"Dream of Red Mansions" is around Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue these four families as the background. Jia BaoYu and Lin Daiyu's love story as the centerline; Bao and Dai fight for the freedom of love, autonomy and personal liberation thought marriage with the contradictions of the feudal system, between the feudal ethics. Although this looks like a love novel, it gives a lot of idea of the traditional China’s feudal marriage system. Because of the patriarchal, women are not independent, the function of wife is connected two family together with benefit and also a tool of procreation. “Dream of Red Mansions” reflected in many different angles about the wives and concubines. In the Chinese language in combination with imagery, "good" compost two …show more content…
Xing and his concubines; master Jia Zheng's wife Mrs. Wang and his concubine aunt Zhao, aunt Zhou. Zhen Jia’s wife You Shi, and concubines Pei Feng and kai luan, etc.. Jia Lian’s wife is Wang Xifeng, his concubine Qiutong and You. Although these masters has a lot of wives, but they will only call the wife wife, but the rest of the wives will be called concubine. Through these phenomena from Jia’s family, it can shows that the marriage system of the traditional feudal society; although they have a lot of polygamy, but there only one positive wife, and the rest of the wives are concubines. Therefore, the institution of marriage in ancient China summarized, as "monogamy multi concubine" system seems to be more accurate than what we usually call "polygamy" system. However, those "many concubines" concept maintains any idea of power and rich; people who living at the bottom do not have the ability to support a huge family member at the same time, so they can just being monogamous due to the economic condition. As Engels said, "polygamy is a privilege of the rich and dignitaries character", it can really shows in “Dream of Red …show more content…
These big four families which contain a lot of family members, and from those members, it is not hard to find out that most of them have a good background and come from a noble family. Jia Daisan - Shi Taijun (Jia and Shi); Jia Zheng - Mrs. Wang Jia Lian - Wang Xifeng (Jia and Wang); Jia BaoYu – Xue Baochai (Jia and Xue); Xue wife - Xue Yima - Royal daughters (Wang and Xue). They have a intricate relationship between the four families, and the writer notice that on the chapter four that, “"This four were contacted pro, a loss of all loss, a prosperity, support each others, both have to take care of.” Prosperity is the best goals of large family practice "perfect match" of their marriage, also, it the marriage is not success, "a loss of all loss" has become its inevitable