Dream of the Red Chamber: Themes, Symbols, and Morality

Introduction: Themes and Authorial Intent

Among the diverse themes of Dream of the Red Chamber are the meaning of jade, of stone, of love, and the imagery that jade and stone offer, based on the authors' views of Chinese religion — Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism — as well as Chinese society and culture. One of the earliest and most central themes of the novel is virtue, goodness, and the ability to lead people toward true understanding so they may be better prepared for their lives. In the first five chapters, the authors create a tone of questioning around value and morality, and around what is merely presented in literature as lovely for the sake of being pretty. The authors criticize writers who produce only entertaining and attractive stories — the "beauty-and-talented-scholar" kind of writing and the "breeze-and-moonlight" kind of writing.

Another theme that emerges through the reading of the novel is played out through the feuding of central characters, which is the authors' way of illustrating, through literature, the decline of feudal Chinese society. On a broad level, this sub-theme is two-fold: it tells the story of power, wealth, and — characteristically within Asian cultural traditions — honor and nobility, alongside society's seemingly self-defeating fall from grace. At the same time, the novel traces the regeneration of the seemingly degenerate character Pao Yu, while also charting the tragedy of his misfortunes.

One of the main protagonists — and most likeable characters — is Black Jade. Two other central characters are Chen Shih-yin, who is in decline at the novel's opening, and Chia Yu-tsun, who has been building a reputation by currying favor with those in positions of power, all in pursuit of personal advancement. Chen is a wealthy intellectual and scholar, married to Lady Feng, living a happy life with a three-year-old daughter named Ying-lien (Lotus). They live near the Temple of the Gourd in Kusu, and their situation sets the stage for much of the action that follows.

Feudal Decline and Central Characters

An important passage early in the novel, which establishes the authors' values with respect to Confucianism and Chinese spiritual culture, occurs when Chen has a dream in which he meets a Buddhist monk and a Daoist priest. They show him a beautiful and precious piece of jade called "The Precious Jade of Spiritual Understanding." Later, he encounters them again, and they warn him that a sad fate awaits his daughter, Lotus. The authors' philosophical views of life are launched through these characters and continue to develop throughout the novel — as is common in literary fiction — but in this case, since there is much for the reader to learn about 18th-century China, the treatment of Buddhism, Daoism, and the culture of that era is both instructive and engaging.

To analyze the central themes, main characters, plot, and morality on display is thus also to analyze the historical period in China during which the book was written, and to understand something of its authors.

One key to understanding the novel is recognizing that certain words and images carry religious and cosmological associations. In Chapter 3, for example, Black Jade (Lin Daiyu) arrives at her new place of residence, where her father has sent her so that she may benefit from a female guardian's presence and receive an education. The authors use this moment to make a point about Daoism.

Daoist Imagery and the Concept of Chaos

Madame Wang warns Black Jade upon her arrival that Madame Wang's son Jia Baoyu (Pao Yu) is a very bad influence — a charming but dangerous womanizer. This is notable precisely because Pao Yu is Madame Wang's own son. As the story progresses, Madame Wang refers to him as a "hunshi mowing," meaning "demonic ruler in the realm of chaos," according to an article in T'oung Pao (Zhou, 2001).

The wayward Pao Yu, who represents the corrupt side of the society the authors depict, later moves into the Garden of the Total Vision and rules over it as "a crown of beauties," as Zhou writes. The girls in the garden embody a concept of "pristine ignorance... oblivious innocence," a situation the authors describe using the term "hundun shijie" — in which "hundun" means "chaos" in Daoist thought. Allowing the manipulative Pao Yu to rule over innocent girls is tantamount, in this metaphor, to the chaos present in society more broadly: insensitive rulers and power brokers in 18th-century China could exploit powerless civilians in the same way Pao Yu exploits young women. Pao even dreams that he makes love to his niece.

Another Daoist term employed by the authors is "hun," referring to "the chaotic state prior to the creation of the world" — a time when, according to Daoist belief, "heaven and earth were not yet separated and yin and yang intermingled." Sociologically, Zhou writes (254), it refers to "the innocence of the primitive age, before moral values, hierarchical divisions and social conventions were introduced into the human world along with all the strife and conflicts."

Continuing the Daoist influence throughout the novel — which is ultimately the moral theme enacted through its characters — the authors use "Hundun" (a faceless emperor in Daoist tradition) as a personification of "benevolent disorder." The Neo-Daoist period known as the "Wei-Jin" period (255) was a time of rejection of "corrupted institutions," during which a "chaotic" lifestyle was adopted that seemed, as Zhou writes, "to hark back to a pre-historical, pre-cultural state of chaos." The authors present Pao Yu ("Jia Baoyu") as connected to a hundun state through his "pre-human identity as a stone made by Nuwa in a pre-historical age."