¶ … shifting gender roles within Chinese history:
Connections, differentiations, and articulations of Chinese women within the ideology of Confucianism
The common stereotype of the East Asian female in the West is that of a frail flower: the most popular Westernized conceptions which leap to mind are that of the bound feet of a Chinese woman. However, the reality in early Chinese history was far more complex. As in the West, Chinese women often struggled for parity in East Asia with their male counterparts, but many were able to distinguish themselves despite certain societal constraints placed upon their behavior. Some of the venues in which women were allowed to exhibit their intellectual prowess, particularly upper-class women, were quite wide, even though (just as in the West) there were also equally vehement cultural stereotypes which questioned the mental and moral character of women. Although the dominant ideology of Confucianism defined a relatively circumscribed role for women, women were able to reconfigure that ideology to create pockets of resistance and articulate feminist aspirations, even though the existing legal and cultural structures worked to circumvent such ideals.
This paper will suggest that Chinese women were able to create creative ideological methods of resistance to what could be read as anti-woman rhetoric within Confucian ideology about the family. Thus, the roles of women in China cannot be viewed in terms of linear progress but as the product of ever-shifting historical and ideological influences. Even while women might have conceded that the appropriate attitude of a woman was one of wifely deference, women often used this as an example of the need to educate and honor the future mothers of sons.
An excellent example of apparent deference actually concealing strength can be seen in the writings of Ban Zhao (48-116 CE) entitled Admonitions for Women. Despite this title, Zhao was extremely firm in her insistence that the Confucian ideal of mutual obligations between husband and wife must be honored: it was not the woman alone who must perform acts of devotion. To soften her message, Zhao begins her treatise by taking a stance of extreme humility -- "this lowly one [meaning herself] is ignorant and by nature unclever" (De Bary 412). However, this should be placed in the context of a Confucian ideal which stressed that all persons outside of the shaping influence of society and moral teaching were potentially troublesome and character was something that had to be learned and cultivated and was not innate. Indeed, Zhao states she is relying upon the instructions of good governesses and instructors when she began to "sweep the broom" as befits a young girl in her new husband's household (De Bary 412).
Zhao notes that when a baby girl was born on the third day she would be placed beneath the bed (to show her humility); given a spindle to illustrate her primary task in the world of being a wife and mother; and yet her birth would also be announced to the ancestors, signifying the major role women had in preserving connections of the present world to the ancestral world, a vital component of Confucianism (De Bary 412). Women should place their own needs second to others and modestly yield, Zhao agreed. But she made a bold case for the education of women, stating that "only to teach men and not to teach women -- is this not ignoring the reciprocal relationship between them" (De Bary 413). To be the ideal wife serving her husband in the hierarchy of the universe required education, not mere blind obedience. "The correct relationship between husband and wife is based upon harmony and intimacy and [conjugal] love is grounded in proper union" (De Bary 414).
It is true that Admonitions for Women call a wife the yin (the feminine, yielding principle) to her husband's yang (wolf-like strength and masculinity) but in some ways this could be read as subtly subversive, given that yang cannot exist without the counterbalancing principle of yin, and in a yin-yang sign the complementary forces are perfectly equal, perfectly meshed, and there is always a 'drop' of yin in yang and vice versa for the harmony of the two opposing principles and thus the harmony of the world to be preserved. Although the forces of yin must be balanced with the forces of yang, too much yang can also create a lack of harmony in the universe. These two principles must not be at war with one another, nor must one surmount...
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history of Japan. First, it will describe the masculinization of Japanese culture during the Kamakura Shogunate period and explore why masculinization happened. Second, the changing roles and relationships with each Buddhism and Shinto in Japan from Nara through the Kamakura period will be explored. Third, Korea's relationship with China and Japan up until the 1600's will be compared and contrasted. Fourth, the kinds of social, political and cultural climate
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