Chinese classical poetry made extensive use of metaphors. For instance, a tomb was also called a "green mound"; longing for a distant friend was compared to "spring trees yearning for clouds"; a rich girl's boudoir was a "red chamber," while a poor girl's room was a "green window."
So did Dream of the Red Chamber mean "Dream of a Wealthy Household"?
This allusion was said to come from Bai Juyi's poem "Red Chamber, Daughter of a Wealthy Family." Dream of the Red Chamber did indeed tell the story of young men and women from a grand household, yet its beauties had remarkably few real activities, certainly nothing comparable to the rich social lives of Parisian women. Although the author tried to give them distinct personalities, they were nearly blank slates apart from their various romances with Jia Baoyu and their poetry recitals. By contrast, "Peppercorn Feng," Wang Xifeng, was the complete opposite. She could not recite a single poem, yet that did nothing to hinder her sharp tongue; her speech was full of all kinds of proverbial punchlines.
At first, Nick had thought this was due to the writer's lack of skill. Later, he understood just how realistic the author had been, and why the priest had used medical treatment as an excuse to encourage women to leave their homes.
To accurately understand the temperament of Chinese women, one needed to know what virtues husbands expected of their wives. For example, society praised women for being filial and obedient, for caring attentively for parents and children, and for doing things silently and unobtrusively. Naturally, they would be raised that way from childhood. Besides books such as Biographies of Exemplary Women, they rarely had access to other reading material. Even when an opera troupe arrived, they could not sit among the