Abstract The Confucian society of ancient China was filled with specific norms and values. Conforming or not conforming to these specific values could cause negative or positive impacts in many individuals' lives. This paper discusses how the characters Pao-yu, Precious Virtue, Black Jade, Phoenix and Chia Lien from "Dream of the Red Chamber" by Hsueh Tsao Chin; Shen Fu and his wife Yun from "The Six Records of a Floating Life" by Shen Fu and Women Wang from "The Death of Women Wang" by Jonathan Spence do or do not conform to Confucian society and the affect that this conformity has on their lives.
From the Paper "Black Jade (Lin Ku-niang) another character from Dream of the Red Chamber is the woman Pao-yu is deeply in love with, like her lover she also has a rebellious nature. Black Jade is a very emotional, sensitive and dramatic girl who fails to conform to society because she was not an individual who showed filial piety, which was significant in a Confucian society. Black Jade loved Pao-yu and believed strongly that they were soul mates and destined to be married. The superiors in the Chia household especially the Matriarch, found Black Jade to have an arrogant and willful nature, they were not impressed by her unbridled behavior and found her speech to be most offending especially since it resulted as filial impiety. "
Abstract This paper explains that among the diverse themes of Tsao Hsueh Chin and Kao Ngoh's novel "The Dream of the Red Chamber" are the meaning of jade and stone as relates to Chinese religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism and Chinese society. The author points out that another theme is played out through the feuding of the central characters, which is the authors' way of illustrating the decline of the feudal society. The paper relates that the main protagonists are Black Jade, Chen Shih-yin, who is a wealthy intellectual scholar and Chia Yu-tsun, who has been building up a reputation based on currying favor with higher-ups, all in the name of Chia gaining power personally.
From the Paper "The wayward, hustler-womanizer Pao Yu, who represents the bad side of the society that the authors write about, later moves into the Garden of the Total Vision, and rules over it as "a crown of beauties," Zhou writes. The girls in the garden are part of a concept of "pristine ignorance...oblivious innocence" and that is a situation that calls for the author to use the term "hundun shijie" ("hundun" means "chaos" in Daoism). Allowing the huckster Pao Yu to rule over innocent girls, a reader could easily surmise, is tantamount to the "chaos" in society, in the metaphor; insensitive rulers, power brokers in that 18th Century society were likely able to take advantage of innocent, powerless civilians in the same way as Pao Yu feeds on young women. Pao even has a dream that he makes love to his niece."
