尤氏

Her Story

Wife of Jia Zhen and mistress of the Ningguo mansion, the senior of the two Jia houses. She has no children: Jia Rong is her stepson, and Qin Keqing was her stepson’s wife. Her family is borrowed too — her father’s widow and that woman’s two daughters, You Erjie and You Sanjie, no blood of hers at all, living off the Ningguo purse.

Chapter 13 puts her position on record. Qin Keqing dies; You Shi is in bed with her old stomach complaint and stays there. Jia Zhen says openly that the inside of the house is not fit to be seen and borrows Wang Xifeng from the other mansion to run the funeral. Nobody waits for her to get better.

She is not unkind, and the novel notices. In Chapter 43, collecting the subscriptions for Xifeng’s birthday, she quietly returns the shares of those who could least afford them — Ping’er, Yuanyang, the maid Caiyun, both of Jia Zheng’s concubines — and lets the widow Li Wan off altogether. It is the only authority she is shown exercising and she spends it on servants.

Chapter 68: Jia Lian has secretly married You Erjie, and Xifeng comes to Ningguo to say so at the top of her voice. You Shi apologises, and pays. Chapter 74: the night search of the garden turns up a bundle in Xichun’s rooms, sent over by her brother’s people; Jia Zhen’s own sister has the maid removed and then breaks off relations with the Ningguo house to You Shi’s face — 矢孤介杜绝宁国府. Chapter 75 opens with her hearing that the Zhen family in the south have been convicted and their property seized, and closes with a long sigh from beyond the ancestral temple wall during Jia Zhen’s moon-viewing party, the shrine doors swinging in a wind out of nowhere.

The house is confiscated in the end and Jia Zhen exiled. She was never given anything to hold and she loses it anyway.

In Xiang Li's Hands

The most expensive cloth of the eight. Winter dress: a mauve-brown robe with large blue-and-gold flower roundels, lined and edged at collar, cuffs and hem in speckled black-and-white fur, over a fur cap with a red plume and a jewelled boss. Small green earrings, a faint smile, the eyes turned away to the side. Her hands are folded together in front of her and hold one small gold box. Nothing behind her at all — bare paper, a grey smudge at the hem, a blue sash trailing off. She is dressed as the mistress of the senior mansion and given nothing whatever to do.

The Calligraphy

尤氏 — a surname and 氏, the genealogist’s formula for a wife whose given name was not written down. The novel does not supply one and the sheet does not invent one. Two characters only, set at the upper left rather than the right, which is where most of these sheets carry their names; the shortest inscription of the group, for the woman with the largest house.

Connections

• Jia Zhen 贾珍 — her husband, master of Ningguo, who borrows another woman to run his household.
• Jia Rong 贾蓉 — her stepson.
• Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — her stepson’s wife, whose funeral in Chapter 13 she is too ill to manage.
• You Erjie 尤二姐 — her stepmother’s daughter, no blood relation, over whose secret marriage Xifeng storms Ningguo in Chapter 68.
• Jia Xichun 贾惜春 — Jia Zhen’s sister, who breaks with the Ningguo house in front of her in Chapter 74.

Others of the same kind · Jia household – wives, concubines, in-laws Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 · Li Wan 李纨 · Qin Keqing 秦可卿 · Wang Furen 王夫人 · You Erjie 尤二姐 · You Sanjie 尤三姐 · Xue Baoqin 薛宝琴 · Xing Xiuyan 邢岫烟 · Li Wen 李纹 · Li Qi 李绮 · Xing Furen 邢夫人 · Xue Yima 薛姨妈 · Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 · Zhou Yiniang 周姨娘 and 11 more

Named on these pages You Erjie 尤二姐 · Jia Zhen 贾珍 · Jia Jing 贾敬 · You Laoniang 尤老娘 · Xieluan 偕鸾 · Jia Rong zhi qi 贾蓉之妻 · Yindie 银蝶 · Chaodou'r 炒豆儿 · Huang Da Nainai 璜大奶奶 · Qieguan 茄官 · Lai Sheng Xi Fu 来升媳妇

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