Novels demand that we inhabit the subjectivities of different characters, quite frequently of different social status, which in the case of The Story of the Stone, includes enslaved people. Perhaps more than any other Qing source, The Story of the Stone reflects deeply on the emotional and psychological ramifications of bondage: what it meant to own others and what it meant to be owned. Some of Jia Baoyu’s most important relationships are with people who are not only owned by other people, but who are casually renamed by their masters, and whose ownership (and transfer of ownership) is casually referenced: Xiren, Qingwen, and Jiang Yuhan (also known as Qiguan). This paper concerns specifically the case of the young actor Jiang Yuhan, who physically resembles Baoyu himself, is sexually or romantically involved with Baoyu and the Prince of Beijing—but over whom the Prince of Zhongshun seems to have both employment and sexual rights. Baoyu’s vicious beating at the hands of his father specifically has to do not just with his transgressive relationship with Jiang Yuhan—but also the way in which that relationship literally cannot be spoken. I am interested in the spaces of silence around his sexual and social status.
