[Analysis] Dream of the Red Chamber vs. In Search of Lost Time
Last month, I told you about the four great classic novels of China, including Dream of the Red Chamber. Reading expert analyses from the Redology (a literary branch that analyzes only this novel), I realized this book had a lot in common with In Search of Lost Time by Proust.
That made me very happy, because I know that the Dream of the Red Chamber only exists in French in Gallimard’s Pléiade collection (in other words, the books are expensive). Reading it is demanding for French readers, as it requires an excellent understanding of Asian culture, as well as Chinese wordplay. However, if this novel resembles Proust’s, you can at least read In Search of Lost Time and experience the same coming-of-age journey as Asian readers who read the Dream of the Red Chamber.
It’s hard to grasp the appeal of these “sprawling” novels teeming with hundreds of characters. In Proust, it’s noble names and very complicated relationships among them (who is whose cousin, who is whose sister), and the same character can go by five or six different titles; a character who appears on page 50 might resurface on page 1500, forcing us to stay hyper-focused, or even take notes. With the Dream of the Red Chamber, there are about a hundred characters whose surname is Jia: we’re in trouble 😀
And yet, those who read these cathedral-like novels often end up completely obsessed, and reread them. Not just once, but two, three times…
Every time I reread even a single chapter, I become aware of the journey I’ve taken, because each reading reflects my own growth: I understand that chapter better, or I see it in a different light, because I’ve lived things since, and I’ve evolved since.
I sincerely believe you should read one of these two novels (or both) at least once in your life. Don’t hesitate to read analyses around the work, because it’s full of layers and subtext; experts will point out the subtle details you might have missed. Failing that, you can also ask ChatGPT (or another AI) “why does the narrator say that in such-and-such chapter?” : these tools have access to scholars’ theses and will be able to answer you.
Here are some commonalities I found between the two novels. I’ll use “the Search” for In Search of Lost Time, and “the Dream” for Dream of the Red Chamber, otherwise it’s too long.
1. “Incomplete” novels
Both novels were finished by their authors, but in Proust’s case, he didn’t have time to reread and refine everything before his death. The last volumes were revised, and some details were cut by his brother before printing. So, despite the vast Proust archive at the BnF, we’ll never know what details Proust would have wanted to add or remove from the version we know today.
In the case of the Dream of the Red Chamber, according to scholars, the complete version did exist, but unfortunately a third of it was lost, leaving only 80 chapters. The novel was finished by another author (the last 40 chapters), who, having no connection to Cao Xueqin, didn’t grasp his intentions and invented a very different ending.
This leaves a lot of gaps… which each reader can fill as they wish. In the case of the Search, on the contrary, we have an abundance of documentation: a multitude of sketches and manuscripts, fully digitized and put online by the BnF. In the case of the Dream, this gap opened up a whole field of literary analysis, the Redology, which is dedicated to dissecting the novel and “guessing” the true ending by scrutinizing every word, every manuscript copy.
2. The main character is a “loser”
Proust’s narrator and Jia Baoyu in Cao Xueqin’s work are perfect losers for their era. One is a cultured bourgeois who does nothing with his life, the other the heir to a great mandarin family who doesn’t go to school. Both spend their time pursuing social life, and both novels lead us (if I simplify a lot) from one party to another. Told like that, you’ll criticize me: “You often talk about fighting mediocrity, why should we read 3000 pages about these two losers?”
It’s that success is defined through false values : money, social status…
These two characters understood that very well, and stand at a spiritual level so much higher that they come across as losers. Both have unconditional, universal love for those around them. One talks to flowers, the other to birds. But in both novels, you can feel they cherish above all the people few respect: the maid Françoise, the servants… whom they deem superior to the nobles.
3. The elite & the common people
If Proust depicts the French elite, Cao Xueqin depicts the Chinese elite. But belonging to the elite doesn’t necessarily mean being cultured. In the Search, the Baron de Charlus is one of the few examples of a scholar: a true living encyclopedia. In the Chinese novel, the noble men are for the most part utterly stupid; only the women are cultured and refined.
But beware, I’m not giving you a speech “eat the rich” where the oppressed would necessarily be purer than the oppressors. In fact, I even think it’s the opposite: the honesty or simplicity we attribute to ordinary people has less to do with who they are than with what they haven’t yet had the chance to become. Power and money are a bit like photographic developer: they don’t create someone’s character, they just bring it to light.
The best example in Proust is Mme Verdurin. She comes from a very modest bourgeois background, scorned at first by the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and she patiently builds her “little clan” with her own exclusionary rites, her victims whom she punishes by no longer inviting them, her own tyranny over anyone who dares to displease her. Nothing forced her to become as despotic as the Guermantes she initially despised, yet the more power her salon gains, the more she becomes an almost worse version of them.
Zhao Yiniang, in the Dream, follows exactly the same path on her own scale: a former servant turned concubine, she shows no solidarity with her past condition and, as soon as she has a bit of status, becomes the most stickler for precedence and rank privileges.
