Dream of the Red Chamber

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Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng) or The Story of the Stone (Shitou Ji) is a novel composed by Cao Xueqin in the middle of the 18th century. One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, it is known for its psychological scope, and its observation of the worldview, aesthetics, life-styles, and social relations of 18th-century China.

The intricate strands of its plot depict the rise and decline of a family such like Cao’s own and, by extension, of the dynasty itself. Cao depicts the power of the father over the family, but the novel is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. At a more profound level, the author explores religious and philosophical questions, and the writing style includes echoes of the plays and novels of the late Ming, as well as poetry from earlier periods.

Cao apparently began composing it in the 1740s and worked on it until his death in 1763 or 1764. Copies of his uncompleted manuscript circulated in Cao’s social circle, under the title Story of a Stone in slightly varying versions of eighty chapters. It was not published until nearly three decades after Cao’s death, when Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan, edited the first and second printed editions under the title Dream of the Red Chamber in 1791–92, adding 40 chapters. It is still debated whether Gao and Cheng composed these chapters themselves and the extent to which they did or did not represent Cao’s intension. Their 120 chapter edition became the most widely circulated version. The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions. “Redology” is the field of study devoted to the novel.

1 Language

The novel is composed in written vernacular (baihua) rather than Classical Chinese (wenyan). Can Xueqin was well versed in Chinese poetry and in Classical Chinese, having written tracts in the semi-wenyan style, while the novel’s dialogue is written in the Beijing Mandarin dialect, which was to become the basis of modern spoken Chinese. In the early 20th century, lexicographers used the text to establish the vocabulary of the new standardised language and reformers used the novel to promote the written vernacular.

2 History

2.1 Textual history

Dream of the Red Chamber’s textual history is complex and has long been the subject of scholarly debate and conjecture. It is definitively known that Cao Xueqin, a member of an eminent family that had served the Qing dynasty emperors but whose fortunes had begun to decline, began writing Dream of the Red Chamber in the 1740s. By the time of Cao’s death in 1763 or 1764 hand-copied manuscripts of the novel’s first 80 chapters had begun circulating, and Cao may have made early drafts of the remaining chapters. These hand-copied manuscripts circulating first among his personal friends and a growing circle of aficionados, then eventually on the open market where they sold for large sums of money. The first printed version, published by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E in 1791, contains edits and revisions not authorized by the author. It is possible that Cao destroyed the last chapters or that at least parts of Cao’s original ending were incorporated into the 120 chapter Cheng-Gao version, with Gao E’s “careful emendations” of Cao’s draft.

2.1.1 “Rouge” versions

Up until 1791, the novel circulated in hand-copied manuscripts. Even amongst some 12 independent surviving manuscripts, small differences in some characters, rearrangements and possible rewritings cause the texts to vary a little. The earliest manuscripts end abruptly at the latest at the 80th chapter. The earlier versions contain comments and annotations in red or black ink from unknown commentators. These commentator’s remarks reveal much about the author as a person, and it is now believed that some of them may even be members of Cao Xueqin’s own family. The most prominent commentator is Zhiyanzhai, who revealed much of the interior structuring of the work and the original manuscript ending, now lost. These manuscripts, the most textually reliable versions, are known as “Rouge versions” (zhi ben 脂本).