Women Writers of Traditional China

Women Writers of Traditional China
Author: Kang-i Sun Chang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 932
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780804732314

The book also includes an extended section of criticism by and about women writers.

Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China

Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China
Author: Kay Ann Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2009-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226401944

Kay Ann Johnson provides much-needed information about women and gender equality under Communist leadership. She contends that, although the Chinese Communist Party has always ostensibly favored women's rights and family reform, it has rarely pushed for such reforms. In reality, its policies often have reinforced the traditional role of women to further the Party's predominant economic and military aims. Johnson's primary focus is on reforms of marriage and family because traditional marriage, family, and kinship practices have had the greatest influence in defining and shaping women's place in Chinese society. Conversant with current theory in political science, anthropology, and Marxist and feminist analysis, Johnson writes with clarity and discernment free of dogma. Her discussions of family reform ultimately provide insights into the Chinese government's concern with decreasing the national birth rate, which has become a top priority. Johnson's predictions of a coming crisis in population control are borne out by the recent increase in female infanticide and the government abortion campaign.

Women in Traditional China

Women in Traditional China
Author: Susan Hill Gross
Publisher:
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1980
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN:

Presents both the historical role of women in China, including a discussion of the custom of footbinding, as well as information on their contemporary status. Primary source materials including personal narratives, government reports, statistics, and anthropological data have been used when possible. The accompanying teacher's guide offers teaching suggestions, discussion questions, and a unit test. Secondary level.

Women and the Family in Chinese History

Women and the Family in Chinese History
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2003
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780415288231

This is a collection of essays by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, it explores features of the Chinese family, gender and kinship systems and places them in a historical context.

Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture

Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture
Author: Robin Wang
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780872206519

This rich collection of writings--many translated especially for this volume and some available in English for the first time--provides a journey through the history of Chinese culture, tracing the Chinese understanding of women as elucidated in writings spanning more than two thousand years. From the earliest oracle bone inscriptions of the Pre-Qin period through the poems and stories of the Song Dynasty, these works shed light on Chinese images of women and their roles in society in terms of such topics as human nature, cosmology, gender, and virtue.

Women in Ming China

Women in Ming China
Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538152975

This groundbreaking work provides an original and deeply knowledgeable overview of Chinese women and gender relations during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Bret Hinsch explores in detail the central aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, religious roles, and virtues. He considers not only the lived world of women, but also delves into their emotional life and the ideals they pursued. Drawing on a wide range of Western and Chinese primary and secondary sources—including standard histories, poetry, prose literature, and epitaphs—Hinsch makes an important period of Chinese women’s history accessible to Western readers.

The Confucian Four Books for Women

The Confucian Four Books for Women
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2018-04-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190460911

This volume presents the first English translation of the Confucian classics, Four Books for Women, with extensive commentary by the compiler, Wang Xiang, and introductions and annotations by translator Ann A. Pang-White. Written by women for women's education, the Confucian Four Books for Women spanned the 1st to the 16th centuries, and encompass Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women, Song Ruoxin's and Song Ruozhao's Analects for Women, Empress Renxiaowen's Teachings for the Inner Court, and Madame Liu's (Chaste Widow Wang's) Short Records of Models for Women. A female counterpart to the famous Sishu (Four Books) compiled by Zhu Xi, Wang Xiang's Nü sishu provides an invaluable look at the long-standing history and evolution of Chinese women's writing, education, identity, and philosophical discourse, along with their struggles and triumphs, across the millennia and numerous Chinese dynasties. Pang-White's new translation brings the authors of the Four Books for Women to life as real, living people, and illustrates why they wrote and how their work empowered women.

Precious Records

Precious Records
Author: Susan Mann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1997
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804727440

Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women's participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.

Exemplary Women of Early China

Exemplary Women of Early China
Author: Anne Behnke Kinney
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2014-02-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231163096

When should a woman disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the policy of a ruler? According to the Lienü zhuan, or Categorized Biographies of Women, it is not only appropriate but necessary for women to offer counsel when fathers, husbands, sons, and rulers stray from virtue. The earliest Chinese text devoted to the moral education of women, the Lienü zhuan was compiled by Liu Xiang (79–8 B.C.E.) at the end of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.E.–9 C.E.) and recounts the deeds of both virtuous and wicked women. Informed by early legends, fictionalized historical accounts, and formal speeches on statecraft, the text taught generations of Chinese women to cultivate filial piety and maternal kindness and undertake such practices as suicide and self-mutilation to preserve chastity and reform wayward men. The Lienü zhuan’s stories inspired artists for a millennium and found their way into local and dynastic histories. An innovative work for its time, the text remains a critical tool for mapping women’s social, political, and domestic roles at a formative time in China’s development.

Women Shall Not Rule

Women Shall Not Rule
Author: Keith McMahon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442222905

Chinese emperors guaranteed male successors by taking multiple wives, in some cases hundreds and even thousands. Women Shall Not Rule offers a fascinating history of imperial wives and concubines, especially in light of the greatest challenges to polygamous harmony—rivalry between women and their attempts to engage in politics. Besides ambitious empresses and concubines, these vivid stories of the imperial polygamous family are also populated with prolific emperors, wanton women, libertine men, cunning eunuchs, and bizarre cases of intrigue and scandal among rival wives. Keith McMahon, a leading expert on the history of gender in China, draws upon decades of research to describe the values and ideals of imperial polygamy and the ways in which it worked and did not work in real life. His rich sources are both historical and fictional, including poetic accounts and sensational stories told in pornographic detail. Displaying rare historical breadth, his lively and fascinating study will be invaluable as a comprehensive and authoritative resource for all readers interested in the domestic life of royal palaces across the world.