贾政荣国府二房的当家人 · 19
Leaf 19 of the Red Chamber · 二老爷 the Second Master
Jia Zheng 贾政
In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the household (当家) · nicknamed 二老爷 “the Second Master”
The Confucian discipline the novel cannot make work: a careful, dull official who reads his son as a ruinous dandy and beats him within an inch of the jade.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 17
Testing the Boy at the Plaques
試才題額He walks Baoyu through the newly built garden making him name the plaques and couplets, testing the boy in front of his clients — and approving almost none of it aloud.
- ch. 33
The Near-Fatal Flogging
大承笞撻His younger son whispers that Baoyu drove a maid to the well, and a prince's men come to the gate demanding his favourite actor; he beats Baoyu so hard that Lady Shi threatens to leave for Nanjing.
- ch. 78
Setting the Boys to the Heroine
同詠姽婳Commanded by his guests to have the boys compose on the heroine Lin Sihniang, he sets Baoyu and Jia Lan to the task and cannot help seeing which of them has the talent.
- ch. 107
The Hereditary Title Restored
復襲世職After the confiscation the throne returns the Rongguo title to him, along with the estate and the money his mother has just distributed, and the household re-forms around his second house.
結局 The ending
He outlives the disaster that his brother invited: reinstated to the dukedom, he survives to see Baoyu pass the provincial examination and then walk off into the snow with a monk and a Taoist, and the book closes with the family school reopened under his name and the son he beat gone past finding.
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