This essay will analyse the role of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century period. While ideas about women and their role in Chinese society underwent considerable change due to a combination of domestic and external factors, many ideas remained the same. However, before one delves into how views on women and their rights within late nineteenth and early twentieth century China changed, one must first contextualize the position of women in Imperial China. A woman’s role in Qing China was based on the Confucian tradition.[1] As Haindrych notes, Chinese women were forced to adhere to the Confucian principles of “Three Obediences and Four Virtues.” These Confucian values underpinned the Chinese woman’s role in society.[2] These values stated that women throughout all stages of life were subservient to their family in their life. In her youth, a woman was forced to obey her husbands and her brothers. While in marriage, she must be subservient to her husband and ensure that the household is kept in order.[3] Hence, as seen, a woman’s value was based on her subservience to a patriarchal figure and family duties within the domestic sphere.
While Confucian ideology was entrenched in Chinese society, changes started to take place during the political turmoil of the Late Qing period. As historian Yifei notes, while Manchu reformers such as Liang Qichao during his 100 days reform never outrightly used the term “women’s rights”, he had started to explore certain concepts which redefined women’s role in Chinese society.[4] Here, Liang advocated for the re-banning of the practice of foot-binding.[5] The role of foot-binding in Chinese history is especially interesting. As Sheperd notes, the reasoning behind foot-binding as a practice is especially complicated.[6] While it is certainly true that the practice of foot-binding was very much tied to the Confucian tradition of its view of a woman’s role in society as it demonstrated to men at the time that she adhered to tradition and was of good social standing, a myriad of other factors played a role as well. These included women practicing foot-binding as a way to stand up against the Manchu-led Qing dynasty as a way of reinforcing their Han identity.[7] Revisionist historians have also noted that certain Western perspectives have influenced the way we think about the practice of foot-binding. Other historians have pointed out that women have practiced foot-binding as a way to demonstrate familial ties between daughter and mother and were seen by many as a way to preserve familial memories.[8]
Hence, when Liang instituted his reforms during the hundred-day period, which led to the banning of foot-binding, he described foot-bound women as “parasites, beasts, and slaves”[9] and that women due to their condition, within the Confucian household, led to “unproductiveness [that was] the cause of China’s backwardness”.[10] As seen, set against the backdrop of the mounting need for reforms, reformers such as Liang started to push for women’s reforms which would allow women to attain an education. Hence, in 1867, Kang Guangren opened the first girl’s school.[11]
While it is undeniable that women as a social group were receiving more rights, one could argue that perception had not changed in Chinese society. For one, while it is true that women were allowed to attain and education and it is true that Liang did ban foot-binding as he viewed it as an oppressive force for women, he only did so out of what he deemed was a practical necessity to improve the economy. As highlighted by Fang, the goal for Liang’s reforms were to “build a strong nation and to achieve this, women needed to be financially independent…[and] that education was also necessary to enable women to fulfil their role as wives and mother.” While these changes could be interpreted as a net positive for the way women were viewed in society, the reformers still viewed women as homemakers, wives and mothers first in their state-building efforts. Ultimately, from the perspective of the Qing state reformers, women should still act within the confines of Confucian traditions that had initially shaped them and that the education provided, was to simply make them fulfil their roles in a more effective way.
However, to analyse these changes from the perspective of male reformers at the time without consideration of female voices during the late Qing period would paint only half a picture.
Due to the policies of the late Qing reformers, women were allowed to be educated both in China and abroad. As mentioned before and reinforced again by Qian, while male reformers only looked at women’s rights through the narrow lens of state building, we ignore the women who were educated both domestically and abroad who had started to re-envision their role within society. For example, following the sudden end to Liang’s hundred-day reforms, Chinese women took it upon themselves to continue their reforms on their own terms.[12] For example, Xue Shaohui and her husband Chen Shoupeng used their knowledge from the liberalization policies of the Qing period to continue to discuss and engage in intellectual debate. During this time, they compiled a book titled “Biographies of foreign women”. This text offered a unique perspective on Western feminism. Unlike a lot of her colleagues during the 1898 reform period, Qian and her husband had synthesized a unique distillation and critique of Western and Chinese ideas on the portrayal of western women and their lives. In their book, they argued that “alien customs and exotic fashions each follow their own righteous track”.[13] This was because for Xue, as Qian notes in her book, felt that the cultural experiences of women in both occidental and Chinese cultures needed to be understood for all its benefits and all its faults in order to conceptualize a new form of Chinese womanhood.
Hence, when Xue wrote her analysis of western women’s lives (including both fictional and biographical women), she included a moral category based on Confucian culture and a Western category defining their socio-poltiical class.[14] Here, Xue went a step further than the male reformers of the Qing dynasty and even pushed for a reinterpretation of the four feminine virtues of Confucius.
For example, the word “Cai”, was reinterpreted from “daily speech” to “scholarly and literary talent” and the word “Yi” was reinterpreted to “artistic and scientific accomplishments”.[15] Hence, while writing “Biographies of foreign women”, she emphasized that the greatest virtues women could have in a Confucian society was their status in literature and science. For Xue, through a deeper understanding of both Western literature and Western women’s lives, Chinese women would be able to recontextualize their role in society through their understanding of the struggles of Western women in ideas of art, love and science would emancipate themselves through both the private and public sphere.[16]
While reform did take place during the late 19th century, the early 20th century for Republican China was a critical period for women as well. For women, this was a period where strong clashes between the Confucian ideals of old and more modern perceptions of womanhood took place. As explained by Stevens, the rapid urbanization of the state during this time, combined with the fact that China was a semi-colonial state, meant that cities became a cultural tinderbox of conflict as old ideas clashed with the new.[17] As a result, women became caught in the crossfire of this momentous period in Chinese history and a duality of perceptions of women emerged.
