Local Theater -- The Gaming Table

Although Susanna Centlivre wrote The Basset Table...I mean...The Gaming Table long before our era begins in EN 230, I'd like to post a quick review of the performance my husband and I saw today at the Folger Theater in DC.

One of the advantages of living near DC is the ability to see performances of plays that are no longer performed as often.  The Folger Theater is a particularly suitable venue.  The two-story stage with its sweeping, wooden staircase represented an eighteenth-century London mansion in a way that a more typical stage might not.

This performance reminded me that Restoration comedy is fun to read--and watch.  The performance was fun and funny without being condescending or condescended to.  Neither did it creak.  The actors were skillful, and parts of the play were discreetly updated here and there.  Since we associate basset with dogs rather than with cards, the play's title became The Gaming Table.  After all, the play is about women who gamble on cards, love, and men.  The prologue and epilogue included references to Congress and women's roles today.

Like many Restoration comedies, The Gaming Table brings together several couples in a merry round of romance.  Centlivre gives us four to be exact.  First is Lady Reveller, a spunky widow, and her beau Worthy, who wants her to give up gambling.  Next is her cousin Lady Lucy, a serious young lady who prefers the playhouse to the gaming table, and Sir James Courtly, a not-so-serious man.  Another cousin, Valeria, would seem to prefer science to love...except that she is in love with the charming Ensign Lovely.  And then there are Mr. and Mrs. Sago, Pud and Kiki...except that she appears to love gaming and Sir James more than she loves her husband.  Other characters throw in complications.  Valeria's father intends for her to marry Captain Hearty who would rather not marry her.  And then there are Buckle and Alpiew, the servants of Worthy and Lady Reveller respectively.

But all's well in the end.

Here are links to a few reviews of The Gaming Table:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2012/02/02/the-gaming-table/

http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/articles/play-dc-the-gaming-table-the-folger-theatre.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/performing-arts/the-gaming-table,1213012/critic-review.html

http://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/susanna-centlivres-the-gaming-basset-table-at-the-folger/

For more information about the play itself, see The Folger Theater's website:

http://www.folger.edu/woSummary.cfm?woid=677

For more information about Susanna Centlivre who wrote The Basset Table in 1705, see these links:

http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=4035

http://www.juggernaut-theatre.org/first100years/centlivrebio.html

See these links for a review of an earlier revival of The Basset Table:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=108015&sectioncode=26

UMBC has a podcast of a performance:

http://www.umbc.edu/theatre/z_bassettable.html

Chicago's Alcyone Festival in 2008 included a performance of another of Centlivre's plays:

http://halcyontheatre.org/boldstroke

The Busy Body was staged in NYC in 2010:

http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com/2010/08/saturday-evening-in-washington-heights.html

The blog entry above has many pictures!

The Wonder was also staged in NYC.  This appears to be a more modern version.

Study Guide for Midterm part two (Summer 2009)

Now that another week is over, I thought that I'd post the next installment of our study guide.  This entry will cover Things Fall Apart, The Turkish Embassy Letters, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as well as the web sites and videos we looked at this week.

Monday we began our discussion of Things Fall Apart (1958), one of the first major works in modern African literature and the first that most of us read.  This novel was also Chinua Achebe (1930-)'s first.  Among the topics we talked about were Okonkwo's character, his relationship with his father (was Achebe influenced by Freudianism), Achebe's depiction of Igbo society, his use of third-person narration, the role of the council, the role of the egwugwu, and Okonkwo's wives.  We also discussed Okonkwo's hypermasculinity and compared it to the masculinity of the other men in the village.  In addition, we talked about elements of orality, especially the proverbs that appear in the narrative as well as in characters' speech.  For more information about orality, see this site here:  http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~univ302/StudentWork/S96/Sandman/Orality.html


We also watched the following scenes from the TV movie version of Things Fall Apart:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBy0-08uw3o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXFuiRaiYB0

I have to add this earlier scene that we did not watch because it allows us to watch Pete Edochie's Okonkwo in action.  Isn't he well cast?! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZijfjuYftw


Tuesday we continued discussing Things Fall Apart.  Topics we considered included Okonkwo as tragic hero, his tragic flaw (his temper?  his pride?  his hypermasculinity?  his misogyny?), Ikemefuna's murder (and Okonkwo's role in it), Igbo society, colonialism, and the impact of Christianity on Umuofia. 

