Abstract
Reviews 137 Emily Honig, editor. Chinese Women's History. Special Issue ofJournal of Women's History (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press), vol. 8, no. 4 (Winter 1997). 202 pp. Paperback $20.00, issn 1042-7961. This special issue oíJournal ofWomen's History covers a range oftopics, familiar and otherwise, on women in China from the sixteenth century to the present day. Its editor, Emily Honig, describes the studies that are included here as "part ofthe larger project ofliberating Chinese women's history from the terms of the revolution [the Communist Revolution of 1949] that claimed to provide their emancipation " (p. 7). All share a focus on social status, local context, and "refusing to write what might be called a history of Chinese women" (p. 7). Within this broad consensus, the essays cover a limited time period and a broad range of topics: footbinding, poetry, charitable institutions, song, and the subject ofwomen's studies itself. Most ofthe essays focus on Qing dynasty and twentieth-century China. The one exception is a study of the late sixteenth century poets Tu Yaose and Shen Tiansun. Ann Waltner and Pi-ching Hsu examine the distinct social and intellectual world of these women poets and show tiiat they used poetry to situate themselves in a very different world from the closeted "inner chambers" of "Confucian " gender segregation. Their poems to each other and to friends speak in diverse voices: loyal wives, worshippers ofGuanyin, courtesan poets, and women out of the past: the beauty Xi Shi or Wang Zhaojun. These poems allowed Tu and Shen to venture in their imagination beyond the confines oftheir lives and locate themselves within a "female tradition, ofwomen who were skilled and accomplished as well as beautiful and tragic" (p. 49). Two essays address changing representations ofwomen in Qing and twentieth -century China. In "The Body as Attire," Dorothy Ko attempts to understand die multiple meanings offootbinding. This misleadingly uniform term described practices that ranged in severity from pressing the toes toward the heel into an arch with cloth binders (therebybreaking the foot) to "wearing tight socks for a slender look" (p. 8). Ko stresses the need to avoid modern nationalist biases in nineteentii-century archival sources. She rejects the equation offootbinding with the oppression ofwomen and anti-footbinding movements with struggles for women's liberation. Drawing on Ming and Qing memorials and edicts in favor of the promotion or prohibition of footbinding, she argues that, as an honored© 1999 by University practice, footbinding symbolized Chinese wen (civility) and cultural ofHawai'i Pressadvancement, and was understood both as an adornment ofthe body and as a marker of the distinction between Han (Chinese) and Manchu. So far so good. Less persuasive is the author's suggestion that "the unanimity of condemnation in 138 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 modern times masks the multiplicity ofpractice and the instability ofmeaning that is the only salient truth aboutfootbinding" (p. 8, italics added). In "Female Heroes and Moonish Lovers," Su Zheng examines transformations of gender identity in the development oftwentieth-century Chinese songs: school songs, art songs, mass songs, popular songs, and the songs in film scores. (Her focus is entirely on the lyrics ofthe musical texts; there is littie or no discussion of the music.) She shows how new images ofwomen in song were related to social change in different ways. Mass songs tended to deny gender difference in favor of class uniformity. Other song types reflected imported Western ideas and practices, reintegrated elements from the Chinese historical and literary tradition, or addressed the aspirations, needs, and desires of the Chinese men who were, in fact, the authors ofmost of the lyrics. Two other essays address various aspects ofthe changing social and political status ofwomen. Ruth Rogaski examines die "Hall for Spreading Benevolence" in Tianjin, which became the largest benevolent institution for women and girls in North China. Rogaski demonstrates tensions between "Confucian rhetoric" and urban reality, and delineates the grim and complex circumstances that created a typically southern charitable institution in a northern Chinese city. She details the circumstances ofthe girls and widows (and their children) who sought shelter within it, and argues that "the hall occupied a cusp between...
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