The Dream of Red Mansions & the Bechdel Test

22nd January 2012

The Dream of Red Mansions & the Bechdel Test

My daughter is taking a class in Chinese Vernacular Literature (in translation) and she begged me to read The Dream of Red Mansions (aka The Story of the Stone aka The Dream of the Red Chamber) along with her (we’re reading the David Hawkes translation).

The novel is about “the changing fortunes of the illustrious Jia family” and was written by Cao Xueqin during the Qing Dynasty in China, in the mid 18th century. Let me repeat that: The mid-18th century.

I don’t know why I didn’t read this sooner. Probably because it’s long and I had an idea it would be worthy and tedious and slow (by my standards) rather like too many Victorian novels I’ve read or tried to read. But it isn’t slow at all. It’s engaging and smart and fantastical and emotional and full of incident and, by the way, it is full of women.

I am only on chapter 5 and honestly it has already rocketed past the Bechdel Test with flying colors. I would go so far as to say it has a great deal better depiction of characters who are women, not to mention sheer NUMBERS of women, than many an epic fantasy I read today. I grant you that part of that is because of the subject matter and story line, but the same story could as easily have been told with a different emphasis, one that would have relegated women to secondary roles “because of” the patriarchal nature of the Qing society. Only that’s not this book. In this story, women are not invisible.

Tagged: dreamofredchamber storyofthestone bechdeltest lovereading fantasy