For more information about the tragic hero, see this site:  http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/tragedy/aristotle.htm

This site has more information about tragedy:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/tragedy.html



In addition, we watched the following videos.  The first, a brief video, contains Chinua Achebe's remarks on slavery, colonialism, and the African diaspora.  It will also shed light on The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdjcFOoVi8

The next, a longer video, is part of Bill Moyers' interview of a middle-aged and vigorous Achebe.  The interview took place just before Achebe returned to Nigeria to become the leader of his town's council.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCic_RoPhoM

We also watched the following examples of Igbo dance.  The first is a masquerade, and the second takes place at a funeral.  Note how these videos help you understand some of the rituals in the novel, particularly the egwugwu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrWu7Dp3Ea0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PxvDFoBxTc


The picture below is of an egwugwu, specifically an elephant spirit.  How does this picture compare to the way that Achebe depicts the appearance of the egwugwu in the village?



Wednesday we began our unit on life writing, a genre that includes autobiographies and memoirs, letters, journals and diaries, and biographies.  In other words, life writing documents an actual individual's life.  Olaudah Equiano's and Harriet Jacobs' writing fall under the category of autobiography.  (Memoirs cover only part of an individual's life.  For example, if Jacobs wrote about her nearly seven years in her grandmother's attic, then her work would be a memoir.  Other examples of the memoir would be Maya Angelou's series that begins with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  As you can see, though, from this image from www.littlebrown.uk, the terms autobiography and memoir are often used interchangeably.


Wednesday we discussed Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789) and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters (first published in 1837, long after the author's death).  For more information about Equiano's life, see this Critical Biography by Prof. Brycchan Carey:

http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/biog.htm

For more about the controversy over Equiano's birthplace, see these links:

http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/nativity.htm
http://www.everygeneration.co.uk/equiano_review.htm

Jim Egan's review is interesting but may be too technical for some.  However, he raises some important points about biographies' old-fashioned attitudes:

http://ecti.english.illinois.edu/reviews/46/egan-carretta.html

I must admit that in our discussion of Equiano's rhetorical strategies and his relationship with Capt. Pascal we fell into some of the errors that Egan mentions.  However, as Prof. Carey's biography indicates, Equiano really did have a complicated relationship with the captain. 

Other passages we focused on were Equiano's first impressions of the Europeans, his relationship with his mentor Daniel Queen, his first impressions of England, a paragraph on cruelty towards new slaves (especially women and girls), the way that he achieved his freedom, and his expressed wish to track down Capt. Pascal (who had sold him off his ship right before it landed in England...again).


This picture is from the University of Maryland's Early Americas Web Gateway.  Vincent Carretta, the scholar who argued that Equiano was born in the Carolinas and not in Africa, is a professor at College Park.  I guess I am going to put his biography of Equiano on my reading list! 

Now for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish Embassy Letters!  For a biography of this most interesting woman, see this link:  http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/montagu/marybio.htm

I think that her letters are particularly interesting in EN 202 for two reasons.  First of all, she is writing at a time (1716 to 1718) when the British Empire was not dominant, so she did not depict the Ottoman Empire from a position of superiority and perhaps contempt.  Secondly, she writes to a number of different people, so her point of view changes from letter to letter.  In fact, here are a few more letters that our anthology did not include:

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/montltrs.htm

The letters we looked at in class were Lady Mary's literary letter to Alexander Pope, her letter to a friend that detailed the Turkish practice of vaccination against smallpox, and her letter to her sister, the Lady Mar.  In that last letter, Lady Mary writes about her visit to two very different harems.  The picture below looks more 19th century than 18th century, but it gives you an idea of what the harems might have been like for Lady Mary.


Thursday we covered Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and scenes from film adaptations of 19th century British novels.  I also talked about the transition from the 18th century to the 19th century.  Even though the difference in gender and geography between Equiano and Jacobs may well be differences enough, I think that the different time periods are also important factors.  I'm particularly thinking of the difficulty that Jacobs' family has in buying their freedom, Jacobs' own embrace of True Womanhood (piety, purity, submissiveness, domesticity), her praise for womanly women like her grandmother and the elderly white woman who gave her her freedom and her scorn for unwomanly women like Mrs. Flint, and her depiction of her childhood (until the death of her parents). 

