Zhen Da Xiao Jie
甄大小姐
“Spoken Of, Never Seen”
Her Story
The eldest daughter of the Zhen house of Jinling. She exists in the novel as a subject of conversation and nothing else.
Chapter 56: four Zhen stewardesses, all past forty and dressed nearly as well as their mistress, come to pay their respects to Grandmother Jia. Asked whether the whole family has come up to the capital, they say the old lady, the boy and two young ladies stayed behind, and only the mistress came, with the third young lady. Grandmother Jia then says: your First Young Lady’s and your Second Young Lady’s households are both on very good terms with ours. Yes, they answer — every year the young ladies write home saying it is all thanks to your house’s care.
That is the whole of her. Chapter 2 has Jia Yucun praising the Zhen family for giving its daughters boys’ names rather than the ornamental ones the Jias use, but the novel never prints a single Zhen daughter’s name.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She stands three-quarter on, chin up, looking out past the top edge of the sheet. Blue-grey and lilac robes over a rose under-gown; a long pale scarf runs from a raised open right hand down to a closed left one. Behind her the ground is a wash of green and grey run downward in streaks, like rain on glass.
The face is finished — brows, lashes, a small red mouth — for a woman nobody in the novel is ever in a room with.
The Calligraphy
甄大小姐 — the surname, the birth order among the sisters, and 小姐: family, rank, courtesy, and no name, brushed in four characters at mid-right, which is precisely the amount of identity the text supplies.
Connections
- Zhen Furen 甄夫人 — her mother, who came up to the capital without her.
- Zhen Yingjia 甄应嘉 — her father, restored to office and sent to the coast.
- Zhen Baoyu 甄宝玉 — her brother, the boy left behind with the old lady.
- Grandmother Jia 贾母 — the only person in the novel who speaks of her, and does so warmly.
- Zhen San Xiaojie 甄三小姐 — her younger sister, the one who did travel.
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
