#ch 701

second madam is a fav, too, but she's almost an elder. madam huang and madam zhuo are likable but not deeply explored. other "peers" - madam lin, the gan sisters, the dowager gan - are much less developed, while some are somewhat unlikable (fifth sister)

i will say i actually like shiniang a lot. like, quite a lot. what a fascinating and proud character. she had a tragic life but she led it well. ditto qiao yiniang and yang yiniang. semi antagonists who make a lot of sense and act quite intelligently

in the younger generation, fang shi is a favorite. so is jiang shi. and of course zhen jie'er. and for the boys, who can beat xu siyu and xu sijie, honest. they are >>>>>> the legitimate sons of xu lingyu, though i acknowledge xu sizhun and jin g'er are both written extremely realistically

i struggle w both shiyi niang and the marquis. i think the fact that shiyi niang is a transmigrator makes her harder for me to take at face value in many ways. i need to understand more deeply how she reconciles herself to the times, and am unsatisfied with merely her thoughts about how you can't get people to change, or how the past must be left in the past. if you take the job of an imperial concubine, the character there basically never lost her calculation - i understood this. or eight treasures trousseau - that FL was a cold-blooded survivalist. but shiyi niang has something unexplored inside her and i keep wanting to see what it is. the snatches of her are not enough for me, and i have ongoing difficulties with the way the text handles her sexual shyness given she was a grown woman in the modern age before transmigtation. and alright im getting the sense she had neglectful parents, but did she really not have any friends? she studied abroad... she founded her own law firm... and? i know it's theoretically all gone, now over 15 years past but... her journey is in many ways about her identity now overwriting who she was, because she can't both live well and fight society and she doesn't want to. and with that overwriting is a moral and ethical overwriting as well, which is interesting to be sure, but maybe i just dont love how it is handled because i feel like she has never looked at who she has become and cometo terms with it, really

for the marquis - quite simply his superlativity is is inseparable from his high-handedness, his arrogance, his privilege, and everything he takes for granted about how society functions. his expressed interiority in the novel is also unfortunately almost entirely concerned with shiyi niang and/or his children. the way he falls for his wife is sweet, but also, unremarkable. who wouldn't? she's only a 35 year old soul in a 16 year old's body, saintly and clever beyond measure. i am happy for him that he has slowly made his way into a different and more intimate form of fatherhood... but yeah. i liked him best that time he stayed up all night thinking about how he was also at fault with yuan niang. perhaps the first? moment he ever questioned the way society functions

the novel is in the end deeply concerned with the complex web of social obligation and maneuvering required to survive in the deeply heirachical and patriarchal ming dynasty. it is interested in the daily goings on of a family under the weight of the structure of the imperial bureacracy and the cultural and religious norms which also uphold it. probably 30% of the novel is just describing in depth the momentary calculations of the novel inhabitants as they attempt to achieve an aim while following propriety and not losing face, but also not offending anyone or becoming a problem in the emperor's eyes. another 30% is just the ebb and flow, the births, engagements, marriages, funerals, spring festivals, autumn festivals, and on and on and on

50 chapters left to go and i will say i have found this book intellectually engaging, historically deep, willing to be complex and a little messy, and very immersive, but rarely emotionally touching. i was moved to tears exactly once

‘Wow, they sure can’t draw!’