In the fifty-sixth time of "Dream of the Red Chamber", When Jia Mu talked about Baoyu to the four women in Zhen Province, she said: I know that the children of other people like you and me, by virtue of what kind of tricks and strange problems they have, when they see outsiders, they must return the formal courtesy... It is the adult doting, it is his one who is born to be satisfactory, and the second is to see that the number of people is better than that of adults... If he only cares about the inside and outside, and does not compete with the adults for glory, he should also be killed by how good his life is.
This passage of Jia Mu explains: Although Baoyu is favored, this favor still has a premise and principle, and if it violates the "etiquette", it is necessary to "kill". The principle of demarcation between favor and death is, of course, a hard indicator. Secondly, this also reflects the basic evaluation of Baoyu by Jia Mu, the supreme figure sitting on the spire of the pagoda in Jia Province, that is, the recognition of Baoyu is not out of the ordinary, and this evaluation is realistic.
At least no one in Jia Fu thought that Baoyu was a "rebel". When the women of Zhen Mansion said of their "Zhen Baoyu", they said: Even if it is sex, it is also the common sentiment of children, spending indiscriminately, which is also the common sentiment of gongzi brothers, afraid of school, but also the common feeling of children...
This also applies to Jia Baoyu. Many of Jia Baoyu's "faults" can be explained by "sex" and "common sense", that is, with the theory of human nature and human feelings.
Only Jia Zheng gave Bao Yu a high degree. When Baoyu was beaten on the thirty-third time, Jia Zheng pointed out the seriousness of Baoyu's problem from the perspective of development: "Tomorrow, when he kills the king and kills his father, you will not be persuaded." "Kill the king and kill the father" Yunyun is a bit rebellious and rebellious. On closer inspection, although Baoyu's crime is large, the crime is nothing more than "wandering in exile, giving away private goods, neglecting his studies at home, and insulting his mother-in-law." Not to mention that the last false accusation from Jia Huan is all untrue, that is, these are all ironclad cases, and Bao Yu's deeds are not more excessive than Jia Zhen Jia Rong and even Xue Pan's genus. Jia Zheng's reason for such a high level of discipline is that Baoyu is from his own birth and is young, and he should be strictly disciplined; more importantly, Baoyu's relationship with Qi Guan has offended Prince Zhongshun.
Jia Zheng said to Bao Yu, "You don't study at home, how can you do such a lawless thing again!" Na Qi Guan is now the one who promised the prince of Zhongshun before driving, what a grassy mustard you are, you have teased him out for no reason, and now it is a disaster for me! Here, it is mainly "the first level of officials to crush people to death", Jia Zheng is afraid of the more powerful magnates than his family, especially afraid of "harming me", frightened to mess up the program, does not reflect the reality of Baoyu. If it had been worse than Jia Zheng, he could have not buckled such a big hat.
Baoyu is not completely unworldly. He dealt with Shi Guan, the governor of Zhongshun Province, and Xian Lai said that he "didn't even know what the word 'Qi Guan' was, but he added the word 'tease'", and when he said it, he began to cry, and it seemed that he was still good at cheating. When the other party threw out the excellent material of the "red sweat towel", he thought to himself that "even if he knows such a secret matter, it is better to hide it from him, it is better to send him away, so as not to say something else", so he changed his strategy and "explained" the whereabouts of Qi Guan.
As for normal circumstances, when Baoyu meets outsiders, his "etiquette" is more perfect. For example, the fourteenth time he wrote Baoyu "Lu Gurudwara King of Northern Jing", Jia Baoyu "grabbed it up to see", "saw and asked to take out (that jade) from his clothes and handed it to the King of Northern Jing to look at carefully", "agreed one by one". Especially when the King of Beijing took off a string of rosary beads on his wrist - "a string of incense rosary beads given by the Holy Father" to Baoyu, Baoyu looked flattered, "took it in a hurry, turned back to worship Jia Zheng", and then "thanked Jia Zheng together".
This is not the end, back to the palace, to welcome Lin Daiyu, who returned from the funeral of his father, "Baoyu also took out the incense string given by the King of Northern Jing and gave it to Daiyu." "Precious take out, give to Daiyu", it can be seen how precious Baoyu is more powerful than his family, the favor of the Prince of Beijing, how complacent and even hope that his confidant and close friend Dai Yu will share his dignity. Instead, Dai Yu was even clearer, saying, "What stinky man has taken it, I don't want him" and "Throw it away." Baoyu was bored.
