Ladies of The Red Mansions

Hong lou meng (variously translated into English as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, and Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin (d. 1763) has been said to be an encyclopedia of eighteenth century imperial China. It is a novel of a complex design with multiple threads of the plot unraveling at the same time. As the main male character Jia Baoyu puts it, girls are made of water; men of mud. Girls are 'fresh and clean'; men 'dirty and stinking'. Therefore the author selected for this volume stories about twenty-nine of the women in the novel, from Old Lady Jia to chambermaids and Granny Liu. Each one of them, whether a lady or a maid, is a memorable individual with her own distinct idiosyncrasies and her own fate. Those closest to each other may turn out to be poles apart in disposition. As a result, there is little likelihood of confusing one character with another. This may partly account for the lasting appeal of Hong lou meng and is attributable to Cao Xueqin s superb talent as a novelist.