Characters
Dream of the Red Chamber contains an extraordinarily large number of characters: nearly forty are considered major characters, and there are almost five hundred additional ones. The novel is also known for the complex portrait of its many female characters. The names of the maids and bondservants are given in the original pinyin pronunciations and in David Hawkes' translation.
Read more about this topic: Jia Yuanchun
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga—stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)