In A Dream of Red Mansions, Cao Xueqin portrayed Lin Daiyu as a "poor person" with unique spirituality, extraordinary intelligence and difficult fate. The author's aesthetic interest in this image is not only to sympathize with her misfortune, but also to show the collision between the avant-garde feminist ideal and feudal ethics, so that the self-destruction of the weak can stimulate readers' thinking sparks and call for women's awakening. Lin Daiyu's tragedy is the tragedy of an era. Her personality is avant-garde, infectious and inspiring.
Keywords Lin Daiyu; Poor man; Tragedy in the vanguard era
A Dream of Red Mansions is a masterpiece with strong tragic color in Qing Dynasty. Every character in the works contains tragic characteristics, among which Lin Daiyu is the representative: Cao Xueqin shaped it into a lovely girl image with unique spirituality, unusual intelligence and difficult fate.
1 Lin Daiyu's artistic image is very tragic.
Her bleak life experience has caused her unique personality of self-esteem, vigilance and self-esteem. She was born in a weak feudal official family, but because of her mother's early death, she was not influenced and trained by feudal ethics and women's morality. She was educated in feudal culture, but because of her weak body, she could not get strict requirements in her lessons. As for the feudal ethics, secular utilitarianism and other social knowledge, the influence on her is obviously very limited. This is also the reason why she keeps her pure character. But it is this character that makes her "be careful step by step, always care about it, and refuse to talk more and walk more" in the Guo Rong mansion full of hatred, struggle, competition and snobbery. Lin Daiyu has to be careful whether her behavior is in tune with others, and pay special attention to others' views and practices, which is a manifestation of her "self-respect and self-love". This makes us deeply realize that the life under the sponsor is so helpless and desolate, which can make readers feel the pity and respect of Daiyu.
Lin Daiyu is delicate and sickly, which makes people fondle it. There are many descriptions of her illness in the story. For example, when her mother died, Daiyu's old illness recurred; For example, when Baoyu first met, Baoyu gave Daiyu the word "quality"; When Lin heard that Baoyu was going to marry Baochai, he was even more indignant and heartbroken, so he smirked with Baoyu and so on. , let a person have a clear impression of her delicate essence. In A Dream of Red Mansions, Cao Xueqin did not spend too much ink to describe the external beauty of Lin Daiyu, but left a very delicate and beautiful image. The novel about Lin Daiyu's birth, with "the embodiment of fairy grass", makes readers realize her otherness and imagine her exquisite and extraordinary beauty with the essence of heaven and earth. In people's aesthetic concept, nature is beauty, and all plants have natural charm. Needless to say, how beautiful a "fairy grass" nourished by the essence of heaven and earth and dew is! When arranging Lin Daiyu's appearance, Cao Xueqin did not directly describe her beauty, but used the praise of Xifeng and Baoyu's feelings to express Lin Daiyu's peerless beauty by means of profile description. Feng is outspoken. As soon as she saw Daiyu, she exclaimed, "There are such beautiful people in the world! I saw it today! " In Jia Baoyu's eyes, Lin Daiyu is "two curved eyebrows like a frown, a pair of eyes like joy, a state of anxiety, a charm all over." Tears a little, breath slightly. Silence is like a beautiful flower shining on the water, and action is like a weak willow. The heart is a little more than the stem, and the disease is not as good as the west. "It can be said that this is not only conveyed by Baoyu's visual and psychological activities, but also the beauty that the author wants to express." I have seen this sister ",from the perspective of Jia Baoyu's aesthetic consciousness, this is his aesthetic standard, that is to say, this is Cao Xueqin's aesthetic consciousness.
When Lin Daiyu first arrived in Jiafu, her works showed her illness through everyone's concern. When the old lady and others saw that she was weak, they asked her, "What medicine do you often take? Why not treat her urgently? " When Wang Xifeng met Daiyu for the first time, she opened her mouth and asked, "What medicine have you taken recently …" and so on. It is not difficult to imagine that Lin Daiyu's first feeling is morbid. Praise words such as "My Gentle Daughter" and "Fairy Sister" make the vivid and "beautiful" image of Daiyu jump from the page. The author did not criticize her morbid beauty in her works, but hinted at the internal reasons of her unfortunate fate with her morbid state.
