<i>A Companion to</i> The Story of the Stone: <i>A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide</i>

A Companion to The Story of the Stone (hereafter Companion) is exactly what it says it is—a chapter-by-chapter companion for the reader or rereader of the eighteenth-century novel also known as Dream of the Red Chamber. Pai Hsien-yung, who is perhaps best known as a writer of fiction, has written important works in Chinese on the novel; this work is a distillation of Pai's earlier work in Chinese on the novel and is a convenient introduction to anglophone readers of Pai's scholarship. Susan Chan Egan is a distinguished scholar and translator.The Companion proceeds methodically through the novel. The authors provide very brief summaries of each chapter of the novel, followed by a commentary that, though always terse, is often illuminating even to those who have read the novel many times. The commentary unfolds chapter by chapter in what seems to be a nod to Chinese traditions of interlinear commentary, which speaks to the reader as the reader works their way through the novel.The book begins with a brief introduction in which Pai and Egan weigh in on the controversy about the authorship of the final forty chapters of the novel. They write, “In our opinion, the story is far too complicated for any significant portion of it to have been written by someone else” (xviii), that is to say, by someone other than Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1715–1763). While Pai and Egan do not argue that the novel is strictly autobiographical, at several points in the commentary, they suggest that specific episodes in the novel may well come from Cao family experience. For example, they suggest that Cao's description of the imperial concubine Yuanchun's visit home in chapter 18 may have been based on stories about the family hosting the Kangxi emperor on one of his southern tours (40). They suggest that the fact that Cao's ancestors were bondservants (which they refer to as “hereditary slaves”) perhaps accounts for the “complex relationships between masters and slaves depicted in the novel” (100). They draw our attention to a nostalgic feeling in chapters 53 and 54, suggesting that it is “as if the author, laboring over every detail, is trying to recapture events that took place long ago” (116). In chapter 60 we see serious strife between the actresses that had been purchased by the Jia family and their “foster mothers” (127), as the servants who were in charge of looking after the young actresses were called. Pai and Egan refer to the chapter as a study in “clique politics” and comment, “It is hard to avoid wondering if, in describing the servants’ clique politics with such relish, the author was not taking aim at the bureaucratic infighting and the court intrigues of the time” (128).Some of the comments inform readers about aspects of Qing society that readers may not be familiar with. For example, in the comments to chapter 9 (which features a schoolroom brawl), where credible allegations of homosexual behavior play a role, the reader is told that homosexuality was not regarded as a sin in premodern China (19–20). The comments sometimes inform the reader about what ordinary behavior in a Qing family might have been like and then go on to tell us how the Jia family deviates from that. For example, in chapter 17 we are told, “It is normal for Chinese fathers to speak disparagingly of their sons to encourage humility, but Baoyu's father appears to take pleasure in humiliating him because Baoyu is nothing like the son he wanted” (37). The comments in chapter 11 give a very brief introduction to Qing medical practice so that the reader can better understand the treatments given to Qin-shi, the wife of Jia Rong and the daughter-in-law of Jia Zhen (22).The medical treatments are to no avail, and Qin-shi dies. The circumstances surrounding the death of Qin-shi are shrouded in mystery. Although all currently extant versions of the novel present illness as the cause of her death, Egan and Pai tell us that in an earlier version of the novel, various pieces of evidence “all point to her hanging herself when her adultery with her father-in-law was discovered” (21). The extravagance of her funeral and the excessive mourning exhibited by her father-in-law suggest that he was inordinately (and probably inappropriately) fond of her.Some of the comments are geared to help us understand the characters in the novel in more complex ways. For example, Jia Zheng, Baoyu's father, is hard to like. He is strict with Baoyu, stingy with praise even on the rare occasions when Baoyu pleases him, and in one horrifying scene in chapter 33 beats Baoyu to the point where he inflicts serious injury. But at several points, Egan and Pai are at pains to remind the reader that Jia Zheng does have a tender side. They suggest that his behavior at a party shows a “tender and perceptive” side of him (50). And later in the novel, when Lady Wang tells him about the death of Daiyu, he “once again . . . shows his tender side by his grief” (220).Neither Jia Huan nor his mother, Concubine Zhao, is a particularly appealing character, but they are treated badly by others in the novel. Egan and Pai provide an evenhanded evaluation of their situation, placing much of the blame for their flaws on circumstance: “Warped by their circumstances, neither Jia Huan nor his mother has the self-esteem or the generosity of spirit necessary to command respect if they should achieve a position of authority” (56).On occasions, the commentators point out something that a reader might be forgiven for overlooking: Xifeng boasts to us in chapter 16 that all of the foreign goods brought into provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Yunnan passed through her grandfather's hands. Egan and Pai suggest, “That Xifeng grew up in a family tasked with supervising tributary missions from abroad makes her unconventional and audacious behavior more believable” (34). Later on (chapter 71), Egan and Pai tell us, “The author of this novel does not readily let his readers off the hook. Just as we are prepared to loathe Wang Xifeng, he casts her in a sympathetic light” (150). This is a comment that is as much about narrative strategies as it is about Wang Xifeng.One of the oddest things about the Jia household is that the adolescent Baoyu is allowed to