Feel free to respond to any of the questions below (or to take issue--kindly and collegially!--with a classmate's response). Just be sure to specify which question you are answering.
1. How would you characterize Bao-yu? What seem to be his dominant traits?
2. In class on Monday, I mentioned some of the similarities between how The Story of the Stone characterizes itself, and some key features of British novels during this time (an emphasis on the lives of women, a deliberate effort to combine pleasure and instruction, a wish to present true-to-life characters). Yet, there are some key differences, most notably Cao Xuequin's use of the supernatural. What do you make of the extended dream-fantasy sequence in Chapter 5?
3. Chapter 17 is one of those moments where The Story of the Stone does not track with western European notions of narrative: group of characters wander around a garden composing verses about it. Rather than view this scene (as you might be inclined to do) as an imaginative failure, try and identify the nature of its success. What parts of the story get "told" in this passage? What information does the reader gain about the characters? What kind of moral instruction is in play here?
4. On his first reading, Brother Vanitas declares that all he can find in this novel are "a number of females, conspicuous, if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling talent of insignificant virtue" (75). After rereading the book, though, Brother Vanitas changes his mind. What aspects of the female characters in this novel (and their interactions) might lead a dubious reader like Brother Vanitas to change his (or her) mind about their significance?
Deadline: Wednesday (2/16), start of class.
8 comments:
I am responding to question #1. I would characterize Bao-yu as an adolescent male who is extra emotional due to the pain he must endure from being born with a jade stone in his mouth which was reincarnated. As the protagonist of this story, Bao-yu is intelligent but sensitive which are his dominant traits. Bao-yu takes an interest in girls and prefers their company. He is said to say, “Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I am with girls I feel fresh and clean, but when I am with boys I feel stupid and nasty.”(page 83) He is unusual in his family because he lacks ambition and has a carefree personality. His family has high expectations for him and sees him as their great hope.
To understand Bao-yu’s dream-fantasy, it might be helpful to think about the couplet that is written on the stone archway leading to the Land of Illusion: “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;/ Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.” (92). I think the fantastical elements that characterize Bao-yu’s dream do not preclude a concern for conveying instruction. Indeed, Xueqin uses fantasy and allegory to offer a discourse on the natures of love and lust. While the setting for this part of the novel is a fantasy, it demonstrates a concern for worldly affairs. Disenchantment explains to Bao-yu that “the love of your dust-stained, mortal world must be doubly an illusion” (94). With this statement about the deceptiveness of reality, Xueqin begins obscuring the distinction between reality and illusion.
Truth—in this case the notion of love that Bao-yu and his society believe in—becomes fiction as Disenchant points out the inaccuracy of how people in the physical world perceive love. Yet this transformation is only possible if fiction, which is represented in this chapter by Bao-yu’s dream, contains traces of truth. The reality-illusion dichotomy is something that we have seen in other works we have recently read. Eloisa to Abelard and Love Suicides at Amijima both engage this issue and indicate that physical love is simply a poor imitation of spiritual love. Chapter five of The Story of the Stone, however, offers a different perspective on love in the material world than the ideas presented in the previous two works we studied.
Disenchantment suggests that love is itself illusory regardless of its domain. In addition, she states that all love is in fact a type of lust. Xueqin’s work does not take a stance on love like other works do but chooses to redefine it. Disenchant then differentiates two forms of lust: a promiscuous kind of lust and “lust of the mind.” She considers the second kind of lust to be better but admits that it also leads to problems. This part of the novel does not entirely endorse one type of lust. Yet chapter five implies that the dream world is the proper place where one should pursue “lust of the mind.” society.
I would characterize Bao-Yu as an extremely emotional male who has to deal with the constant attention he gets from the reputation of his birth (being born with a jade in his mouth). His emotions are constantly fluctuating; a slight reminder of the circumstances of his birth would send him into a tantrum. Bao-Yu seems like a flamboyant character, choosing the presence of females over that of males. His fluctuating behavior was perceived from his introduction where he meets Dai-Yu in one set of clothes only to appear moments later in a new set of clothes. He doesn’t seem to have any self-control or ambition and that is what makes him scorned by his father. His family sees that he has massive potential to be great but because of his preference to be around women and his lack of ambition he is perceived negatively by his family (except his grandmother).
In chapter 17 there is a lot going on. There is the development of the theme of class, character development and meditation on literature.
