In the Early 1920s, the Woman Question - Literature review Example

Full s In the Early 1920s, the Woman Question Social and political power was achieved through the increase in the Confucian classic education in Han China. However, the Confucian principle did not allow women to have an equal level playing ground with the men, because women were generally seen as incapable or unworthy in terms of literary education as compared to the men. Moreover, little discussions about women are made in the Confucian classics, which reveal how women had little impact when it came to Confucian values. Most Confucians agreed the subservience of women to men as proper and equal. According to their perception, failure to restore good relationship between husband and wife regardless of the gender inequality would result to social disharmony and fallout in the rules of respectability (Chao, 1932). This was the only element of how women were viewed in the Chinese tradition. The Chinese society and the Confucian doctrines gave women a great deal of honor not only as mothers or mothers-in-law, but also gave them a very vital position and power in the society. Many extraordinary women gained literacy education and achieved high position in places of great influence and authority, regardless of social difficulties. A good example of a female Confucian was Ban Zhao (ca 45-116 CE), who was the younger sister of Ban Gu (32-92 CE). When Gu died, Zhao worked as an imperial historian under the emperor called Han Hedi (88-105 CE) and she completed the Han dynasty of her brother Han Annal. This is widely regarded as the second from Sima Qian’s historical work. Ban Zhao was also a legal advisor to Empress Deng and she dealt with matters pertaining to the state. Empress Deng later left power as regent to her infant son (106 CE). Ban Baiao (3-54 CE), a reputed writer and administrator gave birth to a daughter called Madame Ban. Who acquired her basic education from her literate mother while still young in her father’s house? Instead, her early life seemed to be quite predictable. She married and bore children at a tender age of 14, which made her to be ranked lowest in her husband’s family. Unfortunately, Ban Zhao lost her husband and she decided not to be married again; but instead decided to earn reputation, compositional grace and literacy pursuits, which finally made her imperial. She realized that Confucian text had little in matters of specifics and practical guidelines in daily lives of women. Ban Zhao seeks to feel this gap by logical set of rules for women, mainly young women in the society. According to Ghen Xiefen (1904), this situation triggered the women to have a turning point and they had a perception that their race was about to perish, yet their duty was to restore more than one hundred million li of Han territory and to save four hundred million who were their fellow compatriots. Chinese women saw that it was high time that they advocate for changes in the society by purifying their minds and setting their thoughts on their goals. The Russian treaty stopped amid rising protest meetings arranged through telegram posting from one protest to another seeking revolution by women. The women protest that men call themselves “honorable,” yet all benefits are accorded to them exclusively. The women question has greatly attracted Chinese reformers and intellectuals, instead of disagreements as a way of defining itself. These scholars have produced well descriptive details and interpretations. In the wider China, the work has been recuperative than contentious; the scholars arguments has been mostly directed to the audiences. The scholarship claims that “women were there too” and focuses on gender dynamics and gendered language that can reconnect the basic assumptions of important events in the twentieth century. Revolution and reform are both preservative and corrosive of arrangements in the family; they can reconstitute gender relations in a manner that is distressingly predictable or sporadically surprising (Hershatter, 2004). Wendy Larson (1998) provides a fascinating example that points out an alternative perception in modern women’s fiction using May Fourth woman writer Lu Yin, where she suggests that by imagining an all female surrounding in which women were defined separately from the men, Lu Yin was able to represent female intellectually or literary pursuits in a more positive way. Larson further states that by 1920s a critical discussion of funii wenxue came up, which one level appeared to transcend the earlier opposition between the level of women and literature by putting Chinese literature as fundamentally feminine in nature. However, Larson points out that this new construction had problems due to several reasons; the dubious slippage associated with attributes of traditional writing that are retroactively coded as actual women writers and feminine. Still, given the provocative thesis, one cannot help but wonder how it might apply to host of historical women who found themselves as journalists, biographers, essayists, translators, creative writers, editors, critics etc, actively taking part in exciting public culture of 1920s and 1930s. In Dooling’s book, ‘Writing Women in Modern China’, the author says ‘Chinese women were writing themselves into modernity,’ this means that the Chinese women were determined to bring revolution by ending the slavery by the men after several decades and they initiated this through writing telegrams from one protestor to another and the number of meetings by protestors increased day by day. The Chinese women were now awake and they wanted freedom and creation of a level playing ground equally to the men and at this point, nothing could stop them from becoming the modern woman that they had longed for. Although, as the women protested female illiteracy and domestic isolation, critics, reformers and to some level women writers found it extremely difficult to overcome the deep- rooted cultural imbalance that reputed literary and intellectual activity to be male reputed. Wendy Larson (pp 267) adds that despite the rise in the radical change to modernity by Chinese women starting with May Fourth era, modern intellectual remained adamant in conventional assumptions that historically gave access to public literary culture. Especially the literary talent and moral virtue that had long ruled the definition of proper male and female circles within Confucian culture continued in modern attempts to brainstorm about women and literature and the relationship between them. Works Cited Chao, Pan. Foremost Woman Scholar of China. New York: Century Co. 1932. Print. Dooling, Amy. Writing and Women in Modern China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 2(3). Hershatter, Gail. The Human Record: Sources of Global History. The Journal of Asian Studies,63(4). Wendy, Larson. Writing and Women in modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1998. Print. Read More