Married into the Jia clan, she runs the Rongguo Mansion's day-to-day finances with ruthless competence and a poisonous tongue. Grandmother Jia herself christens her
凤辣子. The proverb
机关算尽太聪明，
反误了卿卿性命 ('she plotted too cleverly and so undid her very life') in her fate-poem is one of the most quoted lines from the novel.
