Wang Fei Gao Ming

Their Story

Not a woman but a class of women, and the novel always says it in the plural. A 王妃 is the consort of a prince; a 诰命 holds her title by imperial patent, through her husband’s office. Together they are the visiting rank that measures a household’s standing.

They arrive at the funerals. In Chapter 13 You-shi is ill and Jia Zhen’s whole worry is that the visiting titled ladies will be received badly and the house laughed at. In Chapter 15 Xifeng handles the women’s side alone at Qin Keqing’s wake, and they leave in order of rank, the highest first. In Chapter 110, at Grandmother Jia’s, 连日王妃诰命也来得不少 — they come in numbers for days on end, and Xifeng, held to a budget by the elders and short of hands, cannot get upstairs to attend them at all and works the floor below.

They are also a calendar. Chapter 14 lists what Xifeng is carrying in one week besides the funeral itself: the titled lady of the Duke of Shan has died and must be mourned, the consort of the Prince of Xi’an has a birthday and must have a present, the titled lady of the Duke of Zhen has borne a first son and must be congratulated.

They are also measured by the catty. In Chapter 25 the nun Ma Daopo recites her temple’s donors to Grandmother Jia as a price list: the Dowager Consort of the Nan’an princely house burns forty-eight catties of lamp oil a day, the titled lady of the Marquis of Jintian twenty-four, and other houses five, three, one.

No individual is named on the sheet.

In Xiang Li's Hands

Three women, not one. Two elderly ones sit in phoenix crowns and court robes — one in pale gold and grey, one in deep wine and blue with a long bead rosary falling to the floor — while a young woman in green and gold leans in from the right holding out a red fan. Bare paper, no hall. She paints the rank as it actually appears in the novel: a party, already seated, being waited on.

The Calligraphy

王妃诰命, four characters down the upper left above the seal — two ranks set side by side with no surname between them, which is the only way the novel ever refers to these women.

Connections

• Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — receives them at Qin Keqing’s funeral and cannot manage them at Grandmother Jia’s.
• Ma Daopo 马道婆 — who prices their piety by the day’s weight of lamp oil.
• Jia Mu 贾母 — hears that list, and is later mourned by the women on it.
• 南安太妃 · 北静王妃 — the two who are named, seated above all the rest in Chapter 71.

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