紫鹃黛玉的首席侍女 · 31
Leaf 31 of the Red Chamber · 贴身丫头 Daiyu's Confidante
Zijuan 紫鹃
In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the Maids (丫鬟) · nicknamed 贴身丫头 “Daiyu's Confidante”
A servant who loves her mistress past what the house allows: she tells one cruel lie to learn whether Baoyu's grief would be real, and it nearly kills them both.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 3
The Parrot Given to Her Mistress
鸚哥賜主Landless and parentless, Daiyu brings one little maid to the capital; Grandmother Jia adds her own second-rank girl, called Yingge, who is renamed Zijuan and becomes the only witness Daiyu has.
- ch. 57
The Lie of a Suzhou Party
情辭試玉Half in earnest she tells Daiyu that no one in the house will settle her marriage; then she lies to Baoyu that people from Suzhou have come to take her away, and he goes speechless and half-dead.
- ch. 97
Feeding the Poems to the Fire
侍疾焚稿She watches Daiyu waste through the household's silence about the wedding, calls for help in rooms where no one will come, and holds the light while the poems and the handkerchief go into the fire.
- ch. 98
Rebuking the Jade at the Rites
靈前斥玉At the death she is the one crying her mistress's name; when Baoyu comes to mourn she turns on him and tells him he has got what he wanted, giving the house the only open reproach it allows itself.
結局 The ending
Zijuan buries the only person she was loyal to and stays on in the household. The 120-chapter text neither marries her off nor kills her: a late scene lets Baoyu's plain grief for Daiyu loosen the grudge she carried against him, and after that nothing more is said of her. Her ending is left open.
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