薛宝琴贾母膝下的新客 · 40
Leaf 40 of the Red Chamber · 义女 Adopted Daughter of Lady Wang
Xue Baoqin 薛宝琴
In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the household (当家) · nicknamed 义女 “Adopted Daughter of Lady Wang”
Everything the house is about to lose arrives in her at once — travel, health, verse, an old woman who wants her for a daughter — and she is safely promised to somebody else.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 49
The Adoption and the Horoscope
強認義女She arrives with her brother to complete a marriage her father arranged before dying; Grandmother Jia is so taken with her that she makes Lady Wang adopt the girl, then asks her horoscope for Baoyu.
- ch. 50
Plum Blossoms in the Snow
踏雪折梅In fresh snow she stands on the hillside with a maid behind her and a load of red plum in her arms, and the garden pronounces her the living original of a painting the Dowager hangs on her walls.
- ch. 51
Ten Riddles on Foreign Coasts
懷古絕句She brings ten riddle-poems on places her father's trading took her — foreign coasts no other girl in the book has seen — and Baochai protests that they read like ill omens, not a girl's work.
- ch. 57
The Aunt Plays Matchmaker
姨媽說媒Her aunt, playing at matchmaker, tells Daiyu she means the little cousin for Baoyu — though the girl is plighted already; in the ease of that afternoon Daiyu calls Lady Xue godmother.
結局 The ending
She is the one the novel lets go unharmed. The marriage her dead father arranged, with a son of the Mei family, is fulfilled offstage in a line or two while the girls are still at poetry; the 120-chapter text gives her no share in the raids and deaths that follow. She leaves before it darkens.
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