Chaste Women Research Articles

The precious raft of history: the past, the West, and the woman question in China

Contents List of Illustrations xxx Acknowledgments xxx Introduction: Women and Temporality 1 Part One The Regime of Feminine Virtue 000 1. Chaste Women: Sacred, Praiseworthy, or Misguided 000 2. Public Women: Licentious or Evolved 000 Part Two History, Nation, and Female Talent 000 3. Women of Talent: Valorized and Repudiated 000 4. Wise Mothers and Mothers of Citizens 000 Part Three New Global Hierarchies of Female Heroism 000 5. The Chinese Woman Warrior and the Western Heroine 000 6. The New-Style Heroine and the Paradoxes of Feminine Time 000 Conclusion: From the Turn of the Twentieth Century to the Turn of the Twenty-First 000 Glossary and Character List 000 Abbreviations 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000

The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci (review)

Reviewed by: The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci Shuishan Yu (bio) Tracy Miller . The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. xx + 265 pp., 66 color and 14 b/w illus. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 978-0-674-02513-4. Ritual architecture, or lizhi jianzhu 禮制建築, is a unique category in traditional Chinese architecture. Compared to other traditional Chinese architectural types-for instance, Buddhist architecture 佛教建築, palace architecture 宮殿建築, or mausoleum architecture 陵墓建築-ritual architecture is not as clearly defined and contains a much broader range of buildings with a variety of functions.1 Ritual architecture originally refered to structures built to fulfill the Confucian ideals. However, since Confucianism as a religious practice is not as specifically defined as Buddhism or Daoism, structures for worship, ritual sacrifice, or memorial function that cannot be fitted into Buddhism or Daoism are all grouped under the category of ritual architecture, including such diverse building types as the memorial archways for chaste women, shrines dedicated to gods of the five sacred peaks, Confucian temples, and the Altars of Heaven. The complicated nature of ritual architecture originates from the diversity of local beliefs in traditional Chinese society, which cannot be simplified as merely "Confucian." Tracy Miller's book The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci takes up the challenge and makes a fine contribution to our understanding of the complexity of both ritual practices in ancient China and the physical environment that was created by and for such diverse and often contradictory practices. The main argument of the book is that the original source of divinity at the site of modern day Jinci is neither the founder of the Jin state, Shu Yu of the Zhou Dynasty, nor his mother, Yi Jiang, as is widely assumed,2 but the life-giving water as represented by the local water goddess-the Spirit of the Jin Springs (pp. 10, 178). Such a conclusion is supported by recent archaeological discoveries (p. 177), a closer examination of historical documents (p. 178), and the extant buildings, sculptures, and paintings in and the general layout of the Jinci complex (pp. 12-13, 179-184). What led to the confusion and opposition about the identity of the main deity worshiped at Jinci are the competing local patronages, whose wills were materialized in various documents and folklores as well as art and architectural forms (pp. 13-14, 181-183). Such a thesis and reasoning procedure are clearly delineated in the introduction and conclusion of the book. Like other ritual architecture throughout China, Jinci is a collection of shrines and temples dedicated to a variety of deities. The most important ones and at the same time the most relevant to the thesis of the book are the Sage Mother Hall 聖母殿 and the Shu Yu of Tang Shrine Complex 唐叔虞祠, on which most of the chapters of this book focus. Chapter 2 discusses the ambiguous meaning of [End Page 407] the name "Jinci 晉祠" and its potential for different interpretations on the identity of main deities. The author argues that the term "Jinci" allows the site to be interpreted as either dedicated to the rulers of Jin State or the Spirit of the Jin Springs. It also provides a general introduction of the present physical layout of the complex in the beginning section. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the changing significance of Shu Yu across time and the impact that had on the shrine complex built for him. Chapter 3 also discusses the significance of the Taiyuan city, where Jinci is located, as a seat of local power, and suggests that this might be the reason why it was misunderstood as the place where the Jin State was originally founded. In chapter 4, based on historical documents from official dynastic histories to stele inscriptions, the author tries to delineate a picture of both an idealized Shu Yu shrine and the evolvement of the cult of Shu Yu as a state founder. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the worship of the Spirit of the Jin Springs. Chapter 5 focuses on the textual...

