Affection Arousing, Tragedy Befalling: On Miao-yu's Life Predicament

The maidens in the novel A Dream of Read Mansions have their own merits. And Miao-yu is different from others. From her character and behavior, she is high-hearted and independent apparently. In fact, she is elegant as well as common. Her emotion seems to be as calm as the lake without any waves. However, the writer, CAO Xue-qin, expresses her infatuation and affection more fiercely from her language and behavior. From her life encounter, we can find that she fails to understand the Buddhist truth though she has converted to Buddhism. She practiced the religion without distracting thoughts, but she cannot stick to it. She is young and in her best years, yet she is a nun with hair. Her special social status, hard management of interpersonal relationships, constraint of her feelings and the absence of herlife guide, all these have led her life to a tough situation. This makes her struggle in the predicament and keeps her from getting out of it, and finally leads to her tragic ending.