I am going to post a link to a 1973 edition of Orlando, the book that I read.  If you go to the contents and then to the end of chapter four and the beginning of chapter five, you'll find the passage that I read in class:

http://books.google.com/books?id=EOC258GapEoC&dq=virginia+woolf+orlando&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=KAxiSvj1D6Oltgf8r8jvDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

About fifteen years ago Orlando was made into a movie.  The picture below is of Orlando as a young man during the Elizabethan era.  I told you that this novel was not realistic!!



Here is a YouTube video of Orlando in the 18th century with her salon of literary friends.  One (the man with his head wrapped up) is, I believe, Pope. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acWUkoi4Zpc

Unfortunately, I can't find a video of Orlando during the 19th century.

Here are links to the videos that we watched in class:


Above is a picture of young David Copperfield working in the shoe-blacking factory after his mother dies.  His evil stepfather Mr. Murdstone sent him to work there.

This is the part of David Copperfield that we saw:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAle3Efw8-s

This is the opening to the 2006 Jane Eyre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XsB22Qjz3A

You may also prefer this more straightforward opening from the 1940s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxoB2FqeuXw

By the way, she ends up marrying her employer (see picture below):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-5owa_DD7o



What light do these videos shed on Equiano's and Jacobs' autobiographies? What light to they shed on the novel? or the 19th century with its separate spheres for men and women?

Below is an image of the wanted poster that Dr. Norcom (the actual Dr. Flint) circulated after Harriet escaped to her grandmother's attic.  As we learned, Harriet was not free from the Norcom family's menaces until her employer bought her freedom or, rather, paid their blackmail.

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.

The Story of the Stone (part four)

Cultural China's picture of Baoyu, Baochai, and (I think) Dai-yu will be a good lead for this entry on the fourth volume of the Story of the Stone.  Here the cousins are older.  Bao-yu has begun to take his studies much more seriously, in part to please his father and the rest of his family but also because he is no longer able to spend time with his female cousins.  Some have returned home; some are married.  In fact, his family is making arrangements for his marriage to Baochai (the young lady on the right) as well.  Bao-yu, on the other hand, loves Dai-yu even though she is pushing him away.  (She continues to be ill in this book and at one point even tries to will her death.)  Yet Dai-yu hopes that she will marry Bao-yu.  Finally, despite what this picture implies, Baochai is pushing herself away from Bao-yu as well.  She has moved back in with her mother and taken on more responsibilities as her family situation has become worse and worse, even with the marriage of her brother Xue Pan, who seems to have reformed. 

However, Xue Pan has also married Xia Jin-gui, a spoiled yet wealthy young lady who is constantly trying to assert herself and cause trouble in her husband's family.  She is jealous of her husband's "chamber wife," Caltrop (whom she arbitrarily renames); her own maid; and, of course, Baochai.  Then, after her husband is sent to prison for killing a waiter, Xia Jin-gui attempts to seduce her husband's cousin, a clean-cut young man.

In this volume, even more so than in Volume 3, we see the rivalries within the family and among their servants.  I have already mentioned Xue Pan's wife.  In addition, as Wang Xi-feng becomes weaker and the family less rich, she becomes vulnerable to attacks from others.  At one point when her daughter is very ill, Jia Huan, the son of a jealous concubine, knocks over the medicine that Wang Xi-feng has gone to great lengths to make for her daughter.  Then the convent located in the family compound is the site of a lurid scandal.  The family member responsible for maintaining this convent is caught partying with the young novices.  The family then disbands the convent, returning the novices to their families. 



Amidst all of this turmoil Bao-yu and Dai-yu find time to discuss their mutual love of music.  Not only is Dai-yu a brilliant poet but she is also proficient on the qin, a seven-string instrument that is now called the guqin.  (It is pictured above.)  For more information about this instrument, see this link:  http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/qinjieshao.html 
To listen to what the guqin sounds like, see these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKNeParT2eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRFFpxkrfGw&feature=related

At the climax of this volume, right before he is about to go to a viewing party for out-of-season crab flowers, Bao-yu loses his jade.  He attempts to cover it up at first, but he is not successful as he quickly becomes very ill.  Despite everyone's best efforts, including a visit to a psychic, the jade does not turn up.  Bao-yu continues to be quite ill, and in order to cure him, Grandmother Jia and the rest of his family decide to bring about the union of jade and gold...that is...marry him off to Baochai.  Since he is still very much in love with Dai-yu, the family tricks him into believing that he will marry her...hence this scene below.

