62 pages • 2 hours read
Cao XueqinDream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1760A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-24 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Xi-feng talks with Jia Lian about planning a proper birthday party for Bao-chai, who is turning 15 in a few weeks. Grandmother Jia loves Bao-chai and wants to celebrate her first important birthday with plays and a feast. Bao-chai, ever accommodating and polite, chooses plays and wine that she knows her Grandmother Jia will like. At the party, the family members watch plays into the night, and they drink wine and feast together. Aunt Xue, Xiang-yun, and Bao-chai are the guests of honor, as the only people outside the immediate family. Bao-chai teaches Bao-yu a bit about one of her favorite plays and recites the libretto for him, which he loves. The evening ends when Xiang-yun makes a joke at the expense of Dai-yu, admitting that the little boy actor looks exactly like her, all made up.
This joke causes problems for Bao-yu, who tries to stop Xiang-yun from hurting Dai-yu’s feelings to keep the peace. Both Xiang-yun and Dai-yu take offense to his actions, and Bao-yu ends the night dejected in his bed. He writes a little Zen poem before bed and finally falls asleep feeling satisfied at his “enlightenment.” His poem is totally illogical, and Bao-chai, Dai-yu, and Xiang-yun make fun of it, explaining to him the error of his logic and the lack of meaning present in his words. Bao-chai says, “Those Taoist writings and Zen paradoxes can so easily lead people astray if they do not understand them properly” (441), indicating her intention to correct Bao-yu’s thinking. Bao-yu sees the girls have much more knowledge of this than him and gives up, saying that his poem was “only a joke, anyway!” (443).
Later, Yuan-chun sends a lantern from the palace with a riddle and requests a riddle exchange between herself and the other children. This prompts a riddle party hosted by Grandmother Jia, in which the children answer and exchange riddles they make up themselves. Jia Zheng comes because he loves poems and riddles, which causes the children to be more reserved than usual. Jia Zheng eventually goes to bed when he realizes that “all the girls’ verses contained images of grief and loss [...] it is almost as if they were all destined to be unfortunate and short-lived and were unconsciously telling their destiny” (449-50). The children ignore his melancholy mood after he goes and continue their party until the late hours of the night, when Grandmother Jia sends them to bed.
Chapter 23 Summary
A few orders of business begin the chapter. Yuan-chun’s favored poems from her visitation are posted in the garden, under the guidance of a few lower men in the household. In addition, the 24 nuns hired for the event are moved from their miniature temples to the Temple of the Iron Threshold in the country, where the family burial plot rests. Xi-feng and Jia Lian fight over who to give the small job of caring for the nuns, and Xi-feng wins by securing the post for the son of an old widow distantly related to the Rong family.
Yuan-chun makes a proclamation, via a palace eunuch, that the garden shouldn’t remain empty until her next visit. Instead, the young girls of the house and Bao-yu, because he spends so much time with them, should stay there in the small houses on the property. The garden makes Bao-yu “blissfully happy” (460), and he writes four short poems about the garden, one for each season he spends there. His poems are loved by the public, who beg him for samples of his calligraphy and verse. But as Bao-yu spends more time there, he begins to feel morose. He can’t entirely understand his boredom and depression, but Tealeaf knows a cure. He finds raunchy, romantic novels and plays for Bao-yu to read and instructs him to hide them from the girls in the garden. Bao-yu loves these books and disregards Tealeaf’s advice.
This inevitably leads to Dai-yu discovering the book in Bao-yu’s hands when he is putting loose flower petals in the stream one day near her little house. She reads a bit, and it captivates her as well. Bao-yu quotes a line from the play that makes Dai-yu “[redden] to the tips of her ears” (464). She accuses Bao-yu of “taking advantage of [her]” (464), and he apologizes profusely for giving her that impression. She forgives him, and he suddenly takes his leave to visit the ailing Jia She.
This leaves Dai-yu in the garden alone, feeling suddenly morose herself. She happens to walk by and hear bits of the play the little actresses are rehearsing nearby and is so struck by the lines she collapses: “It was like intoxication, a sort of delirium. Her legs would no longer support her” (466). Dai-yu begins to weep from the sadness of the lines, which convey an inevitable loss of beauty, when suddenly a stranger taps her on the shoulder.
Chapter 24 Summary
The stranger who interrupts Dai-yu’s crying is the maid Caltrop, who asks her why she is alone. Caltrop and Dai-yu spend time together playing games and drinking tea, until Dai-yu feels much better.
Bao-yu is called to Jia She’s house, though Jia She has only come down with a chill. Bao-yu also runs into Jia Yun, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time. He invites Jia Yun to spend time in his study the next day. Jia Yun then asks Jia Lian about a job, and Jia Lian insists he wait a few days. Jia Yun is put out and goes to his maternal uncle, who owns a perfumery, asking for musk and camphor on loan. His uncle won’t give it to him, and Jia Yun becomes desperate. He complains, “I don’t see what I am supposed to do without any capital. Even the cleverest housewife can’t make bread without flower!” (474). Just after that meeting, miraculously, Jia Yun runs into an old drunkard and high-interest loan shark named Ni Er in the street. Ni Er is his neighbor, and as a favor, he gives Jia Yun some silver. Jia Yun uses that silver to buy the musk and camphor, with which he wins the affections of Xi-feng, who assures him a job.
During his time at the Rong mansion, Jia Yun waits for Bao-yu, who has forgotten his appointment and gone out for the day. Jia Yun meets the pretty maid Crimson, and they promptly fall in love. Later, Crimson sees an opportunity to spend time with Bao-yu and improve her station when Bao-yu calls for tea and no other maid is around to hear him. She serves him tea but is reprimanded for being an opportunist by the other, higher-up maids. Crimson goes to her room, dejected, and then sees Jia Yun at the window, telling her he has her handkerchief. She goes to him, and he pulls her to him in a seductive gesture. She tries to turn to run but falls flat on her face.
Chapters 22-24 Analysis
The power of poetry returns in these chapters to indicate unsayable feelings and foretold destiny. This is particularly true of the riddles spoken at the riddle party held by Grandmother Jia, which strike Jia Zheng as foreshadowing melancholy and grief. Poetry in this novel often has the power to express unconscious or semi-conscious urges, and Jia Zheng notes this when he reads each of the girls’ riddles, and thinks, “all the girls’ verses contained images of grief and loss [...] it is almost as if they were all destined to be unfortunate and short-lived and were unconsciously telling their destiny” (449-50). However, their verses are a callback to the song cycles of the fairy Disenchantment, in which few of the 12 beauties come out unscathed.
Poetry has a similar power for Dai-yu in Chapter 23, when a line heard through the fence during a play rehearsal has the power to bring her to her knees: “It was like intoxication, a sort of delirium. Her legs would no longer support her” (466). Dai-yu hears the lines and thinks of many others that express a similar sentiment: The world is short-lived and illusory, and happiness always ends. She begins to weep from the power of this impression, brought on by verse alone.
Class and social hierarchy also play a role in these chapters, in which the servants demonstrate their power-hunger and fight with each other over access to Bao-yu and other noble family members. This puts Crimson, a lower servant who is more morally upright and whose plainness strikes Bao-yu, in a position of constant servitude, with few perks or advantages. This relationship among the servants indicates the unfairness of the social hierarchy within the mansion and within the Chinese culture itself. This insular hierarchy also indicates that class and wealth alone are rarely indicative of spiritual or social uprightness.
