Rhetoric In China

Rhetoric has been used in China, to help establish, and to keep Chinese women in their proper societal roles. The continual struggle for power between consort and officialdom motivated the enemies of imperial ladies to develop rhetoric that justified excluding women from government. [1}. Female influence, which was predicated upon kinship roles. The principal roles were those of wife and mother. Therefore Attempts were made to diminish these roles by putting a woman’s inherent femininity over social roles. A woman was a female first and a mother second. This empowered rhetoricians to contend that women were “intrinsically evil and untrustworthy. [2]

Furthermore, Han officials were especially adept at rhetoric and used hyperbole to

criticize and restrict the power of consorts and their interference in state affairs. Han historians commenced blaming women for the downfall of each dynasty. [3] With the passage of time, this rhetoric of woman as evil heightened to the point where women were caricatures. Mo Xi a beauteous consort of Emperor Jie was reputed to have led the dynasty to its ruin due to her overindulge and extravagance. It was claimed that she allowed the common people starve while they hanging meat, from trees, as decoration. [4]
Women’s names were sullied by popularizing a negative image of powerful women this rhetoric proved to be effective and long lasting. Consequently, the best that their rivals could do was to popularize a negative image of powerful women. Stereotypes of evil women in government continued for very long time.

2.1 What sorts of literary works were created by Han women?

2.2 How was education used as a tool to further patrilineal ideals?

Some types of education could be used to confine women to restrictive social roles. Education was link more with social roles more than individual liberation [5] The Han dynasties tied to delineate the relationship between women and knowledge [6] Educators tried to confine women into preconceived roles. Literature was filled with stores of women fulfilling these societal roles. In passing these stories down to their children women were perpetuating these roles...

However, not all women embodied to these roles. Some women sought literacy and some high ranking women were highly educated. Empress Dau was an enthusiastic scholar. She lived in a time when Confucian ideals has not yet fully taken hold, and thus, she was able to use her authority to push Daoist ideals upon Emperors Wen and Jing [7]

Ban Zhao, another powerful woman of the Han era, was also an advocate of for the education of females. People reacted to her ideas of universal literacy with fear. She was a smart woman and portrayed education as a way of strengthening patrilineal values. Strengthening her claims, she used the statement in the Records of Rituals that children should be taught to read by age eight to justify her teachings. Since the text simply said children, and did not specify sex, she was able to claim that this applied to both boys and girls [8]. Lady Zhao later helped to edit the Records of the Han, further solidifying her place as one of the highest educated women in Ancient Imperial

China.
Poems are some of the most important records, of the educated women, of the Han dynasty. Hirsch states;
Poetic conversations presented women with a way to escape from ordinary social conventions that denied them freedom of expression. As such, poetic composition was a rare form of individualism in a society that valued the group, and liberty in a culture that taught conformity. [9]
Unfortunately most of the records that exist from the Han era are stone fragments and many other written accomplishments of women have been lost to time.
3.1Describe the various types of rituals in which women were engaged?
3.2 How do rituals help to define women’s societal roles?
Early imperial China, ritual placed the individual within larger social, religious, and cosmological conceptual systems. Through ritual performance, the individual assumed appropriate roles within the community. [10] Ritual helped to categorize people not as individuals, but as members of a greater society. They helped to define and individuals place me the world. This, in tur helped women to form an individual performing rituals helped them to solidify their place in society
Rituals were a way for a women to appropriately express her female identity. Women distinguished themselves from men and defined her kinship roles. Female status during rituals was more defined by social status then with gender. Elite women sometimes even had advantages over men. Rituals therefore embodied specific views of model female behavior. [11]
Marriage was perhaps the most important ritual a woman could undergo. It symbolized the transition of a woman from her natal home, to her married one. It represented a shifting of allegiances. Marriage was believed to fundamentally transform a women and marked the beginning of new societal roles. [12]
Participation In sacrifices were also important to female identity. Hirsch says,
Female participation in the sacrifices of early China gave women important roles within the religious and cosmological schemes used to envision and organize the world.” Religious sacrifices were performed through gendered roles that located female identity within a broader context and gave meaning to a woman’s sense of self. [13]
Although women had a role in observing all types of ritual, their participation was limited. This reflected a woman’s status in a patrilineal family. [14] One exception to this rule, is the rituals that surrounded death. Women were responsible for carrying out elaborate funeral mourning rites including displaying an appropriate amount of grief. So important was the female role in death rituals that a man who had no wife, could to properly mourn someone. This gave him the duty to be married at all times. [15] A the sacrificial system perpetuated the patrilineal views of the ideal female. Though women had a necessary place is the social and cosmic order, their roles were generally less important than men.
4.1 What were the three cosmological abstractions that influenced gender constructs in Ancient imperial China?
4. 2 how were these cosmological ideas used as Anti-female Rhetoric?
Cosmology became an effective way to express anti- female rhetoric. It reinforced the Dualistic system of gender. The three cosmological abstractions were Heaven/Earth, quin/kun and yin/yang. Initially the idea of heaven was genderless. Over time it became overtly masculine, while earth became decidedly feminine. Terms that established kinship rules were used. “Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of the myriad Things” [16]. This statement associated heaven/earth with patrilineal kinship. What these relationships show, is inequality. These pairs are unequal, and thus, it could be argued that society itself should be based around unequal relationships.
This idea is reinforced in quin/kun. These two ideas represent the relationships of men and women. Confucian texts gave this idea great weight in its arguments. Hirsch states in this manner, Qian and Kun became abstract analogues to many binary social concepts, including dichotomized gender [17] although complimentary, quin/kun interacted as inferior and superior. This idea was used to argue that women should be treated as inferiors.
The last of these 3 cosmological elements in yin/yang. Initially yin/yang were viewed as equal compliments. Over the time balance of power shifted to men. Yin/yang theory was use to criticize privileged female, often princesses. This rhetoric was later uses to expand this criticism to all women involved in government. [18] Over time, yin gradually changed from a positive element to a negative one and this change helped to shift the balance of power to men.
Conclusion
Imperial rhetoric developed during the Qin and Han dynasty, had long term effects on the view and social status of women. The ways in which women’s roles were understood, changed throughout the centuries. During the Han Dynasty, women, especially imperials ones managed to gain very high levels of power and education, and they developed ways to involve themselves in the affairs of the state. Later eras viewed the higher status of women as dangerous. They used rhetoric and rituals to change and destabilize elements of female power. Patrilineal roles were strengthened. Kinship, work, ritual, and government were organized according to explicitly female and male roles. Cosmology, with its rigid ideas about gender was another valuable tool in keeping women in their proper, unequal complimentary roles in male/ female relationships was used. As Confucianism took hold, women saw their positions decline