The Story of the Stone (part five)

Apologies for not posting sooner, but here is the final installment of The Story of the Stone. 

At the beginning of the story, Bao-yu still has not recovered his jade, so he has relapsed into a stupor.  Baochai's brother is still in prison despite the family's best efforts to bribe the officials into releasing him.  Bao-yu's father Jia Zheng has been posted to a job in the provinces where his naivety and rigor will get him into trouble...ironically...for corruption.  (His servants are notoriously corrupt, and one man has even convinced his master that servants expect to be able to make money from corruption in their position.  He said that if they are unable to do so, the master will not be able to do his job.)  The narrator also implies that the Jia family is out of favor with the government.  In fact, later in this volume, the family compound will be raided, and two senior members will have to go into exile.  Ironically, by then, Bao-yu's father will be working in the capitol at a job more suited to his strengths.

It goes without saying that at this point the garden (called Prospect Garden) is haunted.  Some of the family then become possessed by the spirits in this garden after You-shi (one of Bao-yu's aunts) takes a short cut through it.


By this time, hardly anyone is living there or even goes there.  Even the older women who were tending fruit and vegetable gardens there have left.

A number of characters also die in this volume.  The first is Xia Jing-Gui, Xue Pan's wife.  She appears to commit suicide, yet as it turns out, she was tricked into drinking the poisoned soup that she was about to give to Caltrop.  All this is revealed in an inquest.  The next is Ying-chun whose husband had been abusing her.  Grandmother Jia dies a while after the government raids the family's compound.  Ironically, she becomes ill at Baochai's birthday party.  Her protege Xi-feng is responsible for Grandmother's funeral, yet the family's finances, the politics within the family, and her own frailty make it impossible to carry out her duty.  She collapses during the funeral and dies but not before asking Grannie Liu, a poor woman from the country, to watch out for her daughter, Qiao-je.  This will be very important as after Xi-feng's death relatives will attempt to sell Qiao-je as a concubine to a Mongol prince.  Grannie Liu will then rescue the girl, hiding her at her own home in the country. 


Robbers also attack the Jia family compound in this volume, carrying off all the treasure that the late Grandmother Jia hid from the government.  Seeing Adamantina, a beautiful nun whose convent is within the compound, one robber kidnaps, rapes, and (probably) murders her. 

The tide begins to turn for the family towards the end of the book.  A mysterious monk returns Bao-yu's jade.  (As Adamantina predicted, the stone went into hiding at Greensickness Mountain for a time.)  Jia Zheng as head of the family continues to flourish in the capitol.  After all of her tribulations, Caltrop becomes Xue Pan's wife, not merely a "chamber wife."  Xi-feng's husband similarly "promotes" Patience after his wife's death.  Bao-yu and his precocious nephew Jia Lan take the civil service exam, enabling them to carry their weight in the family.  However, shortly after excelling on this exam, Bao-yu disappears.  As it turns out, he has become a monk, having completed what he was destined to do.