The Problem of Women
The greatest problem for women is being a woman. The feminist rally cry, ‘the personal is political’ aims to depict that the many personal problems women face are due to the fact that there are societal oppressions toward them. Xie Bingying’s life gives an amazing depiction of a woman’s struggle between what society and her traditional family want for her and what she wants for herself and her country.
From the start of Bingying’s life the disappoint of her double X chromosome was evident. The first thing her family thought of when she was born was that although she was a very observant excited baby she would not amount to much because it was, “Too bad it’s a girl. If it were a boy he surely would become a big official” (3). She grew up in a traditional family. Her father was very smart and could have joined a government post because he had placed high in the special exams for economics (6). He believed in Confucius and Mencius thinking, traditional morality, like absolute obedience to parents, and old fashion in his thinking but was open to new ideas (5). Her mother was strict and believed in all women should be
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One example of unjust prejudices was that women in the Guangxi Province said to complain, however they “just lowered their heads and worked like cows and horses” (263). Bingying does not even refer to these women as people, they were merely animals doing as they were told. While they were not finical independent, they did support their families by carrying one hundred to two hundred pounds, meanwhile their husbands did mostly nothing (263). Bingying had no interest in impressing her future in-laws to the arranged marriage her parents made. When her mother imprisoned her, she used her notions of revolution to get through
There are little to no direct accounts of how individuals’ lives were a couple thousand years ago in Ancient China. With a wealth of information on the rise, decline, and fall of empires, Michael Loewe, a sinologist who specializes in oriental studies and theology, writes an imaginary story about a hero named Bing set around 70 BCE. Bing: From Farmer’s Son to Magistrate in Han China is Loewe’s fictional portrait of life during the Han Empire. It is by no means a comprehensive historical account of Han times, in fact, it was written with those readers who are not familiar with Chinese in mind, however through the life of Bing we can gage how the lives of laborers, those involved in military service, merchants, and government officials might
Some of the more fascinating documents of the Han period in ancient China were arguably those written by women. The writings were at once contradictory due to the fact that they appeared to destroy the common perceptions of women as uneducated and subservient creatures while simultaneously delivering messages through the texts that demonstrated a strict adherence to traditional values. Those are the paradoxical characteristics of prominent female scholar Ban Zhou’s work called Lesson for a Woman. Because modern opinions on the roles of women in society likely cloud the clear analysis of Zhou’s work, it is necessary to closely examine the Han’s societal norms and popular beliefs that contributed to establishing the author’s perspective and intent.
“Small Happiness” is a documentary about women of a Chinese village. The title derived from the quote, “To give birth to a boy is considered a big happiness, to give birth to a girl is a small happiness.” It covered a variety of topics such as how women view their bodies, marriages, and families. From the documentary’s interviews of women of different ages, we can see although the tradition of male dominance in the Chinese society remains, the lives of rural Chinese women have changed significantly in the last half century.
From the beginning of Wang Lung’s marriage to O-lan, she saved him time, money, and effort without complaint. She offered wisdom when asked and was smart in the ways of the world. During the famine, when the family went south in search of food, O-lan taught her children how to beg for food, “dug the small green weeds, dandelions, and shepherds purse that thrust up feeble new leaves”(p. 128). She raised her children prudently. She knew how to bind her daughter’s feet, and she gave them a better childhood than she had had. O-lan knew that the land was the only consistent thing in her life, so she willingly helped Wang Lung as he bought more and more land. O-lan knew her place in the family was as a wife and mother. As a wife, she fe...