2 Lin Daiyu's talented woman image
Lin Daiyu's external beauty is not the focus to be described. The author pays more attention to the description of her rich, beautiful and sentimental inner world and the display of her artistic talent. For example, when they first set up a poetry club, they used "chanting Bai Haitang" as the theme and "door, basin, soul, scar and faint" as the rhyme, and issued a column of incense within a limited time. Those who fail to do so will be punished. While others were thinking hard, Lin Daiyu quietly looked at autumn scenery, stroking the phoenix tree alone and laughing with the maid in the middle. When everyone handed in their papers in succession, she waved a pen and said, "The curtain in Hunan is half-rolled, the door is half-closed, and the ice is broken into a pot of jade. Steal a pear for three cents and borrow a plum blossom for a soul. The moon cave fairy sews robes, and the woman who always wipes crow marks in my heart in autumn. Who is shy and silent? I'm tired of leaning against the west wind night. " It shows Lin Daiyu's agile talent and rich talent, which is amazing! Among many talented women, Cao Weng used ink most for Lin Daiyu's artistic genius. As far as his works are concerned, there are Autumn Window, Rainy Night, Tang Duoling, Flowers' Funeral, Five Beautiful Songs, The Journey of the Peach Blossom Daughter, Three Musts and so on. Every capital is full of emotions and emotions, which makes people angry. Lin Daiyu is simply a genius who combines all the poems in the world. Daiyu's poems blend scenes, which not only reflects her feelings about life and her pursuit of ideals, but also implies her situation in life. Dai Yu's Song of Burying Flowers can be said to be a true portrayal of her own life experience, and it can also be said that "a poem becomes a prophecy". In this poem, she described her situation and state of mind most aptly: "It's the same for 360 a year, and the wind and the sword crush people!" It shows that she has a deep understanding of the apathy of the world; "May slaves have wings and fly to the end of the sky with the wind" describes her pursuit and yearning for all the beautiful things in the world; "I died and buried today, but I don't know how I will die." It is a feeling of confusion and a helpless cry in the face of difficulties. And "Look at the gradual decline of spring flowers, that is, the beauty dies of old age, there is no elegy for me, and I don't know if the flowers will die" is another painful prediction of Daiyu's tragic situation. In Lin Daiyu's poems, we can see her noble character of "being aloof from things, standing proudly on earth and being dust-free".
Perhaps Lin Daiyu's beautiful image is a response to the saying that "beauty without defects is itself a defect", so Cao Xueqin added a bleak life experience and weak body to Lin Daiyu and ruined this beautiful image for people to see. Maybe that's the beauty of tragedy. The more beautiful it is, the deeper it is, and the more it can arouse people's inner cries.
3 the practical significance of Lin Daiyu's image
It is still of practical significance to savor Lin Daiyu's character. People often only see the unfortunate side of Lin Daiyu's life experience, but ignore the other side that she actually attaches great importance to realizing self-worth, and ignores her value of leading an honest and clean life. In particular, her persistent pursuit of "purity", hoping to fly to the horizon with flowers to pursue this precious and clean pure land, is an extremely beautiful and noble moral pursuit. Some modern women lack this conscious and strong concept of abstinence.
On the issue of love, Lin Daiyu pursues the truth closely related to her heart. She thinks that feelings are extremely important. She doesn't care how or whether the person she loves can embark on a career path. She only knows how to respect her feelings and her relatives' choices, which is a rational choice and an important choice. However, Baodai's love is doomed to be a tragedy. Because it has a sharp contradiction with feudalism, it violates the feudal marriage system agreement of "parents' orders and matchmakers' words", and more importantly, the core of their love rebellious thought conflicts with the whole feudalism. Lin Daiyu and Jia Baoyu refused to give up their pursuit. They represented a new force against feudal families. However, in order to safeguard their fundamental interests, feudal families will never allow such love to exist and develop. Although Baodai's love ended in tragedy, the efforts made by two people for love were so real and touching. I think even modern people will think so. Only in this way can love keep fresh. In this respect, it is of great reference value in today's era when marriage is in turmoil from time to time and family breakdown is common.
Daiyu calls herself "a man of vegetation". Her predecessor was crimson pearl grass. It seems that weakness is her true nature, but Lin Daiyu is not short of strength. She loves to cry, but she is not weak. She has a persistent side, that is, everyone has two sides. Her strength is manifested in her unremitting pursuit of pure love and "pure land". Lin Daiyu is the most outstanding representative of all girls in Jiafu, with a scholar's indomitable temperament and strong character.
In Lin Daiyu, we can see that her personality caused her own tragedy. She has always regarded Baoyu as her own everything, and her life and destiny have entered a strange circle. She was in poor health, worried and suspicious, and as a result, her condition worsened. How much prospect can a sick woman have in Jiafu? In this way, the more she cares about Baoyu, the farther away from what she originally wanted. Let's expand this problem to the whole female group, then we can see the author's intention. Cao Xueqin criticized women, especially girls, for relying too much on men. In feudal society, women succumbed to moral concepts, and girls like Lin Daiyu had no other choice in marriage. They only listen to "parents' orders and matchmakers' words", and of course they can only pin everything on men. Therefore, Lin Daiyu's tragedy is both individual, inevitable and representative. Modern civilized society will not be like this. Men and women are equal, and women enjoy the same rights as men to participate in all activities. It is really sad if any woman regards herself as only a part of a man, her husband and boyfriend as everything, lacks independent life consciousness and personality consciousness, and completely loses herself. At this point, it is also instructive for women today.
