A Pathetic Girl

Among those various roles in A Dream of Red Mansions, Lin Daiyu is one of the typical peculiar characters. In my views, she is weak, sentimental and rebellious.

As is known to all, Lin Daiyu has weak health. Her health was such that she would not go out even at sunset in summer lest she have s sunstroke. Besides, she simply rejected eating cool fruits to avoid getting cough again. Thus those servants often joked as if the wind could have blown her down.

While she is much weak, she also grovels in sentimentality. The most famous poem in the novel is the one based on her burying the flowers. At the depressing sight of the late spring, full of withered flowers and fallen catkins, Lin Daiyu had been touched to her heart. Naturally, it reminded her of her own experiences and sufferings. Without any solutions to her irritating problems, she walked out with a hoe, preparing to bury those fading flowers strewn on the ground. Lin Daiyu just had no means to stand those fallen flowers being trampled on arbitrarily. So soil appeared to be the best final arrangement for those pitiful flowers in her mind.

Furthermore, another personality of hers revealed is that she is the very person against the cruel feudal system. Lin Daiyu was Jia Baoyu’s alter ego. She did not urge the latter to succeed in the examination for fame and fortune as others expected him to be a worthy boy, even a real responsible man. Both of them detested those milk-and-water platitudes and yearned for freedom. In her poems of five beauties, she admired those heroines——some preferring to die standing like Yu Ji and Lv Zhu; some demanding for mastering their own fortune such as Xi Shi and Ming Fei, and some daring to pursue their love and beliefs like Hong Fu. Lin Daiyu held fast to her belief that the feudal courtesy should vanish into nothing.

In brief, it isn’t surprising that Lin Daiyu can not survive the feudalistic community; therefore, her tragedy is the inevitable consequence of her physical health, frequent sentimentality and rebellious spirit.