Aestheticizing Masculinity in Honglou meng
Aestheticizing Masculinity in Honglou meng
Clothing, Dress, and Decoration
This chapter argues that in the eighteenth century, during the height of the Qing dynasty, male bodies were a legitimate human form upon which to display beautiful clothing and accessories. Moreover, an elaborately decorated male body connoted power, high status and strength—superior masculinity was a decorative performance. I build this argument through an analysis of the premier classic Chinese novel of that era, Honglou meng (紅樓夢 Story of the Stone, Red Chamber Dream, circa 1760s), and its descriptions of clothing, dress, accessories, and fabric. Through Cao Xueqin’s 曹雪芹 novel we see that masculine bodies were the preferred aesthetic form. His detailed descriptions of clothing, dress, and accessories are not focused on the many young women who populate the novel—rather, the reader’s aesthetic eye is invited to roam primarily over the male protagonist, Jia Baoyu, and two masculine female figures, Wang Xifeng and Shi Xiangyun. All three of these characters are known for their rejection of strict gender-sex norms and for the fluidity of their expressions of yin陰 (female essence, subordinate, passive, shaded) and yang陽 (male essence, dominant, active, bright). I contend that Cao’s particular attention to the beauty of their dress serves to amplify their masculinity in this interplay of yin and yang. Although the novel focuses primarily on the lives of women, the descriptions of clothing are dedicated primarily to characters who manifest yang attributes.
Keywords: Dream of the Red Chamber, Honglou meng, masculinity, clothing, dress, yin yang
Hong Kong Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
