3. Dream of the Red Chamber - The Main Characters

A Lot is Going On in this Novel…

(Most of the main characters in the Dream of the Red Chamber - 2010 TV series)

As mentioned earlier, there were few novels in China until the 1900s and the author of the Dream of the Red Chamber (DRC), Cao Xue Qin, worked in secret on his novel. As a result, he had to invent the Chinese novel without much help. The result is: the novel starts very badly.

The first characters we meet have no connection to the actual story and they exist only to tell us - over multiple pages - about some of the many characters who we do meet later in the book. This info-dump at the start is pretty much a waste of time because many of the people being describes we do not meet or are bit players in the novel proper. Meanwhile, most of the important characters - maids and servants - are not mentioned.

The main character for the 1st half of the novel is Baoyu - the sentient stone given life as stated in the framing story described in Essay 2. I believe Baoyu is somewhat different from the stone because towards the end of the novel, he losses the mystical jade stone, though by that point in the novel Baoyu had already lost his position as the main character.

Baoyu’s Father - Lord Jia Zheng

Baoyu’s father is a very important man in the Qing government, though he rarely appears in the novel and plays almost no role. It is important to understand that Baoyu’s father and relatives are all Chinese, not Manchu. This distinction is not remarked upon in the novel but it matters and everyone is aware of this. For a Chinese man to working in the top levels of the Qing government was rare. To simplify a complex system, the Manchu ruled China, but the number of Manchu was tiny compared to the Chinese population (less than a million out of a total population of some 200 million). Nearly everyone around the Huangdi of the Qing was Manchu or Mongol, with a scattering of Chinese from families who had joined the Manchu before their meteoric rise to power.

As I stated in my essay about Cao Yin (the author’s grandfather), the ancestor of the Cao family had joined Nurhachi’s Manchu kingdom around 1617. In so doing, the Cao became one of the first Chinese adherents to the Manchu and they rose in status as the Manchu kingdom grew in power.

Almost everyone we meet in the novel is Chinese, the few Manchu characters are princes - son’s of the Huangdi - and consequently very important men. Because the Manchu were fully aware of the precarious nature of their rule, any hint in writing or speech that the Manchu were unworthy rulers was harshly punished. Thus, in the novel, the Princes appear rarely and they are always shown as paragons of virtue.

Baoyu’s Mother and Siblings

Baoyu’s mother - Lady Wang - is the primary wife of his father. Before giving birth to Baoyu, she had given birth to two other children: a son and daughter. At the start of the novel neither sibling is present. Boayu’s elder brother is dead - and we never learn how he died. He was apparently a wonderful son and he showed great promise so his death has left a deep wound in both parents. Baoyu’s older sister is gone because she was selected to enter the Palace and serve the Huangdi of China. This is a very high honor and until 1735, it was very rare for a Chinese woman to enter the palace. From 1626 to 1740, very few wives of the Manchu Huangdi were Han Chinese (about 10%).

One of author’s close relatives became a secondary wife to the prince of the Red Banner, a high honor to be sure, but not one of the Huangdi’s consorts. Why the author wrote about his older sister entering the palace and then becoming one of the lesser wives of the Huangdi is a mystery. However, it is the case that the Qianlong Huangdi (reign 1735-1798) had at least three secondary wives who were Han Chinese, so when the DRC was being written, the idea of a Chinese woman going into the palace and then being chosen as a consort was not absurdly unlikely.

Baoyu’s father had a 2nd wife and at the start of the novel she has given birth to both a son and a daughter. Thus, Baoyu has a half brother, named Huan, and a half-sister name Tanchun. The half-brother, Huan, is a conniving, nasty creep who never changes during the entire novel. It’s safe to guess that the author had a half brother who he hated. Huan, in the hands of a better writer, could have been an interesting character, showing the problems with allowing a man to marry multiple women, but in the DRC, Huan is a jerk without any redeeming qualities. By contrast, Baoyu’s half-sister Tanchun is portrayed very favorably. Near the end of the story she moves away when she marries the son of the Admiral of the Northern Fleet, and we never see her again.

