These manuscripts, the most textually reliable versions, are known as " rouge versions" ( zhī běn 脂本). Eventually Yingchun marries an official of the imperial court, her marriage being merely one of her father's desperate attempts to raise the declining fortunes of the Jia family. He encounters his old friend, Nachtigall, who tells Fridolin that he will be playing piano at a secret high-society orgy that night. The stream of translations and literary studies in the West grew steadily, building on Chinese language scholarship. At a more profound level, the author explores religious and philosophical questions, and the writing style includes echoes of the plays and novels of the late Ming, as well as poetry from earlier periods.

One remarked that the novel is a remarkable example of the "dialectic of dream and reality, art and life, passion and enlightenment, nostalgia and knowledge. Since the 1980s, critics have embraced the novel's richness and aesthetics in a more multicultural context.

Cao depicts the power of the father over the family, but the novel is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. Originally Xifeng's maid in the Wang household, she follows Xifeng as part of her dowry when Xifeng marries into the Jia household. In the 2023 video game Limbus Company created by South Korean studio Project Moon, character Hong Lu is based off of Dream of the Red Chamber. The second complete English translation to be published was by David Hawkes some century and a half after the first English translation. Ferrara, Between Noble and Humble: Cao Xueqin and the Dream of the Red Chamber (New York: Peter Lang, 2009).

Undeniably the most worldly woman in the novel, Xifeng is in charge of the daily running of the Rongguo household and wields economic as well as political power within the family. Again and again, he tries to cast himself in the role of hero of his own narrative – “ I feel that I have found my destiny“, he announces to the masked guests at the party, “ and I want to tell you my name, to remove my mask and to take all the consequences on myself” – but again and again, he’s denied any understanding or agency of his situation.The temple's most venerated gods came from Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and shamanic traditions from various regions within and outside of China, and the book's spiritual themes, prose stylization, and portrayals of mythical figures were inspired by the traditional stories told about these deities and other oral temple traditions from Beijing.

In chapter 1, after a second perusal of the book, Voiding-the-Void Daoist (supposedly its first reader) concludes that "its main theme is about love. It is modernized and Americanized, set in New York City in 1999 during the Christmas season, rather than in Vienna 1900 during Mardi Gras.Nachtigall tells Fridolin about a secret masked ball he is playing at later that night, where the female guests are naked. In the frame story, Baoyu, in his previous incarnation as the Deity Shenying, watered the Fairy Crimson Pearl, Daiyu's incarnation.

The book belongs to the period of the Decadent movement in Vienna after the turn of the 20th century.She is an icon of spirituality and intelligence: beautiful, sentimental, sarcastic, self-assured, an accomplished poet, but subject to fits of jealousy.