A New Interpretation on the Lady Wang in the Dream of the Red Chamber

A common interpretation of the Lady Wang in the Dream of the Red Chamber is to view her as supporting the marriage between Chia Baoyu and Xue Baochai and opposing the love/marriage between Chia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. In a word, Lady Wang is deemed as an embodiment of traditional Confucian ritual-ethical force(傳統禮教勢力）that persecuted young women. Such interpretation is typically based upon a restrictive reading on one single episode of the novel, namely, the rummaging of the Prospect Garden(抄檢大觀園）. This paper carefully examines all the plots about Lady Wang and tries to provide a comprehensive characterization of her role, incorporating, among others, the perspectives of parent-child relationship, uterine family, and maternity. I focus on delineating Lady Wang’s “double mother”(雙重母親）figure: simple-minded and yet prudent, attentive to natural feelings while adhering to traditionally-derived power. This “double mother” characterization echoes the familiar theme of “of second birth”(二度出生）in mythology. I argue that Lady Wang embodies exactly this double image: on the one hand, she is kind, life-giving, and warm; on the other, she is inscrutable, capable of destruction, and has a terrifying persona. The episode of rummaging the Prospect Garden is reexamined and analyzed accordingly under this perspective.