The literary gentlemen are shown to be trying mainly to please Jia Zheng rather than to come up with the best literary verses for the garden. It is made explicit that the literary gentlemen's suggestions are not made "very seriously, since [they] were aware that Jia Zheng intended to test Bao-yu..." (96) and the momement they see Jia Zheng pleased even a little, they "redoubled their praises." (98) Interestingly, they also do a bit of bottom-up management, where they convince Jia Zheng to give Bao-yu a day to come up with something (101).
It looks like chapter 17 is quite severely truncated, but it is cear that it does a lot of character development work. Jia Zheng is established as the patriarch by the way the literary gentlemen pander to him and the way he tests and bullies Bao-yu. The relationship between Jia Zheng and Bao-yu is also developed - it shows the difficulties that they have, such as Bao-yu's lack of studiousness. It is unclear at precisely what point during the walk that things start to turn sour, but it points towards an inability for them to relate to each other.
It was also a meditation on the literary process. Should you reference a classic or try something new? What is appropriate for the audience and what kind of imagery would suit this place? Should something be deliberately concealed in order to unmask its true beauty?
#4: Perhaps Brother Vanitas was convinced to tell the stone's story after the second reading because he was finally in the right frame of mind. On his first read through he might have been expecting a great romance where Bao-yu and Dai-yu end up together, romantic poems are written and recited, and a particular dynasty or historical era is glorified (as evidenced by the stone's criticism of these stories on page 76, and Vanitas' own objection). After all, don't we have to get into a different frame of mind to read this story since we are raised on the Western tradition of storytelling?
After the second read through, however, Vanitas may have seen the "reality" of the story. Dai-yu isn't a traditional female swooning for the male lead, and Bao-yu isn't the traditional hero that steals the woman's hearts. It is even shown by the Fairy Disenchantment that Bao-yu has a "lust of the mind" (page 93), and that this type of lust will make others resent him. Maybe Vanitas saw this characterization, a more realistic representation of society and peoples' feelings, and decided the story was worth telling.
On a side note, maybe Vanitas was turned by the Fairy Disenchantment. Most stories have a point in the story where a character flaw is revealed, or a challenge makes the protagonist step back and question his resolve, but this story actually has this moment represented by a character (whose name is Disenchantment).
I would like to agree with Vivian, Bao-yu is a spoiled brat. It was said that he grew up that way; being around women and with a jade in his mouth, which explains why he act so immature. He throws fits as if he was a small child. From the description when he walked in, one would not get the vibes that he is spoiled. His description made him seem well groomed and attention grabbing to the people in the room. We get the first sense of his personality when he interacts with Dai-yu. It said, "This sent Bao-yu off instantly into one of his mad fitd. Snatching the jade from his neck he hurled it violently on the floor aas if to smash it and began abusing it passionately"(88). His dominant trait hands down is being to worried about the way he is treated and the attention that he get. He does not realize that other people are also significant and not just him.
#1: I would characterize Bao-yu as an emotional, spoiled, and sensitive character. He is very emotional because he has to cope with extreme pain from being born with a jade stone in his mouth. As a child Bao-yu would have extreme tempers and fall outs about it. I would also characterize Bao-yu as immature because he seems to feel that he should always be the center of the attention in his surroundings. I can believe that he has grown into having such a spoiled persona because he has always surrounded by women, rather than men mainly because of this jade stone he was born with in his mouth. I think that Bao-yu's dominant traits are that he is very wise and sensitive. Bao-yu is the type of individual that is very concerned with what others percieve him as. He seems to care much about how he is treated by others along with every attempt to obtain the upmost attention from others. However, I found his character to have a sense of selfishness given he expects everything to be about him.
Far from seeing, the garden seen as an imaginative failure I think that it is a wonderful success. Not only was the author able to come up with a way in which to show an interaction between Bao-yu and his father but it also showed great imagination in the construction of the garden itself. The description is not presented in the dreamy tones of pastoral European literature but by the description given one can see the garden, its layout, and what could be unsatisfying about the layout. More than that as names are suggested for the different places in the garden not only are we as the reader privileged with a general description but a feeling for the scenery, as well as having the added benefit of being exposed to classical Japanese history sound bites. One can also picture the group of men trying to give Bao-yu a chance to please his father and his father finding displeasure in everything.
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