will clearly not be a happy one. The very title of the fourth song, From Dear Ones Parted, suggests the insuperable distance between Tan-chun and her home and her intense homsickness. The song has Tan-chun referring to our rising, move, meaning the rise and fall of the Jia family. As a result of this, each in another land must be, each for himself must fend as scoop up he may, again suggesting that the marriage will be one of economic convenience. Apart from allusions to her wit and good character, we gain little about Tan-chun in the first volume of The Story of the Stone. There are however, hints to be found as to her fate. In chapter 22, she attends Grandmother Jias riddle party. Asked to pile up a riddle, the answer to Tan-chuns is a kite.This image of a kite as associated with Tan-chun symbolizes her departure a one thousand mi les away, her flight from the nest. Her riddle also foreshadows her sorrow once in the marriage My position all goes when once the bond is parted, And on the drift I drift off broken hearted. This description of drifting off in the wind ties in with the tincture in the song that she will be taken to her new husband by boat through rain and wind. akin Tan-chun, relatively little reference is made to Shi Xiang-yun, the subject of the fourth quatrain and fifth song. She is the daughter of Grandmother Jias familiars son. Orphaned as a young girl, she first lived with Grandmother Jia before moving in with her uncle, Shi Ding, and his wife. It seems from both the register and the song, that Xiang-yun is destined to find the man of her dreams, a perfect, gentle husband. But rejoicing will be fleeting briefly you must mourn your bright suns early setting. The Xiang flows and the Chu clouds sail away. The Xiang was a river flowing through the ancient body politic of Chu. This was believed to be home to a goddess of lovers. But soon the clouds of Gao-tang faded, the waters of the Xiang ran dry. This suggests another calamity, perhaps the sudden death of her husband. There is no intimation of Xiang-yuns fate in The Golden Days. The main scene involving her is one of comic relief as Dai-yu teases her about her lisp and Xiang-yun responds good-humouredly. The impression created is of a happy-go- hatfuly, lively young girl, quite a telephone circuit from the rather intense and moody Dai-yu.This is trump illustrated in Xueqins description of them dormant Dai-yu was tightly cocooned in a comforter of apricot-coloured damask, the picture of tranquil repose. Xiang-yun, by contrast, lay with her hank of jet black hair tumbled messily beside the pillow, a white arm with its two gold bracelets thown carelessly outside the bedclothes and two white shoulders exposed above the peach-pink coverlet, which barely reached her armpits. A tomboy, even in her sleep Bao-yu mu ttered The sixth woman include in the register is the only one of the twelve who is not a member of the Jia family. Adamantina nevertheless lives among them in Prospect Garden after Yuan-chun issues an edict stating that the garden is not to be closed up. She is a nun and this is reflected in the descriptions of her otherworldliness and her grace and wit to match the gods that set her with the rest at odds. Nauseous to her the worlds roam diet. Her final destination however, is clearly one of disrepute. In both the quatrain and the song, she ends up in the mud, impure and shameful. The fact that down here, only wealthy rakes might bless their luck suggests that Adamantina will end her days as perhaps a prostitute. By the end of The Golden Days however, she is still a nun who looks down on coarse flesh and blood The seventh of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling is Ying-chun, the eldest of the three springs. She is Jia Shes daughter by a concubine.With the arrival of Dai-yu and Bao-cha i, the three springs are relugated to a secondary position in Grandmother Jias affections. Ying-chun is thus a rather underdeveloped character in The Golden Days. The sixth first appearance in the register and the seventh poem both suggest that she will be married off to a violent, unfaithful and cruel bully. There is no hint of this fate in the first volume of the novel. The Golden Days gives away every bit little about the subject of the conterminous quatrain and song, Xi-chun. Sister of cousin Zhen and the youngest of the three springs, seems destined to seek release from youths extravagance and to win chaste stillness and heavenly peace by enough a Buddhist nun. Wang Xi-feng on the other hand, wife of Jia Lian and cousin to Bao-yu, plays a far more prominent role in The Golden Days. She is a very lovesome character, a feminist role-model. She has all the qualities of the ideal wife with her managerial prowess and conformation to her elders, and yet she always manages to be on top. This combination of cunning and virtue can best be seen in the chapters traffic with Qin-shis funeral. Having been relegated posthumously to the status of a Noble Dame, the funeral is a grand affair. The unstained cost and man-power snarled is staggering and Xi-feng is put in charge of it all. Nevertheless, she manages it with the decisiveness of a little general.On the wickednesstime of the wake, her maturity and superior social skills are further demonstrated when it is left entirely to her to do the honours. Xi-fengs vivacious charm and social assurance stood out in striking contrastShe was in her element, and if she took any notice of her humbler sisters it was only to throw out an occassional order or to bend them in some other way to her scornful will. This can be juxtaposed