Gender Roles and Confucianism in Early Chinese History

Introduction: Complexity Behind the Stereotype

The common stereotype of the East Asian female in the West is that of a frail flower: the most popular Westernized conception that leaps to mind is 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 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 — particularly upper-class women — were allowed to exhibit their intellectual prowess were quite wide, even though there were also equally vehement cultural stereotypes that 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 as existing legal and cultural structures worked to circumvent such ideals.

This paper argues that Chinese women were able to devise creative ideological methods of resistance to what could be read as anti-woman rhetoric within Confucian ideology about the family. The roles of women in China cannot be viewed in terms of linear progress but rather 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, they often used this concession as grounds for insisting upon the education and honor due to the future mothers of sons.

Ban Zhao and the Admonitions for Women

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 the shaping influence of society and moral teaching were potentially troublesome, and that character was something that had to be learned and cultivated — not innately given. 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 as wife and mother; and yet her birth would also be announced to the ancestors, signifying the major role women had in preserving connections between the present world and 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).

Works Cited

De Bary, William Theodore. Sources of East Asian Tradition: Premodern Asia, Volume 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.