Susan Mann investigated widowhood during Qing Dynasty of China from three aspects. From an article on the history of the concept of chastity in China published by a feminist Liu Jihua, and the introduction of different ways rewarding the widows, especially the commendation(jingbiao), she believed that the elite discourse on female chastity shows not only the competition for social position between common family, but also the struggle between scholar-commoner(lower gentry she called) and commoner families. Then by analyzing the family of the chastity widows she considered the emotional bonds between mother and son a significant reason on commitment of the widows . And in the last section, she uses the class and regional difference to help explain the discrepancies between the behaviour of real woman in history and the recorded normative widows during Qing Dynasty. …show more content…
Reasons are debated but one stated by Liu jihua is that the rise is because of the reward and incentives by the state to the families who supported and protected widows. To avoid the rash of knavish request of being rewarded, Qing set many regulations such as jingbiao and editors of county gazetteers had to distinguish the real ones as recognition of chaste widows had become a kind of family honour in local communities. The large numbers of county gazetteers on widows clearly point out that chastity women was a metaphor for community honor. Stories of the suicidal women were recorded and the local area was represented to the outside world. So the female chastity became part of the values representing local moral norm to the world outside the
Women were auctioned off as “merchandise” to the best suitor they could get in town. Beauty, though important, was not as important as the dowry the woman possessed, because it was the dowry the family provided that could exalt a man’s societal status to all new heights. Once married, women were expected to have son’s for their husbands in order to take over the family business. A barren woman was not an option and could have easily been rushed to the nearest convent to take her vows of a nun, for no honor could be brought otherwise. No woman could run from the societal and legal pressures placed upon them. Rather than run, some chose to accept their place, but, like Lusanna, some chose to fight the status quo for rights they believed they
Yan Zhitui states that, "women take charge of family affairs, entering into lawsuits, straightening out disagreements, and paying calls to seek favor...the government offices are filled with their fancy silks." (Differences between north and south, 111). Yet, even in the Qing dynasty women were still restricted by and expected to uphold more traditional ideals, especially in the public eye. So, in the end, through her virtue, Hsi-Liu’s two children we able to become upright. Here, there is a split between what a woman is supposed to be according to old Chinese tradition, and the realities facing women in Tancheng. The loss of her husband, and economic hardship had forced His-Liu to behave in a different way, as if she were usurping the power from the eldest son so she could teach the two boys a lesson about being good family members. While she still maintains the ideals of bearing children, and being loyal to her husband, even after he dies, out of necessity she is forced to break from Confucian ideals of being only concerned with the domestic issues. This too put her at odds with the more traditional society around her, as the villagers pitied her sons, but vilified the Hsi-Liu for being so strict with them (Woman Wang, 65). Had she remarried, she would have been looked down upon even more because she would had broken her duty to remain faithful to her deceased
Do you believe in equality? Regardless of gender, age, education, religion, etc. all people should be treated the same. However, not everyone is. This literature review shows that. My literature review is on the Gender Matters set of essays. The first essay is The Startling Plight of China’s Leftover Women by Christina Larsen. This essay is about the unmarried, educated women in China and why they are still unmarried. The second essay is The Invisible Migrant Man: Questioning Gender Privileges by Chloe Lewis. This piece is about the struggles and issues that married male migrants face and have faced. The last is Body-Building In Afghanistan by Oliver Broudy. It is about the men who are unemployed in Afghanistan who spend their time working out. My literature review is written in the following order: Larsen’s essay, Broudy’s
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on the land, their family structure, and their local conflicts.
...c. 4). This is an example of one of the seven unequal relationships in Confucianism. Much of the social structure of classical China was based on Confucian ideals (Doc. 3). In Greece the relationship between a husband and wife also very unequal due to her young age and lack of education. Alone a woman had no political rights and limited legal powers therefore is was necessary for a husband to provide for his wife much like a father would (Doc. 6) A woman would learn house hold management and eventually produce heirs. These two similar systems of social roles was not a benevolent system. It did not take into account the welfare of individuals, particularly woman who had little power to leave in a bad marital situation. However by insuring that people know their place, which kept them in line, classical societies were more prosperous and able to run more smoothly.
