Late Imperial China Case Study

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The treatment of woman in Chinese law is a complex subject, open to many interpretations. For any given passage, one can drawn a number of conclusions, some of which may be true, others of which may be false. Nonetheless, some things stand out. And so, I assert that the understandings of justice in Late Imperial China was dedicated to the maintenance of the current social order Furthermore, the treatment of women in Chinese law backs up this conclusion, and is but one piece of evidence in a mosaic of evidence supporting this conclusion..

To understand this conclusion, it is first necessary to understand the concepts of Justice and Law. We start with justice. Justice has many meanings, depending on the place, the context, and many other variables. …show more content…

Let us prove this. Start with the reasonable assumption that a society which is focused on social order, and it 's derived concepts of justice, will be concerned about making sure everyone knows what their place is life is and what is expected of them. Based on this, It would be reasonable to expect a hierarchical, high context society to develop, as a hierarchical society would minimalism social disorder, and if everyone understands the rules of society then much information can be conveyed implicitly as well as much conflict avoided.. If evidence of this mentality can be found in Chinese law, it can be concluded that justice in the society was focused, at least in part, on maintaining social …show more content…

And through this, it can be extrapolated that justice of the time was likely concerned with this as well. The treatment of women, men, and the household in Chinese law also supports this conclusion. We turn to further examples from the text for evidence. Page 120 of “The Death of Woman Wang” sports the text “For by the mere act of running away from her husband, woman Wang had become a criminal in the eyes of the law. Only if a wife was severely hurt or mutilated by her husband, or if she was forced to commit sexual acts with others, was she free to leave him.” Page 126, meanwhile, has the information “The law … did state clearly that a husband could divorce a wife on one of seven grounds: Inability to bear sons,

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