live in the garden surrounded by his female cousins, in defiance of the elite custom of female seclusion. The novelist tells the reader that the decision to allow Baoyu to live in the garden was made by Yuanchun. As an imperial concubine, she apparently has the authority to override customary norms, at least in the realm of fiction. The unconventionality of the arrangement is apparent to the characters in the novel. In chapter 34 of The Story of the Stone, Aroma tells Lady Wang that “Master Bao and the young ladies are beginning to grow up now, and though they are all cousins, there is the difference of sex between them, which makes it very awkward sometimes when they are all living together, especially in the case of Miss Lin and Miss Bao, who aren't even of the same clan. One can't help feeling uneasy. Even to outsiders it looks like a very strange sort of family.”1 Egan and Pai describe the living arrangements as “highly unconventional” and account for it by saying “Yuanchun must still think of her brother as a little boy” (52).Bai and Egan point out the layered narrative of the novel. In chapter 10, where Xifeng tricks the lecherous Jia Rui into an assignation which results in his death, the commentary states that the chapter would be hilarious if it were not so sad. The mixture of tragedy and irony is something that the commentators remark on in other chapters. In a comment on chapter 90, they write that “the three most moving death scenes in the novel are lightened by comedies of seduction which keep narrative from sinking into sentimentality” (188). Earlier, in their comments on chapter 33, they say that Cao Xueqin “handles tragedy with a delightfully light and ironic touch” (70). This is a rare occasion when one wishes that they had more fully articulated their argument.One of the most fruitful things about this commentary is that it reminds the reader to pay attention to the visual appeal of the novel. In chapter 27, we are told that the view around the garden is like a moving camera, “taking the reader from scene to scene” (60). And in commentary to the same chapter, our attention is drawn to the visual images of Daiyu “grieving over fallen flowers . . . juxtaposed against that of the plump Baochai chasing butterflies—a symbol of happiness” (60). And we are told that chapter 50 is “distinguished by its pictorial beauty: a pageant of young ladies in gorgeous winter garb, an old lady being carried in a bamboo chair, and then a girl in an iridescent green cape with a spray of red plum blossoms behind her—a splash of green framed by red dots against a snow-white background” (108). The novel is full of lush descriptions; these commentaries prod us to see the novel as we read it. In several places, the commentary is enhanced by reproductions of Sun Wen's 孫溫 (1818–1904) paintings of events in the novel. The small black-and-white reproductions, doubtless necessitated by the desire to keep the cost of the volume down, scarcely do the paintings justice. But color reproductions of the work are now easily available for those whose curiosity is piqued.2In some ways, the most interesting comments talk about the structure of the novel. For example, the commentary points out that we see the Grand View Garden in three ways (88), through three different sets of eyes. The first is through the eyes of Jia Zheng and his literati cronies (chapter 17), the second is through the eyes of the imperial concubine Yuanchun (chapter 18), and the third is through the eyes of Granny Liu (chapter 40). This alerts the reader to be mindful of a technique of repetition and doubling (or, in this case, tripling) that is used frequently in the novel. The commentary does not tell the reader what to make of the repetition but is a clue that enables readers to discover structures on their own. And in their discussion of chapter 70, the authors use a musical metaphor to describe the function of the chapter. They write that the chapter is “a modulating bridge marking the transition in a piece of music from a major to a minor key” (148).The commentary also notes three episodes that contribute to Baoyu's increasing disillusionment with life. The first is the suicide of the maid Golden in chapter 32. In chapter 30, Lady Wang overhears Baoyu flirting with Golden; she slaps Golden and berates her, saying, “Shameless little harlot. It's you and your like that corrupt our innocent young boys.”3 Golden is dismissed and in chapter 32 we learn that she has drowned herself. The second episode of disillusionment, in chapter 46, also deals with a maid and sex. The lecherous Jia She has long set his sights on Granny Jia's maid Faithful as his concubine. She steadfastly refuses. Egan and Pai tell us, “Baoyu's sense of disillusionment deepens as he helplessly watches another maidservant being subjected to unreasonable demands and absurd accusations” (100). The third disillusionment occurs in chapter 80, when Baoyu learns that a lovely and delicate woman, in this case Jingui, the wife of Xuepan, can have a despicable personality (168). His disenchantment centers around young women: both who they are and how they are treated. The way the commentators track Baoyu's growing disenchantment with life prepares us for the ending, when he leaves home and becomes a monk. The ending thus comes as less of a surprise than it might have otherwise. The Companion alerts readers to threads as they develop; we can then follow the threads on our own.As the astute reader will have noticed, the commentary is what engages me the most about this volume. The summaries are quite brief (of necessity), and in reading them, one gets very little sense of the power and the beauty of the novel. While the summaries have their utility, the real power of the book lies in its commentary. The amount of Chinese-language scholarship on the novel is enormous; this scholarship is known as hongxue, translated awkwardly into English as “Redology.” There is also a substantial amount of English-language scholarship: the bibliography to Companion provides good resources. But Companion does something most English-language criticism does not: it sits with you while you read, chapter by chapter, and points things out to you that you may not have known, that you may have skipped over, and thus helps you create a framework for reading and interpreting this wonderful novel on your own terms.