Gender and Textual Politics during the Qing Dynasty: The Case of the Zhengshi ji
In compiling the anthology Guaochao guixiu zhengshi ji (Correct beginnings: women's poetry of our dynasty) and its sequel, the female scholar-poet Yun Zhu (1771-1833) had, argues XIAORONG  LI , explicit objectives: to celebrate the literary achievements of Qing-dynasty gentry-women and establish an orthodoxy of women's poetry in accord with contemporary attitudes toward literature and gender. Locating Zhengshi ji in the context of Qing anthologizing trends for both genders, Li examines both the rhetoric Yun Zhu and other editors adopted in their introductory comments and their anthologizing strategies. Through a comparison with other Qing anthologies, especially those mentioned in Yun Zhu's introduction, Li illustrates how women derived authority from the Confucian classics, particularly the Shijing, in efforts to seize a place in the literary world alongside their male counterparts.
Negotiating the Traditional and the Modern: Chinese Women's Literature from the Late Imperial Period through the Twentieth Century
THE INNER QUARTERS AND BEYOND: WOMEN WRITERS FROM MING THROUGH QING, edited by Grace S. Fong and Ellen Widmer. Women and Gender in China Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2010. 431 pp. $177.00. CHINESE WOMEN WRITERS AND THE FEMINIST IMAGINATION, 1905-1948, by Yan Haiping. New York: Routledge, 2006. 299 pp. $178.00. WOMEN’S LITERARY FEMINISM IN TWENTIETH CENTURY CHINA, by Amy Dooling. New York: Palgrave, 2005. 273 pp. $100.00.
The Social Uses of Female Virtue in Late Ming Editions of Lienü Zhuan
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the Confucian reformer Lu Kun examined feminine morals and found them wanting. The rich were decking themselves in pearls and silk, ancient teachings forgotten, while the songs of village women were fit for the whorehouses! Buoyed by his usual confidence, however, Lu was certain he could make women once again a credit to their parents, husbands, and sons. In his 1591 preface to Female Exemplars (Gui fan), he explains that while women are unlikely to read the ancient books on feminine virtue, which are difficult and dull (he dislikes them himself), they will be drawn to his new collection of model lives. It includes pictures to whet the reader's interest and glosses to help her pronounce and understand difficult words. His appended commentary will spur her to emulate the examples.1 Lu Kun did not particularly trust his female audience. He was one of the most censorious of Ming writers on women, turning to the metaphor of dikes or floodgates (with its menace of disaster) when he urged the necessity of ritual barriers between the sexes.2 His strategy was to coopt the evil tendencies of the day, as he had done before in writing instructive songs for women, children, and the poor of his own lineage.3 Women reading Female Exemplars, or singing the songs he had written for them, would be too happy