Sensuality in Dream of the Red Chamber

A deeper look into the book's philosophy

Sensuality in Dream of the Red Chamber

If you haven’t noticed yet, Dream of the Red Chamber is filled with allusions to sex and romance.

However, it’s far from a pornographic book.

Now, Dream of the Red Chamber is far from a puritanical book. It’s frank in its depictions of sexual interest, romance, and passion. As we’ll soon see, even its main characters are not impervious to the desires of the flesh.

That’s one of the reasons why we keep seeing references to “the meeting on Mount Wu” (巫山之會) and “the pleasures of the clouds and rain” (雲雨之歡). If you and I were educated 18th or 19th century Chinese readers of this novel, we’d understand those literary references right away. Perhaps it would seem a bit scandalous, though it certainly wouldn’t be any worse than books like The Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅), which I’d argue qualifies as pornographic to this day.

But the interesting thing about Dream of the Red Chamber is not that it argues against conjugal relations. Rather, it’s that the book keeps talking about emotional connections between the sexes.

Actually, instead of worrying about how to translate simple words like 情 into English, we can see this trend just by looking at the poetry. Look at this song we saw a few weeks ago: