Original Luo Yuming
Jia Baoyu once said a very distinctive sentence: "Daughters are flesh and bones made of water, and men are flesh and bones made of mud." When I see my daughter, I feel refreshed, and when I see a man, I feel turbid and smelly. It sounds like a teenager's crazy words, but it's not true.
Dream of the Red Chamber is an autobiographical novel, and its memories of the past can no longer be a simple reproduction of the old scenes, and this kind of crazy remarks that reflect the overall interest of the novel have been integrated into all the author's life experiences and his important understanding of the world around him.
The main place where the novel unfolds is the mansion of the hereditary aristocratic Jia family, where adult males belong to the ruling class in society and are the dominant force in the family. With them as the main body, they constitute the world of the so-called "men" in the novel.
And the Grand View Garden in the mansion was built because of the provincial relatives of the concubine, and a group of girls from the family and with various relationships with the Jia family lived. With them as the main body, they constitute the world of the "daughters" in the novel.
The teenager Jia Baoyu and his sisters live in the park, and they are connected to the two worlds at the same time.
We see that the men who are the pillars of the family in Jiafu have alchemists and immortals, lustful and fornicators, those who enjoy honor and honor, and those who are pedantic and stiff, but none of them are ambitious, shrewd and capable. On a small scale, this means that Jiafu is decaying in its bones, and on a large scale, they are the epitome of the ruling power of the entire society.
"Men are flesh and bones made of mud" symbolically indicates that the dominant force of society constitutes a filthy world, which makes the young life that is growing lose its meaning and value.
Jia Baoyu, as the most important heir in the family, is destined to be integrated into that male's adult world. However, he is portrayed as a naughty teenager who abhors the basic rules of the adult world, which creates a conflict between him and the "man" world.
This conflict also has a double significance:
On the one hand, the sensual life of teenagers is destined to be destroyed by the rules of the adult world, and it is a common situation of human nature that people continue to lose themselves in the process of growing up because of the need to enter social norms. People have never thought there was anything unusual about this, but Cao Xueqin deeply felt its sadness.
On the other hand, this description also shows the author's deep disappointment with historical and cultural orthodoxy and with the existing social order. In short: the world has lost its meaning.
So, what does the world of "daughters" mean?
From the perspective of the story itself, first of all, we must note that in the previous eighty episodes, Jia Baoyu's age in "Dream of Red Mansions" was from eleven or twelve to fifteen or sixteen years old, so it is not very accurate to simply regard "Dream of Red Mansions" as a romance novel, it is written about the special emotional experience of a precocious and sensitive teenager.
A teenager's love for the opposite sex is originally full of fantasy, and the opposite sex in fantasy will be particularly beautiful and touching.
Getting out of this illusion is originally the inevitable growth of life. However, when Cao Xueqin wrote Baoyu's story as a projection of her own life, he concluded that this life was "dusty and nothing", and it was worthless.
Therefore, "all the women of the day", their talent and beauty, have become the only precious memories in their life experiences.
In other words: a life whose value has been lost can still exist and be attached to in a meaningless world, and it is only because of those women that they are the light that illuminates life.
Therefore, in the pen of this genius, we see a pure natural love and even reverence for women, and we see a group portrait of a girl who has never been graceful and radiant.
Pursuing the beauty of dreams and mourning its loss in the reconstruction of words has become the basic meaning of Dream of Red Mansions, and for readers, it is also a source of emotion.
The entire storyline of "Dream of Red Mansions" unfolds with the history of the decline of Jiafu, and at the same time, all of Jia Baoyu's obsessions and dreams, and the wonderful youth of those daughters, are also swallowed up one by one with the fall of Jiafu.
"Dream of Red Mansions" instructs the reader with a very strong attitude: beautiful things are brittle and fragile.
"Daughters are flesh and bones made of water, and men are flesh and bones made of clay," and daughters are more fragile than men. is in the group of daughters, compared to Xue Baochai, Lin Daiyu is fragile, compared to attacking people, Qingwen is fragile, and You Sanjie, when she is recklessly dealing with Jia Zhen and others in a depraved manner, she seems to be very tough, and once she truly falls in love with someone, her life will immediately collapse......
"Dream of Red Mansions" is full of the destruction of beauty, which shows that the world in which people live is vulgar and dirty, and it is a tragic stage for beautiful things, but "Dream of Red Mansions" is full of nostalgia for beauty, and this persistent nostalgia expresses the unquenchable longing for life in sorrow, and it leaves a deep impression on the world.