" The Chronicle of Gems: Chinese Women of the 18th Century and Beyond "

Author: Mansu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This is a work of research on gender relations in the lower Yangtze region of the Qing Dynasty from the 18th century and its surrounding period (1683-1839). It adopts a unique perspective that places women at the center of this era. Through an analysis and description of the life experiences, poetic writing, labor, religious activities, and entertainment of women in the Jiangnan region during this period, it elucidates the profound impact of gender relations on economic, political, social, and cultural transformations of the time, emphasizing the irreplaceable value of women's history and gender relations in historical research.
Excerpt: Introduction The study of Chinese women's history has just begun in various parts of the world outside China, and a treasure trove of works by Chinese women is still waiting to be explored by scholars from different countries. This book merely briefly narrates the feelings, beliefs, and actions of these women during a brief period in history. The most important historical materials I used are works by female writers, mainly poems. I also used some common materials written by men: biographies, epigraphs, local historical records, and official documents. These texts related to women and gender relations appear not only in the pragmatic essays of men—officials' policy proposals for managing local affairs—but also in academic articles written by men on rituals, art, and literature. By comparing these common, male-written historical materials with women's own works, a new window into the world of Chinese women is opened. Among these various historical materials, biographical epitaphs are the most abundant. Biographies of Chinese women have been published in thousands of forms. We can find them in local historical records, in epigraphs and biographies collected in scholarly anthologies, or in short narratives—all of which are written by authors who express their love and admiration for the women they feature. The women highly praised in these works are mostly the grandmothers, mothers, aunts, nieces, and stepmothers of the authors or their close relatives, as well as those revered in the West or considered saints for their virtue (female Taoist nuns or Buddhist nuns), and some heroic women known for their bravery (such as avenging their fathers or rescuing their mothers from danger). By the late imperial period, that is, the broader period defined as the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, the so-called "Biographies of Exemplary Women" in fact recorded nothing but the deeds of (women who died resisting violence or committed suicide to refuse humiliation) or widows who remained virginal for life.