Baoyu’s Female Cousins: Daiyu and Baochai

Baoyu has two important female cousins: Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai. Both young ladies are his first cousins (daughters of his father’s sisters) but under Chinese law, since they do not share the same surname, it is entirely legal for Baoyu to marry either (or both) women. Lin Daiyu is the girl for whom Baoyu has the strongest feelings and she is a major character in the novel. Baoyu likes Xue Baochai and he does marry her around chapter 100, though he leaves her and the family at the end of the novel.

Both the young ladies - Daiyu and Baochai - are very similar - and nearly indistinguishable in the 2010 TV production. Both girls are beautiful, intelligent, well read, and skilled at making poems. Both girls have lost their fathers - Daiyu’s mother is also dead so she is a true orphan. Neither girl is particularly wealthy, though the Xue family begins the novel comfortably well off. Daiyu’s father’s family lives in the Nanjing region and she goes back to Nanjing once before returning to Beijing.

In China for the last 100 years, Daiyu was seen as a feminine ideal. Personally I dislike her as she is far too passive for my tastes. I also think the last part of the book was written by someone other than the author and his new writer couldn’t actually write Daiyu’s character. For my taste, Baochai is the ideal woman.

Baoyu’s Cousin Lian and his Wife, Xifeng

Lian is the son of Baoyu’s father’s older brother: Lord Jia Shi. Like Baoyu’s father, Lord Shi plays almost no role in the story. However, his son Lian and his wife Xifeng, are major characters and show up for most of the story.

Lian is one of the only men who is in the manor and who tries to do things. The older men (his father and Baoyu’s father) do nothing that we see, either because they are busy with work or busy with numerous women. The most interesting part of the entire novel centers around Lian’s effort to obtain a second wife and his involvement with this new woman’s family. Then we see Xifeng’s successful counter-attack on Lian’s activities.

Xifeng is arguably the main character of the second half of the novel. She is an extremely well drawn character, quite vicious at times, but also capable of great charm. The author says she is evil but he describes her acts with enough honesty to show that she is clever, has good insight about the real world, and is very hard working. Her death at the end of the novel is, to a degree, earned, but also seems tragic. In the 2010 TV show Xifeng is shown as a woman with many admirable qualities; I think the director, a Chinese woman, saw parts of herself in Xifeng’s story.

Baoyu’s Two Maids: Aroma and Sky-Bright

Baoyu has four inner maids and four outer maids. He only has sexual relations with one of his maids: Aroma, though before Sky-Bright dies she tells Baoyu she would have seduced him if she hadn’t been so proud.

Aroma is presented as an ideal woman, her only weakness is that she can’t read (which was the norm for nearly all Chinese women at this time). Aroma is kind, thoughtful, caring, and she loves Baoyu wishing only for what is in his best interest. No man could possibly have a better wife than Aroma and Baoyu has a just a slight understanding of how valuable - and rare - a woman like Aroma is. That Baoyu leaves her, along with the rest of his family at the end of the novel, is appalling behavior, completely lacking any justification. At least the writer doesn’t kill her off. Although she threatens to commit suicide, she accepts her marriage to another man, with great reluctance.

Sky-bright is the sort of free-spirited woman that Chinese Confucian society tended to allow only in marginal professions like acting or selling sex. The author kills her off half way through the novel but I think it far more likely that she ended up as a high class prostitute in Beijing. Her sudden death after being forced from Baoyu’s service by Grandmother Jia seems unlikely to me. Sky-bright was said to be extremely pretty in addition to being quick witted and and with a bright personality. Dying a few days after being ousted from the Jia compound? That doesn’t seem plausible to me.

Grandmother Jia

The Grandmother is one of the major characters in the novel and her role is given great importance in the 2010 TV series. I believe that the author often speaks to the reader through the words of his grandmother. In the real world, the author’s grandmother was the daughter of a major Chinese noble family. So her marriage to Cao Yin, the personal friend of the Huangdi of China, represented an alliance of equals - a marriage between two of highest status Chinese families in the Qing Dynasty.

Grandmother Jia is almost without flaw. By her actions she demonstrates how a Chinese woman can control the system which is nominally male dominated. Her only apparently weakness is that she likes Xifeng, yet I think the reader should accept Grandmother Jia’s judgments are fundamentally correct. Grandmother Jia rises to the occasion when the Jia family is struck down by an over-zealous Inspecting Official (AKA Imperial Censor) near the end of the novel.