Then, as Bao-yu and Baochai marry, Dai-yu dies alone, with only her maid Nightingale to keep her company.  (The family has neglected her in this last illness.)  Bao-yu relapses but does not learn about his beloved's death until Baochai informs him.  In the short run, he appears to handle the news well, but in the next volume, we will see about the long run!

I'll close this section with an image from a Shanghai ballet based on The Story of the Stone.  Of course, here, Bao-yu is with Dai-yu.


The fourth volume of The Story of the Stone is also a good point to talk about the novel's authorship.  In the version of the novel that I've read, the first three volumes are exclusively the work of Cao Xueqin (@ 1715 - 1763 or 1764), a descendant of a once-flourishing family that fell into disgrace in the 1720s.  The last two volumes were edited and even reconstructed by Gao E (1785 - 1838) as some chapters were missing and there were different versions of others.  Translator David Hawkes has speculated that the missing chapters had been supressed.  Interestingly, the fourth and fifth volumes contain many references to the Emperor's benevolence.

I'll end this entry with an image of Cao Xueqin's statue in Beijing and one of the Cao Xueqin Memorial Hall in a suburb of that city. The author, however, was not from the capital.  He was born in Nanjing and did not move to Beijing until after his family's disgrace.  However, his novel is set in Beijing.

 

The Story of the Stone (part three)

Since I'm not able to find a large enough picture of the cover to Volume 3, I will post this picture of a couple in the Grand View Garden from www.beijingguide2008.com.  It looks like this couple may be actors dressed as Bai-yu and Lin-yu. 

However, this picture is idyllic and belies the overall tone of this volume, "The Warning Voice."  At the end of the volume, Bai-yu is still living in the garden with *most* of the young people who were there at the beginning, and he and his father have begun to be reconciled to each other, but it is clear that things have begun to fall apart for the family.  Throughout the end of Vol. 2 and the whole of Vol. 3, the adult women (especially Wang Xifeng and Lady Wang but also Bao-chai) are concerned about its financial situation.  Xifeng herself is bedridden at the beginning of the volume after giving birth to a stillborn son.  Bai-yu's half-sister Tan-chun and his sister-in-law Li Wan have taken on Xifeng's duties, and they are constantly struggling to manage the family complex and its servants.  Much of the volume is taken up with the servants' jostling for power, prestige, and stolen goods as well as the family's efforts to discipline them for their thefts, gambling, and drunkenness. Moreover, the family is in mourning for Sir Jia Jing, its nominal head, and the Dowager Consort of the late Emperor.  She is not related to the family, but their social position requires that they enter mourning for her.

Below are 19th century painter Xu Baozhuan's depictions of two of Bai-yu's senior maids.  The first is Skybright, a skilled seamstress with a sharp tongue.  She will be one of the servants fired by Lady Wang, and she will die shortly after she is sent to live with her cousin and his vicious wife.  The second is Aroma, Bao-yu's chief maid and "chamber wife."





In addition, soon after her stillbirth, Wang Xifeng's husband Jia Lian marries another woman secretly and sets up a household with her outside the family's compound.  (As you may know from Raise the Red Lantern, men were permitted to have multiple wives.  However, Jia Lian is afraid how his wife and family will respond to his taking a second wife, and, as I have mentioned above, the family is in mourning.)  Once Xifeng finds out about her husband's secret marriage to You Er-jie, she brings her back to the family compound only to make her life miserable.  Er-jie, by the way, commits suicide after this mistreatment that includes the miscarriage of a son.  This miscarriage was induced by the incompetent doctor whom Xifeng hires for her. 

Jia Zheng's return to the family comes as a relief to them and even the reader.  (Remember that he nearly killed Bao-yu in Volume 2.)  Before his father's return, Bao-yu scurries around to complete all the tasks that his father has set him.  In fact, he has to ask his female cousins to help him compile enough calligraphy.  Nevertheless, father and son reconcile.  Jia Zheng even commissions his son to write a poem on a historical figure, the Winsome Colonel, a woman who goes to war to avenge the death of Prince Heng. 

Below is a picture of Mu Guiyung, another of China's woman warriors.


At the end of the third volume, Bao-yu's companions are beginning to move out of the garden.  Bao-chai chooses to move back in with her mother.  The maid Caltrop must move back in with her master Xue Pan once he returns from a long journey.  He soon marries a cruel and capricious woman who torments Caltrop.  Another companion, Ying-chun, marries, and others will soon follow.

