赵姨娘荣国府二房的妾母 · 26
Leaf 26 of the Red Chamber · 赵姨娘 the Zhao Concubine, Jia Zheng's bond-wife
Concubine Zhao 赵姨娘
In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the household (当家) · nicknamed 赵姨娘 “the Zhao Concubine, Jia Zheng's bond-wife”
The concubine the house despises and none of them can silence: she hires a witch against her step-son's life, and ends raving, burning paper to the dead she made.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 25
Wax Effigies at the Birth-Hour
魔法魘人Bribing the Taoist woman Ma Daopo, she has wax figures pricked with the birth-hours of Baoyu and Xifeng; the two go mad with a knife in hand, and the house hunts for the culprit.
- ch. 55
Fighting Over the Twenty Taels
爭喪銀When her brother Zhao Guoji dies, the deputy manager — her own daughter Tanchun — rules his burial gift at the old concubine's rate of twenty taels, and she storms in to ask whose mother she is.
- ch. 61
Fighting Over the Rose Water
擲粉罵婢Taking the insult her son was handed — powder passed off for the rose water he asked — she goes to the singing-girls' quarters and strikes Fangguan, and eleven others set on her.
結局 The ending
Her old witchcraft comes collecting in the later chapters: taken with fits she cringes, begs and burns paper to the dead she raised against the living, and dies badly at home. Tanchun is married far away and never sees her, and Jia Huan, for whom she did it all, can do nothing.
The book itself: what happens, how long it is, which English version to read — The story · How long it is · Which translation · The lamp-oil night · The family tree · The first expulsion