4 the aesthetic connotation of Lin Daiyu's image
The tragic beauty of Lin Daiyu's image itself shows the author's artistic interest and aesthetic ideal. Lin Daiyu is the spokesman of the tragic fate of celebrities.
Cao Xueqin's aesthetic standard in shaping Daiyu in A Dream of Red Mansions is to make the external performance and internal quality of the characters highly consistent. We saw that Lin Daiyu surpassed others in appearance and talent, and her words and deeds were outstanding. In the feudal concept, advocating the feudal dogma that "a woman without talent is virtue", the author did not standardize her words and deeds according to the feudal ethical standards, but broke through the boundaries and created an image of a talented woman with all-round poetry and books and five-tone zaqu. Her talent is not deliberately managed by a well-read person, but realized by holding the phoenix tree, watching autumn scenery or laughing with the ladies-in-waiting, which shows that she is brilliant. Her talent is so, and her inner firmness and strength are reflected in her character, which is different from the secular. This is not only in our nature, but also the inevitable result of acquired education and its profound cultural influence. She was born in a Zhong Ding family with a scholarly family, which naturally differs from ordinary aristocratic ladies. However, due to the death of his parents and helplessness, he had to live in Jiafu. Duckweed's general life experience and the suppression of her love by feudal ethics formed her lonely, sensitive and sentimental character. She has a beautiful vision for her ideals and a deep love for Jia Baoyu, a traitor who is also a feudal ethical code. She longs for independent love. However, at that time, in that family, such a beautiful ideal was doomed to be suppressed and destroyed. Her tragedy is that she didn't face up to the reality, or couldn't face up to it, and finally ended up with a tragic ending of "two people died without knowing."
The author attaches great importance to setting off the characters' personalities with the environment. When designing Lin's life scene, Xiaoxiang Pavilion is an exquisite and typical environment. The most distinctive feature of Xiaoxiang Pavilion is bamboo. Bamboo is also very modest. It symbolizes Lin Daiyu's graceful bearing and unyielding inner quality, and also symbolizes Lin Daiyu's sadness and tears. Tanchun nicknamed Daiyu "Princess Xiaoxiang". "Fei Xiangzhu", also known as "Tears Bamboo", is named after the legend that Shun's two concubines shed tears into spots. In the novel, Lin's former life was crimson pearl grass. "This crimson pearl grass began to get the essence of heaven and earth, and it was nourished by nectar. It took off the uterus of the plant and became a female body. It swims away from hatred all day long, longing for secrets and water. " Therefore, Daiyu in this world is doomed to pay her debts with tears. Cao Xueqin worked hard to create the image and personality of Lin Daiyu in different ways through two myths and legends: "crimson pearl grass" and "fragrant princess pearl". Both of these myths are based on infatuation and tears to imply the ending of reunion. The metaphor of bamboo for Daiyu's inner temperament is due to the author's preference for Daiyu and her unyielding inner character. This makes her have both the delicate characteristics of "crimson pearl grass" and the cultural character of "bamboo".
Bamboo has a deeper meaning in the novel. It is also said that the author has no intention to express the anti-feudal theme, but in fact, the work itself has a strong anti-feudal consciousness. Bamboo symbolizes Daiyu's anti-feudal spirit and noble moral integrity. She doesn't agree with secularism and dares to fight it. Although her life is a tragedy, her thoughts, rebellious character and anti-feudal will are strong. She is arrogant, contemptuous of wealth and fame, and unwilling to go along with the world. Her views fundamentally opposed the feudal orthodox dogma at that time. This kind of arrogance and resistance to feudal dogma can be compared with bamboo, that is, "standard strength and strict style"
Lin Daiyu's tragedy is the tragedy of an era. She belongs to the aristocratic class, but her character is rebellious, and she is a positive figure representing the tendency of progress and stepping. She pursued independent love, but what she did seriously deviated from the political interests of the feudal family and had sharp contradictions and conflicts with the feudal patriarchal clan system. In the struggle to break away from feudal ethics, she could not resist the blow of feudal orthodox forces and suffered emotional setbacks. In the end, love and life gave up. This unique personality, which is incompatible with feudal concepts, is probably inappropriate for anyone else in the works. On this basis, Cao Xueqin used the performance characteristics of "sadness", "tears", "illness" and "thinness" to serve for shaping the image of Lin Daiyu, so that it has lofty tragic significance and aesthetic value, and its personality has pioneering, infectious and enlightening social significance.
;