Classifying Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 as a realistic novel of manners, some modern critics fault its author for failing to maintain a consistently realist approach. This paper argues that the author was not careless or inadvertently “inconsistent”, but instead chose to alternate the “realist” approach with satiric and ironic modes in the novel, creating rhythmic changes in tone and mood for aesthetic effect. The novel can be fruitfully analyzed as a complex satire of manners, or a satire on society of that period, but not as a personal lampoon, a strictly political satire, or a simplistic, Class-based proto-Marxist satire. It lends itself to Bakhtinian polyphonic analysis, for it is intended to be read simultaneously at several levels. I examine the novel's satiric characteristics, the semantic range of its title and the authorial pseudonym, and the problem of interpreting some of the novel's “inconsistencies.” I argue that while the novel encourages multiple interpretations, these interpretations are not indeterminate, indefinite, or endless, nor do they cancel one another out. I suggest that the controversial ending of Jin Ping Mei be read as relatively positive because it implies forgiveness, restoration of peace, regeneration, and growth.