I'll finish with a more desolate picture from the Grand View Garden in Beijing.

Story of the Stone (part two)

In this volume of The Story of the Stone, the cousins are a little more grown up (14 or 15), and they are mad for poetry.  The Crab Flower Club is the name of their club, and many of "their" poems are included in this volume.  Our anthology includes only a few scenes from this section of The Story of the Stone, but I think that it is still well worth reading not only to see what happens to Bao-yu and his family but also to understand a little more about Chinese literature and literary studies as well as their attitudes towards gender.

The picture below is China-Guide's illustration of Dai-yu composing one of her poems.



However, this volume is not as wonky as it seems.    In fact, here, the clouds begin to gather over Bao-yu and his family.  Early on, Jia Zheng, Bao-yu's father, attacks his son, giving him an extremely severe beating because of what he perceives as his dissoluteness.  Keep in mind that Bao-yu hates to study and that he shows especially contempt for what is considered masculine knowledge.  His father, on the other hand, is a Confucian scholar and civil servant.  Almost at the beginning of the book, Golden, a servant to Bao-yu's mother, is dismissed for flirting with the young man.  Later she kills herself.  When Jia Zheng inquires into this young woman's suicide, Jia Huan (his other son by a concubine) informs him that Golden killed herself after Bao-yu had raped her.  (Right now I'm reading Vol. 3, and this lie has not yet been exposed although it is clear to the family that Jia Huan and his mother are troublemakers.)  Jia Zheng leaves the family compound shortly thereafter when the Emperor promotes him to high office.  However, Bao-yu's days in the garden may be limited.  His maid and now "chamber wife," Aroma, advises Bao-yu's mother to be stricter with him, move him into lodgings outside of the garden, and encourage him to be more like his father.  In other words, it is time for Bao-yu to learn to be a man.  (Below is a picture of Confucian scholars from www.cultural-china.com.) 



Dai-yu, Bao-yu's beloved cousin, also faces certain gender strictures.  At one of the meetings of the Crab Flower Club, she quotes lines from Dream of the Western Chamber, a risque novel that Bao-yu has encouraged her to read.  How explicit it is you may see here:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7134.html
Afterwards, Bao-chai takes her aside to warn her about her reading and even her absorption in literature.  She reminds her that for both girls and boys literature is just a pastime. 

Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of Baochai at work, so here is An Ho's portrait of Wang Xifeng, the relative who runs the household...or shall I say family complex.  Wang Xifeng is perhaps Dai-yu's polar opposite.  She is energetic, practical, manipulative, and illiterate.  She puts a great deal of energy into humoring Grandmother Jia and managing the servants as well as making money for herself.  Let's imagine that Wang Xifeng is sitting listening to reports from the various servants.



However, all is not well for Wang Xifeng either.  Her husband Jia Lian is a philanderer, and in the Crab Flower Club, we will see her attack him and her servant Patience after she overhears his complaining about her to a mistress.

As you might imagine, at this point, the poetry club, though, is a useful diversion, uniting the younger members of the family, a group that becomes even more numerous near the end of this volume.  Even Wang Xifeng is involved as the enforcer of penalties.


Perhaps I will end this entry with another picture of the Grandview Garden in Beijing:

The Story of the Stone (part one)

In EN 202, we've read a few scenes from The Story of the Stone, a classic Chinese novel from the 1700s, but I would like to give you a fuller picture of this novel.  After all, the English translation is in five volumes, and the Longman Anthology's excerpts are mainly from the first and the second volumes.

The Story of the Stone follows Bao-yu, a wealthy, spoiled, but idealized young man from before his birth (there is a frame story) through his childhood and adolescence to his decision to become a Daoist monk.  In his early years, his family flourishes, and admittedly, it is easy to lose track of the members of his extended family and their servants who people the novel.  However, Bao-yu will fall on hard times as we will see in the later volumes.  Translator David Hawkes mentions that Bao-yu's story may be a fictionalized version of his author, Cao Xuequin,'s life.  Like Bao-yu, Cao Xuequin came from a wealthy family that lost favor with the Emperor.

That was the short version of The Story of the Stone.   The pictures and text make up the long version of my summary of Volume 1.

Below is a picture of a jade pendant to evoke the pendant that Bao-yu wore around his neck.  (As we learn in the frame story, he had been a jade cornerstone in a previous life.  Curiously, he was the stone that a goddess rejected and a Daoist monk rescued.)


