This volume continues Cao Xueqin’s epic fictional history of the Jia clan. It weaves plot lines effortlessly between the multiple strands and generations of both the Ning-Guo and Rong-Guo Houses, while primarily focusing on Grandmother Jia and her two favorite grandchildren, Bao-Yu and Lin Dai-yu. Her granddaughter in-law, Xi-Feng, as manager of the expenses for Rong-Guo House, also plays a critical role throughout the novel. “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 for a single moment for fear of being eaten. In any case, our expenditure is still far above our income. The trouble is, everything in this household from the largest down to the smallest item has to be done on a scale and according to rules that were laid down by our ancestors; but unfortunately the income from our property is not what it was in those days. If we do economize, the family looks ridiculous, Their Ladyships feel uncomfortable, and the servants complain of our harshness.”
When Xi-Feng is stricken with a strange illness, two of Grandmother Jia’s younger granddaughters, Li Wan and Tan-chun, take to the fore and step up to shoulder the administration of the household. Borrowing into their capital, shuffling around servants, and minimizing the expenses of entertaining family, friends, and retainers all become constant worries. While Grandmother Jia is shielded from money worries, the younger generations of Jias begin to hold onto their silver and account for their expenditures a tad more responsibly. “There would be no point in saving an extra two or three hundred taels if it meant resorting to undignified methods in order to do so…. Whereas if we went all out to economize with no other consideration but making money in mind, no doubt we should have little difficulty in squeezing more out.”
As the grandchildren grow up, gender distinctions also begin to play a bigger role in the novel. One granddaughter opines, “If I’d been a boy I should have left home long ago and done something to show myself worthy of her kindness; but as I am a girl, I have to stay at home and never say a word out of turn.” The Jia boys are alternately treated with more leeway to explore their natures and beaten mercilessly for indiscretions to protocol. “Children brought up in families like ours, no matter how odd or eccentric they may be, will always conduct themselves in a courteous, well-bred manner in the presence of strangers. Otherwise their eccentricity would not be tolerated…. Although our Bao-yu is so odd and mischievous, he can at times, when he is with visitors, behave himself better than a grown-up, so that it’s a pleasure to watch him. No one who meets him can help liking him…. If it were just his willfulness, which is fairly normal in a child, it could be cured in time; so could his extravagance, which is normal in the sons of well-to-do people; and so could his hatred of study, which again is fairly normal in a young person. But this weird perverseness of his seems to be inbred: there seems to be no cure for it.”
The other division that is further exposed in this volume is the difference between first wives, concubines, and chamber wives. The constant scheming and fight for relative status often makes for a disharmonious household. This pecking order is most apparent in the treatment of the wives’ children by other family members, the servants, and outsiders alike. “I know being a wife’s or a concubine’s child is not supposed to make any difference, and in a boy’s case perhaps it doesn’t; but I’m afraid with girls, when the time comes to start finding husbands for them, it often does. Nowadays you get a very shallow class of person who will ask about that before anything else and often, if they hear that a girl is a concubine’s child, will have nothing further to do with her. It’s silly, really, because if they did but know it, even the maids in a household like ours are better than the wife’s daughters in many another household, let alone the daughters of concubines.”
No matter the Jia clan-members vast differences in temperament and wealth, as well as their sprawling alliances in marriage and business, in the end, they all know that they are foremost bonded by their family ties. “In life we shall live together; in death we shall mingle our dust.” Nonetheless, even Grandmother Jia senses that the times are changing for both China, at large, and her family in particular, “I never felt in the past on these occasions that we were a small family. Looking at us today, though, I must say we do make a very miserable turnout. I can remember Mid-Autumns when there were thirty or forty of us sitting down together. Ah, what times we had then! We shan’t ever have numbers like that again. Let’s have the girls sit with us. See if we can’t fill up that gap!”
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