China Age Of Glory Summary

Kathryn Vandrey

10/26/17

China Age of Glory

列女傳: Biographies of Women

The 列女傳was written during the Han dynasty by Liu Xiang, who was a Han dynasty Historian and Librarian (Theobald, Persons in Chinese History); the 列女傳it is the earliest and best known Chinese book “solely devoted to the moral education of women,” (Kinney, Traditions of Exemplary women). This book was created to promote Confucian ideals of how a proper and virtuous woman should behave both in public and private. Each of the stories focuses on a woman of virtue, who through actions and words was an exemplary example of Confucian ideals. The biographies have different categories that talk of different types of women such as “Matronly Models, The Chaste and Obedient, and The Principles and Righteous,” just to name a few (Kinney, Traditions of Exemplary Women). The selection I’ve done a reading on is from the biographies of the worthy and enlightened (賢明傳) which is chapter 2 of the 列女傳.

These biographies are written in short vignettes that very quickly go over each woman, often times a male relative, and the virtuous, or in this case, worthy or enlightened thing the woman has done.

There, in almost all the stories in this chapter, is a strong focus on what the woman has done for a male ruler, husband, or relative. Following traditional Confuciean ideas “women’s roles were primarily kinship roles: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother-in-law,” (Ebrey, Women in Traditional China) you can see this reflected in the fact that each of the stories starts out by saying who the woman was related or married

to.
“Ji of Wey was the daughter of the Marquis of Wey and the wife of Duke Huan of Qi. Queen Jiang, consort of King Xuan of the Zhou dynasty, was the daughter of the Marquis of Qi.” (Lie nǚ Zhuan excerpt, p. 2).
The women are all introduced, and named in relation to their male relatives, thus placing them firmly in a kinship role, the introductions let you know exactly who they’re related to and what relationship title they thus have. During this time in China women were heavily regulated to the household sector, they had control over their households by virtue of being allowed so, even in thee matters they were still expected to defer to their husbands.