Rebellion and revenge: the meaning of suicide of women in rural China

Abstract

The current literature on suicide in China shows that the female suicide rate is extraordinarily higher than the rate for males. Many studies have been conducted on the prevalence and perpetrating factors for suicidal incidents. Few have attempted to understand women’s suicide acts. In this article, the ethnographic data are used to explore the special meaning of the suicide act in a Chinese family and its impact on the other family members. Research has shown that suicide may have a different meaning in the Chinese context, especially for women with an inferior status within the family. Suicide is taken as an act of revenge in a moral and spiritual sense. The act of suicide is very powerful; it grants the woman so much power that she may achieve what she could not during her lifetime. The suicide event remains in the collective memory of the relatives and other people who knew the person. Its powerful meaning is related to the memory of the transgressive event of taking one’s own life as well as to the collective and personal guilt connected with the event.