In short, the message isn’t “the common people are virtuous” or “the rich are corrupt”: it’s that power doesn’t really corrupt, it mainly confirms what was already there. And that should make us a bit more humble: in their place, with more money and more power, we might have been much worse than them: more cruel, more corrupt, more despicable.
4. Multidisciplinary Knowledge
Both authors are extremely cultured. They possess multidisciplinary knowledge and phenomenal memories: they can hold forth on the etymology of French villages as well as on the differences between wild herbs. Their analyses of each character’s psychology are exceedingly subtle, and the world they build, rich in detail, feels more alive than ever.
We learn a tremendous amount from these two novels. In Proust, for instance, we discover the dependence of certain orchids on a very specific pollinator. The best water for making tea is also not neglected in the Dream (snow collected five years earlier from plum blossoms at the Xuanmu Panxiang Monastery, then kept buried in a blue stoneware jar). Fashion is omnipresent: from fabrics inspired by Venetian paintings (Fortuny drew on Carpaccio and Titian for his dresses, which Proust describes at length in The Prisoner) to the famous coat woven with fine feathers plucked from under the eyes of wild ducks, which Grandmother Jia gives to Xue Baoqin (only a few feathers can be retrieved per duck). Luxury is everywhere, but only attentive eyes know how to recognize and appreciate it.
I often say that specialization is for those seeking a steady job, while multidisciplinarity is for entrepreneurs and for those who want to fully enjoy life. It’s also, I think, what will most set us apart from AI in the years to come: an artificial intelligence recombines what already exists, but it’s by connecting fields that are a priori very distant, as Proust and Cao Xueqin do, that true human creativity is born.
In the Dream, there’s a passage (chapters 55-56) that will greatly appeal to corporate managers, and even to country leaders (Mao Zedong himself considered the Dream one of China’s four proud achievements): Wang Xifeng, accustomed to managing the affairs of two great families at the head of no fewer than a thousand servants, falls ill. Three other people take turns replacing her and take the opportunity to improve management. We observe various management methods, human resources management, how to encourage, punish, reward, increase each person’s responsibility, and treat people according to their personalities. The novel also shows the risk of arrogance in a company that has become a “leader,” the negligence that besets a growing company, how an organization can be eaten away from within by a few bad hires, or how personal interest must remain tied to the general interest for the good of the company; there are even budget cuts before a layoff 😀 Proof that even if these are noble families from 18th-century China, human structures are similar and always obey the same rules.
5. Snobbery
In both novels, snobbery isn’t reserved for the masters. Servants reproduce among themselves a hierarchy just as rigid, sometimes even more violent, since it plays out within the same social group, without the distance that usually separates masters and servants. This proves a bit, by the absurd, that snobbery isn’t about social class but about structure: as soon as there’s a hierarchy, even a small one, it ends up secreting its own snobbery.
In Proust, Françoise follows a code of conduct almost comically strict, full of very subtle rules about what is done or not done, and she can be fiercely jealous of her rivals, going so far as to attack a pregnant kitchen girl. In the Dream, it’s completely institutionalized: servants of higher rank have the right to reprimand, even beat, those of lower rank.
Doesn’t it remind you of the salespeople (male or female) in certain luxury boutiques, who look down on a customer who walks in wearing jeans and sneakers, when their own social status is most likely inferior to his? It’s exactly the same mechanism as the director of the Grand Hôtel de Balbec in Proust: it’s not their own rank they’re defending, but that of the house they represent, whose prestige they borrow. The more prestigious the brand, the bigger the loan, and the more the salesperson, even if paid minimum wage, feels entitled to judge someone who has the money to drop €8,000 on a bag but doesn’t look “good enough” for the store.
And this somewhat contradicts, incidentally, a famous reading of the novel: Mao Zedong saw in it The Dream of the Red Chamber a true “illustrated history of the class struggle,” with the novel’s 300 servants grouped into a single oppressed bloc, united against the masters. Except the novel actually shows the opposite: within that very group of the “oppressed,” there is a hierarchy just as rigid, with its own dominators and dominated. Oppression never goes one way; it spreads through every level, even among those who suffer it first.
And this isn’t unique to 18th-century China. I can’t remember which politician said it, but during the doctors’ strike, the railway workers didn’t support them; during the railway workers’ strike, it was the doctors who didn’t support them. By constantly being jealous of each other across professions instead of uniting, we forget the essential: those who earn €1,000 a month envy those who earn €2,000, who in turn envy those who earn €5,000, while the common enemy is those who earn a million. The little people fight among themselves, and it just makes them forget the real enemy.
Whether in a garden in 18th-century Beijing or in our society today, this division always serves, whether we like it or not, the interests of those at the very top.
