Recap: On Tuesday, Baochai spent her visit quietly questioning Xiren, and then Xiren gave Baoyu the silent treatment. (See The Silent Treatment.)
A maid tells the heir of the family not to set foot in her room, and he sulks off to bed. How does a servant have that kind of power?
Simple: by borrowing it.
Hua Xiren holds power the same way Wang Xifeng does. Both of them borrow their authority from someone higher up. Both of them win by knowing more than anyone around them.
The difference between the two is how they spend this authority they borrow. Xifeng spends fear. Xiren spends affection.
Hold on to the word borrow. We’ll come back to it.
A quick detour first
Before I put these two side by side, it helps to know how old this theme really is.
The servant who knows more than the family is one of the oldest tricks in fiction. Let’s take a look.
Nelly Dean tells the whole story of Wuthering Heights (1847) to a stranger because she was the one in the room. Jeeves, who debuts in Wodehouse’s stories in 1915, keeps Bertie Wooster out of trouble, and the joke is that Bertie never sees it happen. Figaro outwits his own master in Beaumarchais’s plays, and the authorities fought for years to keep The Marriage of Figaro off the stage. And in Downton Abbey, Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes actually run the house; the Crawleys only think they run it.
The pattern is always the same. The family has the name, and the staff has the information.
That’s the background. Now back to the Jias, where the information belongs to two women.
Xifeng: authority by token
We’ll start with what we saw back in Chapter 13. When Qin Keqing’s funeral needs a manager, Jia Zhen offers Wang Xifeng the Ningguo Mansion token. As you may recall, she doesn’t just grab it. She looks at Lady Wang first, who tells her to go ahead, but not to act on her own initiative if problems come up. In other words, Xifeng’s power arrives with a leash.
Now look at how she uses that power.
She does what any good manager does: she works out what’s broken. Her list is five items long: too many people coming and going, nobody with clear duties, wasteful spending, unfair workloads, and arrogant staff. She fixes every one of these problems in Chapter 14. She holds a roll call at a quarter past five every morning. She assigns every broom and cushion to a named person. And when one woman shows up late, Xifeng says that if she’s lenient once, she’ll have to be lenient with everyone. The woman gets twenty strokes and loses a month’s pay and rations. (See Chapter 14.)
The narrator’s verdict is that the old habits of shirking and pilfering were gone. Her system worked, and everyone was afraid of her.
Xiren: authority by affection
Now Xiren. She has no token and no title. In fact, the only thing she has going for her is the fact that Grandmother Jia gave her to Jia Baoyu. Everything she does rests on that.
Look at Chapter 19. Xiren’s mother and brother talk of buying her back, and Xiren tells Baoyu she’s leaving. Then the narrator lets us in on the trick. She had already told her family no. She wanted to test Baoyu’s feelings and take the fight out of him before she lectured him. (See Servitude and Xiren’s Loyalty.)
That’s the way Hua Xiren exercises her power. Once she’s seen how much he needs her, she sets her terms, which are three: no more talk of dying, at least pretend to like his books, and no more playing with the girls’ rouge.
Notice how her argument works. She tells Baoyu the Jia family has never used its power to force its own way, and that Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang would never agree to keep her for no reason. She uses the family’s own reputation as her lever. Then on Tuesday, in Chapter 21, she reaches for the same tool: “I’ll go back to waiting on Grandmother Jia, same as before.” The threat works because Grandmother Jia is the one who gave her to him.
Where they match
Put the two women side by side and three things line up.
First, both know the roster. Xifeng demands the register of household members before she does anything else. Xiren packs Baoyu’s school things and knows his habits, down to his warm clothes.
Second, both stage a scene to set the terms. Xifeng’s is the roll call. Xiren’s is the threat to leave.
Third, both are borrowing. Xifeng holds Jia Zhen’s token under Lady Wang’s watch. Xiren holds Grandmother Jia’s gift. Neither can keep that power without the backing of someone above her, because neither is the owner.
Where the comparison breaks
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Xifeng is a mistress and Xiren is a maid, right? And, yeah, that difference is pretty important.
Look back at Xiren’s fight with Nanny Li. Nanny Li, sore about her gambling losses, takes it out on Baoyu’s maids. Xiren is sick in bed and can’t make her stop. What ends it is Xifeng, who takes the old woman by the arm, calls her “Nanny,” offers to beat whoever has been bad, and leads her off to a drink and a meal. (See Hua Xiren and Nanny Li Fight.)
And that’s where you’ve got the difference between Hua Xiren and Wang Xifeng. Xifeng can have a woman beaten. Xiren can only go quiet. And Xiren, as Nanny Li reminds everyone, was bought for a few taels of silver.
Hua Xiren’s power is real, but it can be revoked. Xifeng’s can be revoked too, but only by someone a good deal higher up.
So who runs the house?
Neither of them owns the place. Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang sit above them both and wield the actual authority.
My verdict: Xiren is a small version of Xifeng, with less rank and a lighter hand. If you want to understand how this household really works, you’ve got to understand both of their methods.
So here’s my question for you. Which would you rather work for: the boss who rules by fear, or the one who rules by making you feel needed?
The Silent Treatment is the translation post that accompanies this commentary. Members can read that post and every other post, plus the weekly podcast, for $5 a month.
Comment prompt: Which would you rather work for: the boss who rules by fear, or the one who rules by making you feel needed? Tell me in the comments.
Next in the story: On Thursday, Baoyu rewrites a chapter of Zhuangzi. (Free.) Go deeper: The Silent Treatment (Tuesday, paid) Meet them: Hua Xiren / Wang Xifeng / All the characters