Lin Daiyu

Lin has become one of the most loved, controversial and written-about Chinese literary characters. The complexity of her depictions and the compassionate nature of her portrayal in the novel by Cao has garnered acclaim.

Life

In the framing chapters, Lin Daiyu was a flower who was later incarnated as Daiyu to pay back her "debt of tears" to Jia Baoyu, who watered and gave life to the flower. Lin and Jia were the only two characters in the book that were coming from the illusory world.

Born to a Suzhou scholar-official, Lin Ruhai, and Lady Jia Min of the Rongguo house, Daiyu was raised by her parents in her family's mansion in nearby Yangzhou, where she received an excellent education. She has a natural affinity for literature and learns exceptionally well. Her childhood tutor is Jia Yucun (贾雨村).

During her childhood, a Buddhist monk once proposed to take her away to save her from a tragic fate. This was of course, rejected. Having a naturally weak constitution she has been taking medicine and tonic from a very young age, and this resulted in her somewhat willowy build and ethereal beauty.

At the age of six Daiyu lost her mother; shortly after she is summoned to the capital to be with her maternal grandmother, the powerful Jia Clan matriarch, Grandmother Jia. She immediately bonds with Jia Baoyu, her maternal cousin and her grandmother's favorite, and with the many girl cousins in the house. Daiyu's father dies a few years after her entry into the Rongguo House, leaving her a complete orphan. She is one of Grandmother Jia's most doted-on grandchildren.

Daiyu is an emotional girl, prone to extreme mood swings and melancholic spells. She is described as having been sickly since childhood; indeed, when she is first introduced, a couplet describes her "with a heart like Bi Gan's, yet even more intelligent; and with an illness like Xi Zi, yet even more beautiful". Her disposition to frowning leads Baoyu to give her the courtesy name of Pin'pin (颦颦) or Frowner, when they first meet.

One of the enduring images of Daiyu, often portrayed in Chinese art and re-enacted in Chinese operas, is "Daiyu burying the flowers" (黛玉葬花, Chapters 27–8). Overcome by a spell of melancholy after a misunderstanding with Baoyu, Daiyu goes to the garden to bury fallen petals at a hillside, wrapping them in silk to keep them pure, and falls in deep weeping at their (and her own) transience. She composed an elegiac ballad for the dead petals, which evokes a sympathetic response in the eavesdropping Baoyu.

“Now you are dead and gone,
I gather you for the grave,
And I’m not yet able to foretell
when my own death will be mourned.

Daiyu's emotional tirades make sense in the context of the supernatural. Daiyu is a reincarnated Crimson Pearl Flower that through good care by a Divine Attendant-in-Waiting in the heavens (the reincarnation of which is Baoyu) was imbued with sentient life. In exchange for this gift, the flower vowed to be reincarnated as a human, and pay back her caregiver in the form of as many tears as a person may weep in a lifetime.