The state controlled sex through the different treatments of the people in rural settings and those in urban settings: loose in the former and strict in the latter. The urban areas were filled with the bourgeoisie and the rural with the “sent-down youth,” teenagers who were “sent to labor in the fields to reform their thinking.” “Life in the countryside was punctuated by flirtation and sex.” Sex was an abomination in the urban settings because it was seen as “being equated with being cheap, and bourgeois, with promiscuity; [violators] are unrevolutionary, not worthy of brave hearts that should be beating with thoughts of building a new socialist nation.” Chinese people were called to “maintain the honor and reputation of the country” by “remain[ing] pure.” Sex was no longer a personal business; it was a matter of conc...
I will first begin by summarizing the plot of Family by Pa Chin and the plot of Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki and summarizing the characters as I go along. I will then explain how the two authors constructed their characters on modernity and tradition and conclude this paper by explaining the themes of the novels and how I would compare the two novels.
Psychoanalysis is a theory based on the assumption that, no behavior is accidental. All the behaviors that people have originate from the experiences that they went through in the past. Therefore, Psychoanalytic criticism is arguing either positively or negatively on the reason why people exhibit certain behaviors in their lives. The voice of a mother and daughter is one of the subjects that feminist scholars have critically looked at. Scholars have captured the issue of western feminists with the literature of matrilineage. Amy Tan in her scholarly works has written stories on Chinese Ladies who went through great suffering in their past life, and this has really affected their present life. Hence, this article will look at the voice of a mother and feminist subjectivity from a psychoanalytic perspective. Basing on the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Chan, through psychoanalytic criticism, this paper explores the techniques that the author uses to expose the experiences of the Joy luck mothers in China, and how these experiences shape their present characters, as well as their daughters’ lives.
The Shrew described a lot of problems in the woman's issues, love, marriage, and family. Ancient Chinese Women’s opinion on their love and marriage has the conflict with the social system, moral norms, traditional ideas, customary forces by that time. Sometime the conflicts could also lead to tragedy and casual life. In the real-life, such events are common, thus causing widespread concern and attention in the society. In the feudal society, women are subject to restrictions, repression, abuse, persecution of the most profound, so their resistance is the strongest.
Lessons for Women was written by Ban Zhao, the leading female Confucian scholar of classical China, in 100 C.E. It was written to apply Confucian principles to the moral instruction of women, and was particularly addressed to Ban Zhao’s own daughters. As her best remembered work, it allows the reader insight into the common role of a woman during this fascinating time-period. The work starts off by Ban Zhao unconvincingly berating herself, and claiming how she once lived with the constant fear of disgracing her family. This argument is rather implausible, for the reader already knows the credibility of Ban Zhao, and how important her role was in ancient China.
The early part of the novel shows women’s place in Chinese culture. Women had no say or position in society. They were viewed as objects, and were used as concubines and treated with disparagement in society. The status of women’s social rank in the 20th century in China is a definite positive change. As the development of Communism continued, women were allowed to be involved in not only protests, but attended universities and more opportunities outside “house” work. Communism established gender equality and legimated free marriage, instead of concunbinage. Mao’s slogan, “Women hold half of the sky”, became extremely popular. Women did almost any job a man performed. Women were victims by being compared to objects and treated as sex slaves. This was compared to the human acts right, because it was an issue of inhumane treatment.
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...
This essay will explore how Classical Chinese literature written during the Ming Dynasty illustrates the social role that women played in the traditional Chinese marriage. Issues and traditions that greatly affected women`s roles in the family and society included lineage, male dominance, families position in society, grounds and repercussions for divorce. In the vernacular short story ``The Shrew: Sharp Tongued Ts`ui-lien``, anonymous is a story in the collection Vernacular Short Stories from the Clear and Peaceful Studio (Qingping shantung heaven) which was writing during the Ming dynasty, the main character Ts`uilien, exemplifies a woman in this time period, subject to its rules and societal norms, who rebels against tradition and is forced to deal with the repercussions of doing so. The other hua pen and vernacular short stories that deal with women and marriage during the Imperial time period and were studied in this course are: ``The Tragedy of Pu Fei-Yen``, ``The Oil Peddler Courts the Courtesan``, ``The Jest that Leads to Disaster``. The main character of ``The Shrew: Sharp Tongued Ts`uilien`` exemplified the atypical version of a young female during the Ming dynasty. Her behaviour conflicted with the norms of society in that time period, which will be examined and analysed in this essay.
Rosenlee. L., (2007). Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation. State University of New York Press. p. 92
This suggests that even as a widow, a woman was not free to do as she pleased, with regards to who she was to wed. The fact that a widow was being dictated to, showed that the village society was more patriarchal than that of the society that existe...