Vida de Segundo: Versión castellana de la ‘Vita Secundi’ de Vicente de Beauvais ed. by Hugo O. Bizzarri (review)

MLRy 97.4, 2002 1003 Vida de Segundo: Version castellana de la (Vita Secundi' de Vicente de Beauvais. Ed. by Hugo O. Bizzarri. (Exeter Hispanic Texts, 55) Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2000. lxxvi + 46pp. ?13.99. Secundus learns as a schoolboy that there is no such thing as a chaste woman. Years later, he visits his mother anonymously and pays a servant to persuade her to lie with him. Although he remains chaste, his mother kills herself in shame. Seeing that his words were responsible for her death, he resolves never to speak again. He pursues a career ofteaching at Athens, writing but never speaking. The questions seek definitions, and the responses are often poetic: 'Que es el omne? Voluntad encarnada, fantasma del tienpo, asechador de la vida, collacion de la muerte' (p. 14). The tale is of Greek origin. As Bizzarri explains (pp. xix-xxvii), following Lloyd W. Daly and Walter Suchier, The Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti Philosophi' and the Question-and-Answer Dialogue (Illinois: University Press of Illinois, 1939), theoldest Latin version is that of Willelmus Medicus (fl. 1167-86). From Willelmus descend Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264), who expurgates his text, and Walter Burley (12751345 )>who takes William over wholesale. Of these, Vincent and Burley were translated into Spanish, and are the subject of the present edition. The Old Spanish Vincent firstappears as Chapter 196 of the Primera cronica general of AlfonsoX (c.1270); then as an independent text in a collection of wisdom texts (Escorial h.in. 1 and Salamanca, University, 1763); and in the fifteenthcentury as a chapter oi Bocados de oro (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional 9204; Escorial e.m.io; Majorca (?): private library of Bartolome March; Gerona: Biblioteca Lambert Mata). The link with Bocados continues into print, with three editions of 1495, 1510, and 1527. This association is understandable, as both Bocados and Segundo deal with the life and sayings of the sages. The Spanish Burley exists in three manuscripts: Escorial h.111.1, Madrid: Real Biblioteca 11-561, and Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, San Roman 39. The Burleian Secundus material does not circulate separately. To Bizzarri's bibliography we must add: Francisco Crosas Lopez, 'Notas para la edicion de la version castellana de Walter Burley, De vita et moribusphilosophorum', in Actes del VII Congres de la Associacio Hispdnica de LiteraturaMedieval, ed. by S. Fortuno Llorens and T. Martinez Romero (Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universtitat Jaume I, 1999), 1, 101-12; and 'Traduccion castellana medieval del De vita et moribusphilosophorum de Walter Burley', RILCE, 16 (2000), 38-45. Medieval Spanish literature has three texts of a similar nature: Donzella Teodor, the tale of Tawaddud fromthe Thousandand One Nights, studied recently by Margaret Parker in The Story of a Story across Cultures: The Case of the Doncella Teodor (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 1996); the Spanish version of the Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti, the Dialogo de Epicteto y el emperador Adriano, edited by Bizzarri (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 1995); and the subject of the present edition, the Vida de Segundo. Both texts edited here have been edited before by Hermann Knust, Vincent in Mittheilungen aus dem Eskurial (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1879) and Burley in Gualteri Burlaei Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1886). Ramon Menendez Pidal edited the Alfonsine Vincent in his Primera cronica general de Espana (Madrid: Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, 1906). Although these editions are classics, the appearance of new witnesses and the work of Daly and Suchier, and of Ben Edwin Perry, Secundus the Silent Philosopher (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), have made a new edition necessary. The present work opens with a solid 76-page introduction which surveys the textual tradition and establishes a stemma. There follow the editions. An important aspect of the textual history ofthe Spanish Vincent version, which Bizzarri appears not to have examined at firsthand, is precisely the earliest stage of its transmission in Spanish. As Bizzarri explains, this version firstappears in the Primera cronica general. However, he chooses 1004 Reviews as his base the independent text of h.m.i, noting readings from the Alfonsine text as edited by Menendez Pidal. Variants are exhaustively recorded. Endnotes cite the Latin original of Vincent...

Managing and Marketing Virtue in Sarah Fielding's History of the Countess of Dellwyn

