HY2206:WOMEN AND THE PROBLEMS THEY CREATE Getting beyond stereotyped descriptions of women’s virtues to a fuller understanding of the ideas: China’s Imperial Past: History and Culture Essay, NUS, Singapore

WOMEN AND THE PROBLEMS THEY CREATE

Getting beyond stereotyped descriptions of women’s virtues to a fuller understanding of the ideas. feelings and conventions that shaped their lives is difficult because not nearly as many historical records survive concerning women’s lives as men’s. The sorts of sources included in selection 17, “Women’s Virtues and Vices.” survive in abundance for all periods.

Following the conventions of Lit. Xiang’s Biographies of Heroic Women, the standard dynastic histories regularly included brief accounts of women who achieved renown for some act of courage or principle, such as sacrificing themselves to save a parent or to prevent themselves from being raped or forced to remarry.

By Song times, however, with the explosion in the range and number of surviving books, it is possible to see other dimensions of women’s lives and gender conceptions. Below are selections from two twelfth-century authors who took fresh looks at women. First are three brief stories recorded by Hong Mai 11123-12021, a man attracted to the uncanny who collected stories wherever he went.

Some of the stories he recorded probably began as folktales, others may be quite factual, altered little in the retelling. Either way, they reveal Song’s perceptions of women. their powers and weaknesses, and their relations with men. These stories are followed by selections from Yuan Cai’s Ica. 1140-ea. 1195) book of advice for family heads on how to handle both the financial and interpersonal problems commonly encountered by relatively well-off families.

Yuan could not of course write from a woman’s point of view, but he seems to have been a sensitive and sympathetic observer of the problems women faced and the problems they created for the men around them.

but since the youngest was only a few years old, she figured she could not leave. Conse-quently, she responded to her husband meekly, “I have been your wife (or over twenty years. Our daughters are married and we have grandchil-dren. If you chase me out, where can I go?” Wang left again, this time bringing the prosti-tute back with him and sating her up in an inn in a nearby street.

The wife, at home, had to pawn or sell little by little everything she had stored in her uses, until there was not a thing left in the house. When Wang returned and saw this, he was even angrier. “You and I can never get together again. Let’s settle things today.” His wife, finally becoming agitated, said, “If that is how it is, we must go to court.- She grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him to the county coon, where the magistrate granted the divorce and divided the prop-erty in two.

Wang wanted to take the young girl, but his wife objected, “My husband is shameless. He abandoned his wife and took up with a prostitute. If this girl goes with him, she will certainly end up in degraded circumstances.” The county magistrate agreed with her, and so she got custody of the girl. The woman went to live in another village. She bought such things as jars and jugs and lined them up by her door the way shopkeepers do.

One day her ex-husband passed her door and spoke to her as though they were on the same familiar terms as before. “How much money can you make on these? Why not try something else?” She chased him away, railing at him, “Since we have broken our relationship, we are like strangers. How do you get to interfere in my family affairs?” Thereafter they never saw each other again.

When the daughter came of age, she was married into the Tian family of Fangcheng. By then the woman’s property had grown to 100,000 strings, and the Tian family got it all. Mr. Wang lived with the prostitute and died away from home in Huainan. Several years later his ex-wife also died. When she was ready to be buried, the daughter troubled that her father’s body had not been brought back, sent someone to get it, wanting to bury him with her mother. After the two

The Reward for Widow Miss Wu served her mother-in-law very filially. Her mother-in-law had an eye ailment and felt sorry for her daughter-in-law’s solitary and poverty-stricken situation. so suggested that they all in a son-in-law for her and thereby get an adoptive heir. Miss Wu announced in tears, “A woman does not serve two husbands.

I will support you. Don’t talk this way.” Her mother-in-law, seeing that she was determined, did not press her. Miss Wu did spinning, washing, sewing, cooking, and cleaning for her neighbors, earning perhaps a hundred cash a day, all of which she gave to her mother-in-law to cover the cost of fire-wood and food If she was given any meat, she would wrap it up to take home.

Miss Wu was honest by nature. She did not chat idly, and even if other peoples things were right in front of her, she did not look at them, wanting only what was her own. Thus neighbors often engaged her and they helped out her and her mother-in-law, so they managed to avoid dying of hunger or cold.

Once when her mother-in-law was cooking rice, a neighbor caned her, and to avoid over-cooking the rice, she dumped it into a pan. Due to her bad eyes, however, she mistakenly put it in the dirty chamber pot. When Miss Wu returned and saw it, she did not say a word. She went to a neigh-bon to borrow some cooked rice for her mother-in-law and took the dim rice and washed it to eat herself.

Orphaned Girls Should Have Their Marriages Arranged Early When a widow remarries she sometimes has an orphaned daughter not yet engaged. In such cases she should try to get a respectable relative to ar-range a marriage for her daughter. She should also seek to have her daughter reared in the house of her future in-laws, with the marriage to take place after the girl has grown up.

If the girl were to go along with the mother m her grenfatlwr’s amine, she would not be able to clear herself if she were subjected to any humiliations.
For Women Old Age Is Particularly Hard to Bear People say that, though there may be a hundred years allotted to a person’s life, only a few reach seventy, for time quickly runs out.

But for those destined to be poor, old age is hard to endure. For them, until about the age of fifty, the passage of twenty years seems like only ten; but after that age, ten years can feel as long as twenty. For women who live a long life, old age is especially hard to bear, because most women must rely on others for their existence.

Before a woman’s marriage, a good father is even more important than a good grandfather; a good brother is even more important than a good father; a good nephew is even more important than a good brother.

After her marriage, a good husband is even more important than a good father-in-law; a good son is even more important than a good husband, and a good grandson is even more important than a good son. For this reason, women often enjoy comfort in their youth but find their old age