In classical Chinese literature, Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber is an immortal classic. Lin Daiyu, the protagonist of this magnum opus, has always been the focus of readers' attention, she has a lonely temperament and outstanding talent, and she is destined not to follow the crowd. However, there have been different opinions about the prototype of this fictional character. In recent years, a new point of view has attracted a lot of attention - Lin Daiyu's prototype turned out to be Cao Xueqin's maid! It may sound absurd at first glance, but how can it be possible to associate such a peerless talented woman with a humble maid?
Before analyzing Lin Daiyu's prototype, we might as well take a look at Cao Xueqin's life. As an intellectual, Cao Xueqin's family background is prominent, and she has been immersed in a scholarly environment since she was a child. But the good times didn't last long, he was raided twice, and his family fell into the middle. During these gloomy years, Cao Xueqin began to collect life materials with a creative heart, and finally brewed the immortal masterpiece "Dream of Red Mansions". When Cao Xueqin was a child, he had a maid surnamed Zhu who served him to study, and the two got along very closely. is named Zhu Hongyu, although she is a girl, she is quite talented, and she can learn poetry and songs with Cao Xueqin, and gradually becomes his close friend. Some scholars speculate that Lin Daiyu was created based on the image of Zhu Hongyu.
Let's take a look at Lin Daiyu's personality traits. She is gifted, talented, and excellent at writing; But he is also withdrawn, loves freedom, and has no chance with the world. Zhu Hongyu was born in a poor family, without a father or mother, but she has outstanding talents, and she is as incompatible with the world as Lin Daiyu. And the Cao family's maid ring has had to serve and study for the masters since she was a child, no wonder Zhu Hongyu will receive a good education and has a very high attainment. What's more interesting is that Zhu Hongyu later entered the palace as a palace maid, and saw all kinds of things in the world of drunken gold, and suffered the same ruthless torture of fate as Daiyu.
Some people may say that Daiyu is a rich daughter, how can she be compared with Zhu Hongyu, who was born in a poor family? In fact, in Cao Xueqin's writing, there is no essential difference between the aristocracy and the poor, although Lin Daiyu was born in a famous family, she is incompatible with the children of ordinary rich families, and she has tasted the heat and coldness of the world. In Cao Xueqin's eyes, the huge gap in life is not insurmountable, Lin Daiyu and Zhu Hongyu are both ill-fated, lonely and loyal women, so they have a spiritual fit.
In addition, Cao Xueqin often uses her own life experience as the material in her creations, combining personal experience with fiction to construct a three-dimensional and vivid character. The friendship between Cao Xueqin and Zhu Hongyu can be called intimate and intellectual, and it is probably impossible to say that it is not projected on Lin Daiyu at all. In short, Lin Daiyu and Cao Xueqin's maid Zhu Hongyu have a fateful and talented charm, and they have a spiritual fit, and it is not unintentional to speculate that the two have a prototype relationship.
In this way, more and more corroborating evidence appeared, making the statement that "Lin Daiyu is like Zhu Hongyu" gradually become a conclusion. However, in the final analysis, Lin Daiyu is just a masterpiece of Cao Xueqin's talent, and her complex character has traces of carving, rather than simply copying someone's image. Perhaps as written in the novel, "I don't know what to do, go deep", in Cao Xueqin's pen, Lin Daiyu did gradually move away from a single archetype and showed her own unique personality charm. This twists and turns, the interweaving of truth and fiction, is precisely the charm of Dream of Red Mansions.
In addition to Daiyu and Zhu Hongyu, the other characters in the novel are more or less alluded to the images of Cao Xueqin's relatives and friends in life. For example, Daiyu's friend Baochai is quite similar to Cao Xueqin's cousin; And Yinglian and other characters have a slight shadow of his mother. It shows that Cao Xueqin extensively borrowed from the characters around her, and then processed them artistically to create a colorful group portrait of the Dream of Red Mansions.
However, the most memorable is probably Lin Daiyu. She is lonely and loyal, sharp and clever, and does not lose the delicate charm of the boudoir, which is really charming. Not only did Cao Xueqin inject the shadow of Zhu Hongyu into it, but also condensed her own life experience into it, giving it a unique temperament beyond ordinary people. It can be said that Lin Daiyu is an immortal masterpiece carved by Cao Xueqin's painstaking efforts, she is not only the heroine of the novel, but also the epitome of Cao Xueqin's youthful friendship and ideals.
In general, the reason why Lin Daiyu has become an immortal classic image of literature is not only because of who her prototype is, but because Cao Xueqin has cast her life history and aesthetic ideals into it, making it have an eternal spiritual temperament. Her image originates from life, but it is higher than life, and has become a symbol of personality that pursues freedom, independence and nobility. This is precisely the unique charm of the artist's carefully carved figures. The so-called literary classics are nothing more than the artist's blending of life and ideals. As Cao Xueqin herself said: "What struggle do I rely on in my life? And you can like it. Lin Daiyu's immortality is also the perfect embodiment of this attitude towards life. #头条首发大赛#