Managing and Marketing Virtue in Sarah Fielding's History ofthe Countess ofDellwyn Sara Gadeken In her penultimate novel, The History of the Countess of Delluryn (1759), Sarah Fielding explores the power that accrues to women in the newly developing commercial culture. In contrast to her first novel, David Simple (1744) , and its sequel, Volume theLast (1753) , Delluryn emphasizes women's responses to victimization rather than the suffering occasioned by it, and Fielding stresses their limited but real power as managers and marketers of consumer goods. In Delluryn, virtue is not figured sexually but economically, as the familiar dichotomy ofwoman as virgin or whore is replaced by another dichotomy ofwoman as lavish consumer or prudent domestic manager. The two figures, Fielding demonstrates, are dependent on each other; the luxury-loving aristocrat is necessary to establish the industrious and frugal domestic paragon, just as the sexually transgressive female is necessary to establish that of the chaste woman. By casting female virtue in an economic mode, Fielding is able to manipulate the contradictions of eighteenth-century attitudes towards consumer consumption, which condemn increased consumption of goods because it contributes to morally dangerous luxury, and, at the same time, admire the industriousness of those who produce such goods and the prudence of those who manage them well. Linda Bree notes these contradictions in Delluryn, but dismisses their importance: "it is an ironic touch that honest livings can be made by EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 15, Number 1, October 2002 20EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION providing the commodities that the rich ... so recklessly consume."1 However, Gillian Skinner criticizes Delluryn for ignoring the inherent contradictions ofthese ideas, objecting that Fielding disapproves "strongly of luxury in the civic humanist manner in one breath, while lauding it in another."2 In this essay I hope to show that, in Dellwyn, Sarah Fielding, far from ignoring these contradictions, deliberately manipulates diem in order to create a new and uneasy space of female empowerment. She finds in these conflicting ideas an opportunity for impoverished gentlewomen to achieve economic security. One of the ideas to which she appeals is that of civic humanism, an important segment of eighteenth-century political thought that derives from the Renaissance political ideology that posits man as a political animal who most fully realizes himselfby participating in government. In contrast to the changing class relations and complex commodity exchanges that mark the commercial society, civic humanism posits a hierarchical society offixed and unchanging status, with a clear economic function separate from the market, embedding all social relations within a self-regulating system. Frugality, as opposed to luxury, is essential to this paradigm, for it guarantees the economic and moral health of the nation. According to such moralists as George Berkeley, "Frugality of Manners is the Nourishment and Strength of Bodies politic. It is that by which they grow and subsist, until they are corrupted by Luxury."3 Benevolence towards the needy is also an essential part ofcivic humanism, in which ownership of property carries social obligations and in which owners and workers are mutually dependent. Frugality makes benevolence possible, as Wetenhall Wilkes explains: "Frugality is the support of generosity. Constant inquietudes ... prevent a profuse person to do many noble and generous things."4 Frugality enables benevolence, luxury prevents it. 1 Linda Bree, Sarah Fielding (London: Twayne, 1996), p. 129. 2 Gillian Skinner, Sensibility and Economics in the Novel, 1 740-1800: The Price ofa Tear (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 32. 3 George Berkeley, An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721), cited in Stephen Copely, Literatureand theSocial Orderin Eighteenth-CenturyEngland (London: Croom Helm, 1984), pp. 90-91. 4 Wetenhall Wilkes, A Utter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young ¡Mdy (London: Hawes, 1766), p. 201. SARAH FIELDING'S HISTORY OF THECOUNTESS OF DELLWYN 21 In contrast to civic humanism's association of virtue with moral autonomy, constancy, and a fixed and constant value, the commercial notion ofvirtue is fluid, its value depending on serial exchanges in the marketplace. Liz Bellamy calls it "a tradition of economic thought which was based on the assessment of the economic consequence of individual actions [which assume that] the maximisation of material wealth was the primary function...

One Woman or Two? 1 Corinthians 7:34

Abstract 1 Cor 7:34 presents a challenge to text critic and interpreter. Its textual parentage is not self-evident. In this article I argue that the reading chosen is the preferred reading and that the perceived problem originates in the grammatical choices that interpreters have made. Most translators and exegetes interpret the phrase καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἡ ἄ γαμος καὶ ἡ παρθένος as two nouns (γυνή and παρθένος, "the unmarried woman and the virgin"), thereby creating a conflict with 7:11, where ἅγαμος refers to a divorced woman. The preferred alternative is to read παρθένος adjectivally, as is common in Greek literature. This produces the translation, "and the unmarried chaste woman," resolving the interpreter's dilemma and validating the UBS's textual choice.

Lustful Women, Elusive Lovers

One of the more popular self-projections of women in the oral tradition of rural north India is the image of a lustful woman, which directly contradicts the dominant and ideal image of the chaste woman and offers an alternative moral perspective on kinship, gender, sexuality and norms of behaviour. This article explores the construction of the lustful woman based exclu sively upon women's songs produced collectively by women and sung by women for an audi ence consisting purely of women. It seeks to understand how and why this image, common to both men and women's songs, has different connotations and messages. The construction of meaning around this image is explored in the social context of power relations and status con siderations existing within the family, caste and class. As such, the article seeks to understand how far the subversiveness of these songs finds its echo in the actual transgressive behaviour of women in caste/class and gender relationships, and with what effect. It highlights the construc tion of masculinity, pleasure and deprivation, which cuts across several societal hierarchies. The inevitable conflict within a worldview where different and contradictory beliefs and desires coexist brings to the fore the interface between ideology and practice.

