Mirror Of Romance

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Within The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin, the Mirror of Romance given to Jia Rui as a cure for his desire for Xi-Feng can be analyzed through a Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist perspective. The mirror highlights the Daoist beliefs that two extremes are two sides of the same coin and the dangers of not going to one extreme. The mirror also hints at the Buddhist warnings about the dangers one can bring by mistaking the unreal as real. However, Cao Xueqin also uses the mirror as a method to acknowledge the failures of Confucianism. This critique is shown through Jia Rui’s failure to rid his desire for Xi-Feng through the corporal punishment he receives for expressing his sexual transgressions. Thus, the Mirror of Romance serves as a vessel …show more content…
The author’s critique of Confucianism is seen through Jia Rui’s failure to lessen his desire for Xi-Feng when he is faced with corporal punishment. Within the Analects, the story of Zai Yu reveals a student that fails to honor the relationship between student and teacher by ignoring Confucius teachings. Instead of heeding Confucius’s teachings to better improve his personal cultivation of virtue through daily reflections, Zai Yu decides to “sleep during the day” (Waley 109). Confucius then uses corporal punishment to discipline Zai Yu and compares him to “rotten wood [that] cannot be carved, nor a wall of dried dung [that] can be trowelled” (Waley 109). Unfortunately, this punishment does not change the mindset of Zai Yu. Zai Yu’s failure to alter his apathetic mental mindset is comparable to Jia Rui’s failure to change his sexual mindset towards Xi-Feng. In the Story of the Stone, Jia Rui is forced to kneel “with an empty stomach… after having already been frozen all night long and then beaten” by his grandfather (Xueqin 246). However, this physical beating does not lessen Jia Rui’s desire to have sexual relations with Xi-Feng and does not allow him to see the broken ritual between him and a family member’s wife. This causes the only cure for his desire to be the Mirror of Romance. In addition, the Mirror of Romance being the only cure for Jia Rui’s desire reveals Cao Xueqin’s personal preference in the three traditional Chinese philosophies. Since Confucian practices did not change the mindset of Jia Rui, the implementation of the Mirror of Romance signals that the author prefers Daoist and Buddhist methods in helping an individual reach moral alignment. In short, Jia Rui’s inability to change due to physical punishment presents the author’s belief that Confucianism failed to
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