Abstract
Civil-service examination candidates in Ming and Qing China often encountered "small-topic" essay questions, which required them to restrict their analysis to a small fragment of a canonical text rather than a longer, coherent passage. Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) "The Woman Would Have Excess Cloth" is one such essay. I argue that this essay goes well beyond the original passage of the Mengzi from which the topic was drawn: it proposes that the ability to exchange one's excess production on the market is appropriate motivation for an individual to continue to produce. Beginning from the specific case of the woman whose weaving exceeds the needs of her own household, Tang alludes as well to the written work engaged in by literati, framing the sale of cloth and the exchange of letters and prefaces as ethical means of sustaining the motivation on which social discipline is grounded.
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