"The chaste woman takes her chastity wherever she goes"

The collapse of AdenThis paper traces public discourses on women in a socially turbulent period of time in Aden. Aden was the capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) until May 1990, when the PDRY and the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) unified to form the new Republic of Yemen with capital in San’a. This unification, long aspired to by all Yemenis, turned to be a tragedy for Aden as the city became marginalised and was left to decline. Adeni people soon lost their enthusiasm abo...

The right to protection from sexual assault: the Indian anti-rape campaign.

This article reveals a viewpoint that emphasizes some dilemmas among Indian feminist practice, women's sexuality in legal terms, and case law in India. The Indian Women's Movement (IWM) was successful in 1983 in adding a legal amendment on rape and child abuse. The case that mobilized women to change the law occurred in 1980 when a court acquitted two policemen who were charged with raping and molesting a 16-year-old tribal girl. The Bombay High Court overturned the judgement and convicted both policemen. The case was appealed, and the policemen successfully argued that rape did not occur because the girl did not protest and was sexually experienced anyway. In 1980 the Forum Against Rape was formed to mobilize public support and to lobby the State for reform of the law on rape. The campaign focused on custodial rape and political repression, rape as civil rights issue, and rape as a women's issue. There was a distancing between the victim, who occupied a lower caste and class position, and her defenders in the women's groups. The campaign appealed to both the appropriate judgement of the State and the denial that the State was an effective vehicle for change. The campaign did not directly address incest and marital rape or domestic violence within families. The legislature debated the issue of legal change during 1982. The debate revealed deep divisions about sexuality and women's status. It was argued that chaste women were not rape victims, and unchaste women were of a socially inferior caste and class. It was argued that there should be a ban on child marriage rather than spousal rape laws. Child rape is a legal issue only when the perpetrator is outside the family. Rape was discussed as an act of lust and not violence. In 1992, a woman promoting an end to child marriage was raped and the men were acquitted. It was argued that the law was out-of-date and in need of revision.

Judicial vision: Rape, prostitution and the ‘chaste woman’

Synopsis In 1991 Judge Jones of the Victorian County Court said that the law is the same for women working as prostitutes as it is for everyone else. He then sentenced a man convicted of rape of a sex worker to a lower penalty because the women was working as a prostitute and therefore was ‘less psychologically harmed by the rape’ than a ‘chaste women’ would have been. The public protest against the decision was enormous. The case went on appeal to the Supreme Court of Victoria, but the principle was left intact. In 1981 the Supreme Court of Victoria had already established this notion firmly in the law. They went further — as did the County Court judge. They held that a ‘sexually experienced’ woman is less harmed by rape than a ‘chaste’ woman. What is a ‘chaste’ woman? According to the Supreme Court of Victoria, it is a ‘married woman, living in a flat,’ who in the absence of her husband is raped by a man coming in the window. How ‘sexually experienced’ does a woman have to be not to be so damaged by rape? Apparently judges of the Victorian Supreme and County Courts are unable to tell the difference between sex-with-consent and sex-without-consent. How else could they establish a ‘principle’ and a sexually experienced women will be less psychologically harmed by rape than a woman without such experience? The public outcry shows that the community is more is tune with the reality of rape and woman's experience of it than was so in the past. Now — the question is, when will the judges catch up?

Lucrece’s Re-Creation

L UCRECE PRESENTS SOME SPECIAL PROBLEMS FOR MODERN READERS because it is about a chaste woman who, having been forcibly raped by the king's son, a friend and comrade of her husband, concludes that she is impure and that she must therefore kill herself. A considerable amount of critical energy has been expended in trying to determine whether Lucrece was defiled and whether she should have reacted differently. It is difficult for many readers to forgive Shakespeare and Lucrece for what they take to be the creation of a false dilemma from which the only release is self-destruction. It seems to me that Lucrece's corruption by Tarquin's act is a simple fact, accepted by Lucrece and her society and by Shakespeare and his society. If we accept that Lucrece has lost her purity, it follows that she is faced with a real moral dilemma. I believe that Lucrece resolves this dilemma successfully, in a way that simultaneously satisfies her own demands and those of her society. But however we finally judge Lucrece's resolution of her dilemma, we must be certain that we understand it as she understood it and as it is presented in the poem, and this is what many readers have failed to do.