Sex in Dream of the Red Chamber
It’s no secret that the modern world of corporate censorship makes it so that we can’t talk like adults about certain adult subjects.
This is why I had to use some interesting and unusual ways to refer to sexuality in my latest video:
The truth is that modern society tends to have a lot of odd and bizarre sexual hangups. And there’s really a lot we can learn about human sexuality from novels like Dream of the Red Chamber.
One of the fascinating things about Cao Xueqin’s novel is that it deals with human sexuality in a mature and adult manner. In other words, rather than prattling on and on about the anatomic features of a certain character, Cao Xueqin spends his time writing about how characters relate to one another.
That’s not to say that the characters don’t have sex lives. They do. And, in fact, the characters in Dream of the Red Chamber seem to always be sleeping around with each other. And if the occasional references to actual sexual activity aren’t enough, there are also all sorts of innuendos and oblique references to sexual desire throughout the book.
This is one of the things that makes Dream of the Red Chamber so fascinating, of course. But it’s not just a book about sex.
Rather, it’s a book about actual human connection. And, in my mind, that’s what sets this novel apart from run of the mill books that occasionally include a steamy scene.