Theme Of Love In The Dream Of Red Chamber

It is interesting to note that The Dream of red Chamber from the first chapter is presented as a story of enlightenment. It is described by Vanitas as a love story, but that is only a vehicle used to stimulate enlightenment through love. In the novel, Zhen Shiyin and Jia Zheng both become enlightened through their deep-rooted love for their children. However, characters such as Adamantina and Jia Jing illustrate contrasts to them. Neither of these characters attempt to achieve enlightenment through love, but instead study Buddhist and Daoist scriptures. Jia Jing's death is an ineffective message since his character is for the most part outside of the novel's scope. However, Adamantina, being a resident of the garden, is closer to home and serves as a more potent sign. Using her, the author illustrates the inefficiency of Buddhism and Daoism when searching for enlightenment, and in this sense her story has some meaning. Buddhist scriptures can be read all day for the rest of ones life, but they cannot really help one to achieve true self-enlighenment.

Adamantina's love is self-directed. One the surface she is a pious nun, who sits in a temple day in and day out reading scriptures while the other youths of the garden enjoy the seasons and leisure. She is highly cultivated and ranked with the two heroines and the Jia girls as one of the “twelve beauties”. Not long into the story, one finds out that Adamantina's seeming purity is replaced by her desire for love and passions. Her name employs the same pun in Chinese as Daiyu's and Baoyu's names. Yu as it is written in each of their names means “jade” or “purity”, but a similarly pronounced character means “desire”. Adamantina is, in fact, the third passionate character in the novel...

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...onal purity.

This contradiction is the seed of Adamantina's tragedy and becomes the cause of her transformation from the pure nun to the polluted whore. Every time after this when Adamantina is mentioned, it is in relation to Bao-yu, which gives the reader the impression that she is infatuated with him. Within a short time her ability to meditate is even impaired by the suppression of her feelings for Baoyu. She becomes delirious during meditation and imagines herself surrounded by young suitors and manhandled by ruffians. This even leads to lewd rumors around town and eventually leads to the burglary of the hermitage and her ruin. This extreme fall of her character is not only ironic, but also predictable when one references one of the most important themes in the novel “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real.”