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 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Qin Zhong, having returned from the country, falls ill from the romantic exertion he experienced with his lover Sapientia, and Bao-yu is upset about his friend’s sickness. There is a similar tragedy when Xi-feng receives news that the favor she granted the Prioress Euergesia was dealt with, but it caused the daughter and her fiancé to kill themselves in grief, hearing that the proposal had been revoked. Later, Sapientia, Qin Zhong’s lover, runs away from the priory to find Qin Zhong, but Qin Zhong’s grandfather discovers her. The grandfather beats Qin Zhong in punishment, but the exertion of beating Qin Zhong takes its toll on the grandfather, who dies a few days later. Qin Zhong is left alone with no one to care for his family’s estate and with his lover missing in the city.
Meanwhile, the family is thrilled at news from the Emperor that Bao-yu’s sister has been chosen to become an Imperial Concubine. A decree from the Emperor was made about the possibility of visitation on family grounds for concubines if the family provides appropriate quarters, so the Rong and Ning-guo families embark on a construction project to prepare a space for a future visitation by Bao-yu’s sister. Dai-yu and Jia Lian return, much to the happiness of both Bao-yu and Xi-feng: Bao-yu is struck by Dai-yu’s beauty, and Xi-feng is pleased to have her husband back and to return to less taxing daily duties.
The chapter ends with sudden news from Tealeaf that Qin Zhong is dying. Although Bao-yu had just visited his friend the day before, he rushes to Qin Zhong’s house to see him before he dies. When Bao-yu arrives, Qin Zhong is already in the throes of death: “Qin Zhong’s soul had already left his body” (321). Bao-yu cries out to his friend, whose “soul was refusing to go quietly” (321). Bao-yu and his “demon-repelling jade” (322) manage to pull Qin Zhong from death for a few moments, and Qin Zhong nods slowly at his best friend before “he slid once more into the dark” (323).
Chapter 17 Summary
Qin Zhong dies, and an inconsolable Bao-yu spends many weeks in grief. Finally, Bao-yu manages to go on without his friend, though the loss still troubles him. Around the same time, the garden is finished, and Jia Zheng, Bao-yu’s father, travels there with his literary gentlemen to give temporary names to the buildings and vistas that need inscriptions. Grandmother Jia sends Bao-yu into the new garden to play. Although he tries to escape his father, he finds himself sucked into their garden tour. Jia Dai-ru, Bao-yu’s instructor, recently sent a note to Jia Zheng about Bao-yu’s skill in poetry. Jia Zheng decides to test his son, and Bao-yu continuously proves to be more skilled at recitation and composition of poems than any of the literary gentlemen. Jia Zheng is pleased but still manages to berate and bully his son throughout the afternoon. Bao-yu argues with his father about the idea of the word “natural,” and how his definition is only an “appearance of artifice” (337), or human reproduction of nature’s beauty. Bao-yu is most struck by the fairy gate, which reminds him of another structure he can’t quite recall. He satisfactorily passes his father’s tests and spends the afternoon resting with Dai-yu, whom he argues with over an embroidered purse she gave him as a gift.
Finally, Jia Qiang arrives from Soochow with 12 little girl actresses to be trained at the family drama school for the coming visitation. The family also requests to keep 24 Buddhist and Taoist nuns on the property. The narrator introduces a girl named Adamantina, a lay nun who has not shaved her head. Adamantina was the daughter of officials who became a nun to help cure a persistent childhood illness. She is known to be both “a rather proud young woman” and “handsome” (351). The family sends a formal invitation, and she comes by carriage the next day.
Chapter 18 Summary
Everyone is kept busy until the tenth month of the year, when the garden is finished. The family sends a letter requesting visitation, which is granted for the first day of the Lantern Festival the next year. The family is thrilled, and they continue their work training the young actresses and preparing the house for the visit. The night before Yuan-chun arrives, nobody sleeps.
Finally, Yuan-chun arrives, flanked by 10 pairs of eunuchs on horseback. The new garden and her new quarters startle her. When all the ceremonies of her arrival are over, she begins to hang on her Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang and weeps: “All three of them, in fact, though there was so much they wanted to say, seemed quite incapable of speech and stood there holding each other and sobbing, apparently unable to stop” (360). Yuan-chun also speaks to her father through a curtain, the only way he can see his daughter now that she “was the Emperor’s woman” (362). She mourns that loss of connection, saying, “What is the use of all this luxury [...] if I am always separated from those I love—denied the tenderness which even the poorest peasant … is free to enjoy?” (362). Her father responds by saying they are beyond blessed to have a daughter who receives such an honor from the Emperor. He tells her not to worry about their separation because her duties are elsewhere and far more important than loyalty to her family.
The night continues with poems written by the school children in the family. Yuan-chun is thrilled that her beloved baby brother Bao-yu has become a skilled poet. Dai-yu is put out that her poetry skills aren’t put to better use and composes a poem for Bao-yu when his sister’s requests overwhelm him. Yuan-chun distributes elaborate gifts to the family, and then she must leave, “unable to prevent a few drops [tears] from falling” (374). Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang mourn her after she goes.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
In these chapters, there are more warnings about the consequences of romantic love, and the characters struggle with the inability to express their deepest feelings and find solace in poetry. The dangers of love are clear in the story of the couple whose engagement is called off thanks to the meddling of Xi-feng, who did a favor for her friend, the Prioress Euergesia:
On learning that her affianced had been sent packing, she quietly went off and hanged herself in her scarf. The captain’s son, too, turned out to be a young person of unexpectedly romantic notions, for on hearing that Jing-ge had hanged herself, he promptly threw himself into a river and was drowned (303).
Although these characters aren’t essential to the narrative of the novel, their suffering at the loss of love connects to the warnings of the fairy Disenchantment and other characters, who warn against “romantic notions.” As such, they become yet another symbol of the harsh consequences of love. Similarly, Qin Zhong becomes a symbol of love and its damaging power when he begins a romantic relationship with the little nun Sapientia. The exertion of the romance, coupled with the harsh punishment given by his grandfather when he discovers the romance, lead to Qin Zhong’s illness and eventual death. The untimely death of Bao-yu’s best friend due to romantic engagements is yet another warning for Bao-yu about the hazards of his romantic lifestyle.
The strong feelings of the characters in these chapters—due to grief, love, and awe over nature—lead to a reliance on poetry as a mode of expression. The power of poetry becomes a significant theme in the second half of the book to express otherwise un-expressible emotions. This is true when Bao-yu and his father walk through the freshly designed garden, which is so beautiful that no expression seems truly worthy of its splendor. Instead, poems and inscriptions are given to convey the beauty of the place. Later, when Yuan-chun arrives for her visitation, she, her mother, and her grandmother are dumbstruck by their feelings. This inability to convey the heightened feelings of the moment leads to a celebration of verse for all the characters, particularly Bao-yu, whose poetic talents are known around the city. As in the narrative itself, when the narrator breaks into verse to convey particularly precious or significant moments, the characters themselves rely on poetry to say when cannot be said; the pure expression of poetry becomes a vehicle by which the most significant feelings and scenes of the narrative can be expressed.