It seems that to describe Baoyu as a rebellion of feudal society is too highly evaluated. Some of his behaviors, such as skipping school, disgusting with Bible reading, and not thinking about merit and enterprising, one is to make a common sense, and the other is the trend of Jia Fu. The enjoyment of feudal privileges can become an attraction for the cold people to read hard, become the bait for "enterprising", and can also become a powerful corrosive agent and a cocaine-like narcotic for the children of the family who have obtained feudal privileges by relying on the "Tian'en Zude".
Looking at Jia Fusumei, apart from Jia Zheng, who still has the heart to maintain orthodoxy, but actually does nothing and does nothing, who is committed to the career economy? They may be loud and colorful, arrogant and lascivious, such as Jia Zhen Jia Zhen Jia Rong's generation, or alchemy for immortals, looking for immortality, enjoying a lifetime of blessings is not enough, but also to enjoy generations of generations, such as Jia Jing. Among them, how can there be any benevolence and morality, cultivation of Qi Zhiping, career economy, entrepreneurship and keeping of business, and enterprising?
Jia Baoyu's performance is really an integral part of the great trend of the whole jia fu and the children of the nobles, the passive and decadent spiritual outlook of the entire Jia fu and the children of the nobility, the way of life of parasitic pleasure, the decay and degeneration under the cover of the serious respect and inferiority, and the great trend of the family community of Shengping, Magnificent, and The Fourth And Fifth Dynasties.
As a negative phenomenon in the general trend of decline, Baoyu was not qualitatively different from the other old and young masters in Jia Province in this regard. Even from a strict feudal orthodox point of view, Jia Baoyu was no better than the other old and young masters of the Jia family, and he was by no means worse or more dangerous than others. Sisters and sisters, crying and laughing, this is not the root cause of the loser. The anti-human nature of feudal morality (the so-called "existence of heavenly reason, annihilation of human desires") is of course very harsh, its concept of respect and inferiority, its privileged system and privileged thinking, and the particularly superior living conditions of some people, but it has opened a great mouth for the royal family, the magnates and their children and their slaves, under this mouth, all male thieves and female prostitutes may be connived at and covered up and diluted, and some thoughts and deeds with heretical overtones that are actually harmless can also be allowed or ignored. There can even be justifications for it.
But after all, Jia Baoyu and the other children of Jia Fu gave people a different impression, he was more naïve, kinder, more loving and more likely to have a set of "philosophy". His spiritual realm and cultural level are higher than those who steal chickens and dogs.
Innocence and kindness do not require much argument and explanation. In Jia Province, for the most part, Baoyu is a well-behaved, easy-going, and often helpful character who responds to every need. Interestingly, feudal privileges were originally alienated by human nature, but in this alienated environment, they were also favored by the "old ancestor" Jia Mu, the leading figure Madame Wang, and the powerful figure Wang Xifeng, on the one hand, Jia Baoyu was less subject to the severe restraint of feudal etiquette in some aspects of his life, he could skip school, he could not study all day to learn Kong Meng, he could escape Jia Zheng's Taoist teachings and supervision; on the other hand, he was exempted from the survival pressure of the lower-class people in feudal society, and he did not have to work for life for the mouth. They will not lose their dignity and joy of life in hunger and humiliation.
He protected himself from the above two aspects, but he was more conditional to "get sex", that is, to act arbitrarily, to be more conditional and try to meet his material and spiritual needs. And because of his young age, he is more free to express his love and concern for the opposite sex than others. In addition to eating, drinking and having fun, his "busy with nothing" (Xue Baochao's description of him) shows that he is busy and what he wants to do is what he wants to do. If it is forced—whether by respect, by morality, by the needs of actual life, or by some sense of mission—it is not "busy with nothing" but "busy with something." In the kind of situation he was in, it was ironic that it was more free and more human to be busy than to be busy.
Of course, in the historical environment of Jha Province, freedom is not necessarily a commendable category. Compared with the slaves, the masters are of course free, and their freedom is the freedom of evil, that is, the freedom of taking advantage of the plunder, the freedom of parasitism and depravity, the freedom to play with women, and even the freedom to take human life. Here we must look not only at whether we are free, but also at what kind of person we are and what kind of self we are free of.
Jia Baoyu is outstanding: his purity, his conscience, his understanding, his culture, or more correctly, the cultivation of art and literature, all make him different, make him a model of pureness and sorrow that has no precedent in a literary gallery and is extremely difficult to imitate, and make him a person with his own true spiritual life.
Wang Meng, a contemporary Chinese writer and scholar, former minister of culture, honorary chairman of the China Writers Association, has authored nearly 100 novels such as "Long Live Youth" and "Activities Change Human Form".
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