Rescued by the monk, the future Bao-yu meets a flower that will become Dai-yu, his childhood companion and first love.  Below is a picture of the couple.  This appears to be a scene from the end of Volume 1 or perhaps Volume 2.



In 1987, CCTV, China's major television network, broadcast a miniseries version of The Story of the Stone.  (The miniseries, though, is titled The Dream of the Red Chamber, an alternate title for the novel.)  Here is a scene from that series.  In this version, Bao-yu is played by a man, but this role has been performed by a woman in the Shaw Brothers' version  from 1977.
(The Shaw Brothers were based in Hong Kong, which was a British colony and *not* part of China in those days.)

For a little more information, here is a link to a page on the TV series:

http://www.china-guide.com/entertainment/dream.html

I will also post a link to the trailer of the recent TV series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUGdUH-3fI



Or you may prefer Bukit Panjang Hokkien Konguay Opera Troupe's rendition of this scene:


If you would like to hear what an operatic version is like, see this video of Dai-yu burying the flowers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwBGFUiK0Bo


I also want to include some pictures that show you how opulent Bao-yu's lifestyle was as well as how beautiful his family's gardens were.  Below is a scene from the recent remake of The Story of the Stone!  In the first volume, Bao-yu's grandmother (Grandmother Jia) is often depicted holding court over her family's meals, so I imagine that this scene might be one of those occasions.


Bao-yu's life, though, is not all pleasure even though he is his grandmother's favorite.  His father, on the other hand, feels contempt for him because he prefers the company of women and dislikes studying.  (Jia Zheng, the father, is a Confucian scholar and civil servant, so he represents a more conventional adult masculinity.)  In one of the scenes that we may read for EN 202, Jia Zheng forces Bao-yu to come up with names and brief poems for the various highlights of the garden he has built for his daughter's visit.  The father appears to despise his son's contributions, but in the end he accepts them.  In another scene that we will not read, Baochai's brother Xue Pan tricks Bao-yu by claiming that his father is looking for him.  Bao-yu's fear of his father is that well-known. 


Below is another scene from this recent remake.  This depicts Dai-yu as a young girl who has just come to live with her relatives (Bao-yu's extended family).  We see Dai-yu's precociousness and pensiveness in this picture.  (She studies in secret and is an accomplished poet as well as a skilled needleworker who destroys her work out of spite.)  However, we do not see her prickliness, but this, too, is a strong element in her character.  As an adolescent, she is constantly bickering and battling with Bao-yu.  She is also jealous of Bao-chai, a more conventional young lady who has also come to live with the family and will marry Bao-yu. 



Here is a picture of Baochai from that same miniseries.  However, this picture depicts her as a teenager.  While Dai-yu is always bickering or brooding, Baochai has a much calmer, friendlier demeanor, and she is particularly noted for her kindness to servants.  As a poet and needleworker, she is talented but not as talented as Dai-yu is.   According to David Hawkes, Baochai and Dai-yu are two variants on the ideal woman. 



The picture below depicts Bao-yu and Dai-yu together in the garden near their houses.  (Yes, as adolescents, each of the young people in the family had his or her own house in the garden.  Previously they had lived with Grandmother Jia.)  This picture is quite fantastic, but it gives you an idea of how stunning the garden is.  (It was built as a venue for a one-day visit by Bao-yu's older sister, one of the Emperor's concubines.)


Here is a more realistic picture of what the garden may have looked like.  In fact, after the filming of the 1987 miniseries, the Chinese government recreated the novel's Grand View Garden.


For more information about this site, see the links below:

http://english.sina.com/p/2008/0806/176446.html

http://www.beijingguide2008.com/grand_view_garden_beijing/grand_view_garden_beijing.html

Finally, the picture below from www.culturalchina.com shows just how crowded with family members and servants The Story of the Stone is!  For example, when Jia Zheng quizzes his son in the new garden, a number of male family members and other "literary gentlemen" accompany them.  Moreover, quite a bit of the latter part of Volume 1 is devoted to the rivalries between the family's servants as well as those between members of the family.  At one point a concubine has a spell cast on both Bao-yu and Wang Xi-Feng because she feels that the family bullies her son.  Bao-yu is the first wife's son, but the bustling Wang Xi-Feng happens to be the young family member who manages the household.  Bao-yu's jade, by the way, breaks the spell once a Daoist monk repurifies the stone.