Tai Fei Gui Fei
太妃贵妃
“The Weather Inside the Palace”
Their Story
Two palace ranks, not one woman. A 太妃 is a dowager consort left over from a previous reign; a 贵妃 an honoured consort of the present one. No individual is named on the sheet.
They are the weather of the novel — offstage, out of reach, and deciding what the Jia house is allowed to do. In Chapter 55 a dowager consort in the palace falls ill; because the reigning emperor governs by filial piety, every consort cuts her meals and puts away her ornaments, family visits and entertainments are suspended, and the Rong mansion holds no lantern-riddle party that year. In Chapter 58 that old dowager consort dies. Every titled lady must attend court by rank and keep the mourning; for a year no titled household may hold a banquet or music, and commoners may not marry for three months. Grandmother Jia and her women are at court daily for a month, the two mansions are left without their heads, the opera troupe is broken up and the girls parcelled out among the Garden’s apartments — one death, and the household never reassembles the same way. In Chapter 86 word comes that Consort Zhou has died, and for a day the family believe it was Yuanchun.
Individuals do exist behind the ranks: Yuanchun herself, raised to Worthy and Virtuous Consort in Chapter 16; Consort Wu, whose father is also building a visitation garden; the Dowager Consort of Nan’an, who comes to Grandmother Jia’s eightieth in Chapter 71 and asks to see the girls. The painting names none of them.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Four or five women in court dress, crowned in gold and jewels. The nearest is seen from behind and to one side, in scarlet worked with gold roundels over a celadon train, a green sash across the shoulder, holding a ruyi sceptre out at arm’s length; the older woman facing her has a lined face and is smiling; a servant behind carries a fan-screen on a pole. Not one of them faces us squarely. She paints a rank rather than a person, and keeps the front figure’s face turned away — the correct treatment for women the novel never lets into the room.
The Calligraphy
太妃贵妃, four characters at the left above the seal: two titles side by side, no surname and no name, which is exactly how the novel refers to them.
Connections
- 贾元春 Jia Yuanchun — the family’s own consort, and the reason palace ranks govern this household.
- 贾母 Jia Mu — who attends court daily through the Chapter 58 mourning.
- 南安太妃 — a named dowager consort, guest of honour at the Chapter 71 birthday.
- 周贵妃 — whose death in Chapter 86 is mistaken for Yuanchun’s.
- 梨香院十二女伶 — the opera troupe disbanded because of the mourning.
Dream of the Red Chamber
Xiang Li painted all 413 characters of the novel between 1975 and 1985, the first person to complete the entire cast. See the whole collection · Chinese Empresses