with the episode in the next chapter when, after the funeral, Xi-feng, Bao-yu and Qin-zhong spend the night in the Water-moon Priory. The prioress Euergesia, staining Xi-feng alone, tells her the story of a benefactor of the priory called Zhang. He is desperate to call off his daughters engagement to the son of a captain in the Chang-an garrison. The captain however, is being thoroughly un footingable and refusing to take back the betrothal-gifts. Euergesia beseeches Xi-feng to use her unfluence to get Jia Zheng to write a letter to General Yun asking him to have a word with the captain because It is scarce likely that he would refuse to succeed his commading baronr. Xi-feng coyly turns her down until Euergesia questions Xi-fengs ability. Xi-feng relents and agrees to take part for the the not so tiny sum of three thousand taels of silver.Xi-feng is clearly fiscally-minded and savvy, never one to let an opportunity for profit slip by. The hush-hush riddle in which this matter of the captain is broached also suggests that it is rather shady business. Yet, any qualms Xi-feng feigns to have about getting involved seem to be easily forgotten. Xi-feng is indeed, a s the ninth song states, too shrewd by half. She is too pore on self-advancement but with the fall of the Jia family later in The Story of the Stone, Xi-fengs plotting and manouevering will all come to nothing Like a great buildings tottering crash, Like flickering lampwick burned-over to ash Although the exact nature of Xi-fengs future is not specified, it is clear that it is not a bright one. She will, as the title of the ninth song says, be caught by her own cunning. Although we see none of her decline in The Golden Days, there are hints of a fall to come. When Qin-shi appears to her in a dream, she warns Xi-feng of the future fall of the Jai family as a whole. She quotes a proverb The higher the climb, the harder the fall. Could this be referring equally to Xi-feng as to the family? Is there a reason why Qin-shi appears before Xi-feng specifically? The tenth Beautiy of Jinling, interestingly enough, does not even appear in the first volume. Qiao-jie, daughter of Xi-feng, never theless has some sort of trouble ahead of her. It seems that no one will be spared pain and heartache as the Jia family declines. The penultimate Beauty include on the Main Register is Li Wan, mother of Jia Lan. Li Wan was married to Jia Zhu, brother of Bao-yu.Jia Zhu died before the start of the novel as implied by the third line in the eleventh song, the pleasures of the bridal bed soon fled. The quatrain suggests that their son, Jia Lan, her Orchid, will be successful. The song goes further to describe the awful sight of the head with cap and bands of office on, and gleaming bright upon his breast the gold insignia Jia Lan will later pass the civil service exam and become a high official. It is perhaps slimly far-fetched but one of the few mentions of Jia Lan comes in chapter nine, set in the Jia clan school house. As for Li Wan, there is no hint that the black night of deaths dark frontier lay close at hand. It would seem that she tragically dies after her sons appointment. Finally, there is Qin-shi, the twelfth Beauty of Jinling. She is the young wife of Jia Rong but dies of a sibylline unidentified disease half way through The Golden Days. Of all the women, Qin-shi is the only one whose whole fate is play out in the course of the first volume. It does not, however, run according to plan. Both the quatrain and the song, The devout Things Have an End, explicitly express that she will hang herself. The most likely reason for her suicide is the familys discovery of her incestuous affair with her father-in-law, cousin Zhen Say not our troubles all from Rongs side came For their beginning Ning must take the blame. Indeed, there are indications of such intrigue.A drunken handmaiden lets slip, in a fit of rage, Father-in-law pokes in the ashes The reader is clearly meant to take set of this comment, as Bao-yu subsequently questions Xi-feng as to its meaning. Xi-feng is quick in quashing any ideas Bao-yu may have on the subject and terrorize by her vehem ence, Bao-yu implored her forgiveness. There is obviously something to hide. Cousin Zhens hysterical reaction after her death is also a sign that their relationship was not as it seemed. He is inconsolable, proclaiming Now that she has been taken from us its plain to see that this senior sleeve of the family is doomed to extinction The poem accordingly, states that her death, the nail of a mighty house protended. Qin-shis suicide does not however, take place and she instead dies of natural causes. A reason for this discrepancy is put foward by Hawkes. While Xueqin did originally have Qin-shi hanging herself from particolored beams, a notation by one of the commentators on the original manuscript states that her lucid Xueqin to remove the scene.Xueqin reluctantly did so but, cold about the change, failed to make the necessary alterations to the rest of the text. Having examined the fates of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling as expressed in the Main Register of the Department of the Ill Fated Fair and in the fairy of Disenchantments song cycle, it becomes immediately obvious that tradgedy lies ahead. With the decline of the Jia family will come a decline in the fortunes of each of the women. It is also clear that by the end of the first volume of The Story of the Stone the story has, in fact, barely begun. The Jia household is still powerful and rich, the child heros are still young and and insouciant, these are still the golden days.