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“The Story of the Stone” is one of the four famous Chinese classical novels. The story was written in Qing dynasty, Cao Xueqing was tried to expose societal dark by using this book. Basically, the first chapter is kind of introducing the different characters in the story. Some part of this chapter is describing the unreal world; the story is beginning with a stone. The author is trying to by using the stone bring out the story. The main characters are Lin Daiyu and Jia Baoyu. The story is talking about the love story of the two characters’ and it also talking about the Jia’s family story. Daiyu is the old lady Jia‘s granddaughter, and the following two chapters are talking about Daiyu’s mother died, and then Daiyu came to Jias of Rongguo House.
Actually, I read this novel when I was at middle school in China. “The Story of the Stone” as a requirement novel in Chinese middle school, every student needs to read this novel. When I read this story at first time, I did not really understand what the story was talking about. The reason is that there were many ancient Chinese words; the author also used many poems to explain his feelings. After I got to understand this tory, I was interested in this story. It was not just a story; the author was trying to explore the realistic of the society in that dynasty. From the beginning the story, the author pointed out that “Pages full of idle words, Penned with hot and bitter tears: All men call the author fool; None his secret message hears.” From this short message, we could know that the author tried to expose the corrupt society. In that dynasty, people could not express anything they wanted, so they needed to use story to tell people what they tried to tell to the society. In a word, all truth would be covered. “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true.”
I agree with you that most people could not express their real feelings in public in that time especially for the women. It is like their lives are not theirs. They could not control their life, their marriage, and their rights to get education and so on. All of them had to obey and accept the traditional rules and social status set for them. If they disobey it, they might set to die or kick out from their family. In their world, there was no freedom, no rights, obey any decisions the elder made for them, that was all for their lives.
I had tried to read an easy and shorter book of the story in my middle school. However, it was really complicated and hard to understand. First, there were too much characters and the names were similar even I read it in Chinese. Second, there were poems and ancient Chinese style words; it made the book more difficult to understand. Therefore, I just gave up reading it. After a long period, I got to know the main idea of the story. The author was trying to expose the darkness of the society and eager for freedom.
The Romance of the Three Kingsoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and The Story of the Stone are the four famous Chinese literature. When I was in jounior middle school in China, I only read few parts of this story, but it was hard to understand. I knew this story exposed the real dark society in Qing Dynasty, and talking about Baoyu and Daiyu’s love story. “The author pointed out that ‘Pages full of idle words, Penned with hot and bitter tears’. ” and people thought the author was fool, I think people did not realize their real society, they did not enlightment, and they did not need anything change by under government control.
As Lihua said before, people didn’t having their rights to control their lives, like marriage and education. The government was monarchism. The emperor controled everythings, and the officials followed it. However, they corrupted, and their second generations could get educations at home by hiring private teachers. The marriage controled by parents, and should be matched. Men could have few concubines.