Reframing the Boundaries of Household and Text in Hou Honglou Meng

Abstract

Hou honglou meng (1796) (Later dream of the red chamber) is the earliest sequel to Cao Xueqin’s Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamber). It does more than redeem the romantic tragedy of the parent novel: it also intervenes to strengthen the dissolving Jia household and family structure and offers a conscious act of literary critique on the novel. Hou honglou meng deliberately intervenes in the parent novel's metafictionality, reconstructs the Jia mansion and redraws its boundaries, and rewrites its family dynamics with a new balance of emotion (qing) and ritual (li). In the process it offers new visions of the wealthy household, of romance and marriage, of the domestic novel as a genre, and of the relationship between text, author(s), readers, and critics.