As Stevens identifies in her essay, this duality became represented in literature at the time in two versions of women aptly coined as the “New Woman” and “Modern Girl”. The “New Woman” can be identified as a woman who embraces her modernity and is liberated by it becoming a symbol of strength and model for the state. Meanwhile, the “Modern Girl” poses a more complicated question of modernity as while she embraces modernity, she also is in turn, alienated by the urbanization and westernization of China and starts to question where lines should be drawn between tradition and modernity.[18] Stevens points out an example of the “Modern Woman” in Ding Ling’s novel “Shanghai Spring 1930”. The book follows a dissatisfied partner of a bourgeois writer named Meilin who realizes that she does not enjoy her bourgeois life and seeks to rectify this by joining the communist party as she commits herself to a cause bigger than herself.[19] However, it is interesting to point out as well that this could represent the duality of the “Modern Woman” and the “New Girl” as Meilin’s character could also be argued to have rejected a form of bourgeois modernity thus, shedding her “New Girl” persona and growing into a “Modern Woman” as she commits to modernity where she places the needs of the many before herself and commits to herself to a political cause being reborn as the “Modern Woman”.
Meanwhile, as Edwards writes (about the real political situation at the time), the fragile alliance between the KMT and CCP collapsed, the modernity and progressiveness of women were perceived as a threat to the state-building efforts of the KMT.
Many women who became politically involved and embraced the “Modern Woman’s” version of modernity became targets of the state and at least a thousand women were accused of being communists and killed during this time.[20] One could argue that Edward’s description of the brutal repression by the state towards women during this time in many ways represented how the Chinese State was still deeply troubled by the changing ideas of how a woman should act within society. In many ways, the Republican Chinese state of the 20th century still had the same perception of women as the Late Qing reformers did and the idea of a woman entering the public sphere was still culturally taboo.
In conclusion, while great strides were made with regard to women’s rights both during the late 19th and early 20th century, the lingering influence of Confucian ideology still haunted the state’s policies during both periods. Nonetheless, women in China were able to visualize a version of modernity outside of Confucianism and Western Modernity that was unique in its own right.
[1] Eryk Hajndrych, ‘Chinese women in the late Qing period: Reading through Guido Amedeo Vitale’s Chinese Folklore: Pekinese Rhymes’, Gdańsk East Asian Studies, 19 (2021), 45.
[2] Haindrych, ‘Chinese women in the late Qing period’, 45
[3] Haindrych, ‘Chinese women in the late Qing period’, 45
[4] Shen Yifei, ‘Feminism in China An Analysis of Advocates, Debates, and Strategies’, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1 (2016), 2.
[5] Shen Yifei, ‘Feminism in China’ 2
[6] John Robert Sheperd ‘Footbinding as Fashion: Ethnicity, Labor, and Status in Traditional China’ (Seattle, 2018; acc. JSTOR), 4.
[7] Sheperd, ‘Footbinding as Fashion’, 4
[8] Patricia Angela Sieber, ‘Corporal Transactions: New Perspectives on Traditional Practices in China, India, and Africa’, Journal of Women's History, 17 (2005), 143.
[9] Dorothy Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (California, 2005; acc. JSTOR), 21.
[10] Anais Fang, ‘Female Education in the New Womanhood’, International Forum of Teaching and Studies, 18 (1975), 34.
[11] Fang, ‘Female Education’, 35[
12] Yanning Wang, ‘Review: Rediscovering an Extraordinary Woman: A Reinterpretation of the Late Qing Reforms’, China Review International, 21 (2014), 12.
[13] Nanxiu Qian, Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (California, 2015; acc. Pro quest Ebook Central), 164
[14] Qian, Politics,Poetics and Gender, 164-5
[15] Qian, Politics,Poetics and Gender, 145-47
[16] Qian, Politics,Poetics and Gender, 166
[17] Sarah E. Stevens ‘Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the Modern Girl in Republican China’ NWSA Journal, 15 (2003), 84.
[18] Stevens ‘Figuring Modernity’ 86-87
[19] Stevens ‘Figuring Modernity’ 89
[20] Louise Edwards ‘Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China’ Modern China 26 (2000), 118-119
References
Fang, Anais., ‘Female Education in the New Womanhood’, International Forum of Teaching and Studies, 18 (1975), 34,35.
Hajndrych, Eric., ‘Chinese women in the late Qing period: Reading through Guido Amedeo Vitale’s Chinese Folklore: Pekinese Rhymes’, Gdańsk East Asian Studies, 19 (2021), 45.
Ko, Dorothy., Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (California, 2005; acc. JSTOR)
Edwards, Louise., ‘Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China’ Modern China 26 (2000), 118-119.
Qian, Nanxiu. Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (California, 2015; acc. Pro quest Ebook Central).
Sheperd, John Robert., ‘Footbinding as Fashion: Ethnicity, Labor, and Status in Traditional China’ (Seattle, 2018; acc. JSTOR), 4.
Sieber, Patricia Angela., ‘Corporal Transactions: New Perspectives on Traditional Practices in China, India, and Africa’, Journal of Women's History, 17 (2005), 143.
Stevens, Sarah E., ‘Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the Modern Girl in Republican China’ NWSA Journal, 15 (2003), 84,86,87,89.
Wang, Yanning., ‘Review: Rediscovering an Extraordinary Woman: A Reinterpretation of the Late Qing Reforms’, China Review International, 21 (2014), 12.
Yifei, Shen., ‘Feminism in China An Analysis of Advocates, Debates, and Strategies’, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1 (2016), 2.