Inventing Familial Agency from Powerlessness: Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women

Abstract

For centuries Chinese women have been trained to Sanchung Side or “Three Obediences and Four Virtues,” as set forth in Nüjie, (Lessons for Women), written in 106 CE by Ban Zhao, ,1 during the East Han Dynasty.2 This essay reinterprets the oldest extant and most important female conduct manual in Chinese in order to question the traditional view that Ban silences Chinese women. It argues that Western feminists' approach to the idea of agency is not appropriate to understanding Chinese women's agency. It delineates a different concept of agency, based on Lessons for Women, forged out of the powerlessness of individual women, which is familial, communal, indirect, and conferred by others. In addition to expanding rhetorical scholarship on agency, I demonstrate that Ban's embedded concepts of familial agency are well illustrated by the 20th-century Taiwanese First Lady Chiang Fang-liang, a Russian Communist who married Chiang Ching-kuo, eldest son and heir of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who followed Ban's precepts to transform her perilous situation into an honored and respected life role.