6. Demanding novels, motivated readers
These two novels demand a lot from their readers. First, you have to remember the names and characteristics of all the characters, because once a character has been introduced, we are never reminded again: “hey, remember, that was so-and-so’s cousin”. We are treated as if we are part of the inner circle, and therefore expected to remember names like everyone else. Yet it is established that we only form more or less close relationships with about 150 people. Reading these novels, we must therefore expand our “virtual” circle to welcome 300 additional people, whom we have never met, but simply encountered along the pages. This demands a lot of neurons, but it is also a way to broaden the reader’s consciousness. If you have concentration issues, you must read these novels!
It’s no coincidence that these novels are in the Pléiade collection. This type of edition is aimed at researchers, who want to know exactly which word was changed from one edition to another; and the very high price separates the motivated reader from the merely curious one who just wants to be entertained. For Proust, you can access paperback editions, and even comic books, but Dream of the Red Chamber only exists in the Pléiade version: take it or leave it. This edition has never been reprinted, because the publisher can’t even sell out the entire first print run; so don’t count on a paperback edition.
7. What we know we should let go of, but don’t dare
There is something common in the characters’ inability to rid themselves of what destroys them. Proust’s narrator knows, somewhere inside him, that Albertine will never make him happy: he constantly suspects her, almost imprisons her, suffers from her presence as much as from her absence. He senses that the only way out would be to let her go, and that is precisely what he can never do while she is there. It is only once she leaves him, and then dies, that he can finally, too late, free himself from her, and even then, through a grieving process that spans hundreds of pages.
In the Dream, it’s an entire family that refuses to let go of its status. Lucidity is not lacking: several characters see the decline coming, Wang Xifeng herself perceives the flaws in family management, Tanchun attempts reforms. But no one dares to truly give up the lifestyle, the banquets, the hundreds of servants, the image the family must continue to project. They prefer to borrow, mortgage, close their eyes, rather than admit they need to downsize, and thus lose face.
In both cases, it’s not ignorance that undoes the characters: it’s the inability to act on what they already know. And if we’re honest, that’s true for each of us too. Deep down, we know very well what we should let go of: a relationship that no longer does us good, a job we no longer like, a self-image we keep maintaining when it no longer fits us. We know it, we even talk about it sometimes with friends, and yet we stay, we hold on, we find a thousand good reasons to wait a little longer. Perhaps these two novels speak to us so much because they confront us, without judging, with what we do every day: knowing, and not acting, simply because letting go is the hardest gesture of all. True freedom costs a lot.
8. The world is a dream
In In Search of Lost Time, from the very first chapter, we step into a “timeless” space. The madeleine episode is not just an experience of “involuntary memory”: Proust himself describes a sensation that exists both in the past and the present, allowing him to reach what he calls “a little time in its pure state”: for him, past, present, and future can exist simultaneously. Which, when you think about it, challenges the idea that we are a unique, continuous person steadily advancing along a linear timeline: that might just be a habit we pick up while awake, not as solid a truth as we think.
In the Dream, Jia Baoyu is transported, in a dream, to a fairy-tale place. But a word from the fairy (who urges him to focus on his studies to become a mandarin) reveals that even this fairy world is still just a dream because it’s still based on false values. There are actually several levels of dream, and as you shift levels, you never know if you’re in an even more sophisticated dream or if you’ve finally woken up.
This echoes Zhuangzi: he dreams he is a butterfly, fluttering about, happy with his lot, unaware he is Zhuangzi. He suddenly wakes up and realizes he is Zhuangzi. He no longer knows if he is Zhuangzi who just dreamed he was a butterfly, or if he is a butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, the favorite book of Steve Jobs, it’s said that after his master’s death, Yogananda was able to see him again. The master reveals he has reincarnated into a more evolved world, but still a dream world; the people there are so happy they have even less desire than here to leave it. Thus, we would be caught in dreams nested within each other, stuck in a collective dream from which we no longer know (or no longer want) to escape.
9. The end of the novel is revealed from the very first chapters
Both novels reveal their own method for getting out. But subtly, from the early chapters, so readers have the truth right in their faces, yet see it with veiled eyes.
It’s a bit like when we come into the world: the script of our life would already be reserved for us, there are several ways to read it. But nobody makes the effort to do so, and besides, what good would it do to know it in advance? Even if you knew your destiny ahead of time, it’s not certain you could change it.
The destination has never been the main goal; it’s the journey that gets you there that matters. It’s the same with these two novels: the ending is revealed from the early chapters, but you have to go all the way to understand and fully appreciate it.
I hope these few lines have made you want to discover both novels. I’ve done a quick analysis for each book, which you can re-read here for In Search of Lost Time (I’ve listed the editions) , and the Dream.
In Search of Lost Time:
- Comic versions: Swann’s Way (Amazon link, Fnac link) and Within a Budding Grove (Amazon link)
- Folio: 7 volumes (Amazon link)
- Pléiade: 4 volumes (Amazon link)
The Dream of the Red Chamber:
