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The Sage and The Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender Ed by Chengyang Li takes on a lot of the issues raised by feminism and gender studies about Imperial China and Confucianism in general. It seems that most books dealing with gender and China focus almost entirely on the modern period. This book looks at some of the origins of this type of scholarship. They look at the rise of the "new culture" movement and missionaries obsessed with foot-binding who all benefited from the idea that "traditional" or "Confucian" China was a very backward and barbaric place. One where women were treated as subhuman and were valued for being weak and dumb. As a result of these writings feminists and modern Confucians have found themselves at odds and the Confucians have remained fairly quiet on the matter. This book tries to answer some of the problems brought about from this approach. It looks at the early Confucian philosophy, relates it to feminist philosophy, and tries to explore what it's view of gender relations really was. It looks at the idea of gendered virtue, and tries to explore how this applied to Confucianism. It also looks at Early Imperial China and tries to draw some distinctions between Confucian views and societal views and societal norms.
The most interesting part for me was four essays dealing with the Han dynasty. It seems very little gets written about women during this time period. By close examination the essays show that women were not the helpless passive multitude that modern portrayals would have us believe in, but rather women were an active, vocal, and intelligent part of the society and were appreciated for being so. In the introduction Patricia Ebrey writes how many historians when writing about the time period they specialise in find this to be the case. She herself specialises in the Song period and the works of Neo-Confucians. The opposite of this is to be found among authors who Michael Nylan states are the "ahistorical historians: those who presume linear highly ideological meta-narratives about the contemporary "survival" of ancient Chinese practices in Chinese society today." (p213) He goes on to argue that cultural replication over time is not something that should be taken for granted but something that needs explaining and that older cultural elements are used for new ends. His article was the best in the book looking at the comparison between "Elite women in the Achamenid and Han Empires". He looks at how literary sources with dubious historical authenticity are viewed as accurate representations of Elite women in Persian empire and that historical texts, with little doubts on accuracy, are considered to be bad representations for women in Han China. He sees the prejudice of modern scholarship affecting how we view the past. To combat this he gives examples of how this is not the case, as well as methodology for how to avoid making mistakes when using the older Chinese sources.
For me it was very interesting and useful to find a book that looked at the role of women in Early Imperial China. I agree that too much of what is written about women in China focuses on what happened in the Ming and Qing and applies these ideas to the rest of China without any in-depth look at the time period in question. It is also interesting to see how something that should be free of preconceived notions is in fact perpetrating them with generalisations. I should also mention that essays in this book do not deny the sexism of early Imperial China, but they try to examine it in more depth. For instance the idea of social inequality but one of moral equality which was fairly interesting. In her essay Lisa Raphals quoted from Rousseau who saw women and men as having separate virtues and the male virtues were considered superior to those of women. Rousseau said that the virtue of women was to be obedient, dutiful, modest, chaste and above all responsible to the demands of children and husband. It was interesting to note that both China and Western philosophy in the 18th century saw women's virtues and place to be almost identical.
The most interesting part for me was four essays dealing with the Han dynasty. It seems very little gets written about women during this time period. By close examination the essays show that women were not the helpless passive multitude that modern portrayals would have us believe in, but rather women were an active, vocal, and intelligent part of the society and were appreciated for being so. In the introduction Patricia Ebrey writes how many historians when writing about the time period they specialise in find this to be the case. She herself specialises in the Song period and the works of Neo-Confucians. The opposite of this is to be found among authors who Michael Nylan states are the "ahistorical historians: those who presume linear highly ideological meta-narratives about the contemporary "survival" of ancient Chinese practices in Chinese society today." (p213) He goes on to argue that cultural replication over time is not something that should be taken for granted but something that needs explaining and that older cultural elements are used for new ends. His article was the best in the book looking at the comparison between "Elite women in the Achamenid and Han Empires". He looks at how literary sources with dubious historical authenticity are viewed as accurate representations of Elite women in Persian empire and that historical texts, with little doubts on accuracy, are considered to be bad representations for women in Han China. He sees the prejudice of modern scholarship affecting how we view the past. To combat this he gives examples of how this is not the case, as well as methodology for how to avoid making mistakes when using the older Chinese sources.
For me it was very interesting and useful to find a book that looked at the role of women in Early Imperial China. I agree that too much of what is written about women in China focuses on what happened in the Ming and Qing and applies these ideas to the rest of China without any in-depth look at the time period in question. It is also interesting to see how something that should be free of preconceived notions is in fact perpetrating them with generalisations. I should also mention that essays in this book do not deny the sexism of early Imperial China, but they try to examine it in more depth. For instance the idea of social inequality but one of moral equality which was fairly interesting. In her essay Lisa Raphals quoted from Rousseau who saw women and men as having separate virtues and the male virtues were considered superior to those of women. Rousseau said that the virtue of women was to be obedient, dutiful, modest, chaste and above all responsible to the demands of children and husband. It was interesting to note that both China and Western philosophy in the 18th century saw women's virtues and place to be almost identical.