Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China / Edition 1

by Janet Theiss

Overview

Looking beyond the familiar trappings of the cult of female chastity—such as hagiographies of widows and chastity shrines—in late imperial China, this book explores the cult's political significance and practical ramifications in everyday life during the eighteenth century. In the first full-length study of the subject, Janet Theiss examines a vast number of laws, legal cases, regulations, and policies to illustrate the social and political processes through which female virtue was defined, enforced, and contested. Along the way, she provides rich details of social life and cultural practices among ordinary Chinese people through narratives of criminal cases of sexual assault, harassment, adultery, and domestic violence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520240339
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/10/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Janet M. Theiss is Associate Professor of History at the University of Utah.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note on Textual Conventions
A Note on Dynasties and Reigns
Introduction

part one · The Chastening State: The Qing Chastity
Cult in Ritual,Law,and Statecraft

Prologue: A Chaste Barbarian Martyrs Herself on the Imperial Frontier

1. Defining Gender Orthodoxy for a Multiethnic Empire

2. Statecraft and Gender Order in the Qianlong Reign

part two · Female Virtue and the Politics of Patriarchy

Prologue: A Righteous Husband Plays the Politics of the Wifely Way

3. Enforcing Gender Order: Between the Ancestral Hall and the Yamen

4. Divided Loyalties: Natal Families and the Exercise of Patrilineal Authority

5. Adultery, Incest and the Multiple Meanings of Patriarchy

part three · Mapping Chastity across Boundaries of Body,Mind,and Space

Prologue: A Compromised Widow Sacrifices Her Body to Defend Inner Virtue

6. The Wages of Wanton Mixing: Violation and Gender Disorder

7. “Accommodating Sages”: Gender Separation in Social Practice

part four · “Being a Person”: Female Humiliation and Social Power

Prologue: Male Impropriety and Female Outrage Lead to a Tragic End

8. The Problem of Female Moral Agency

9. The Logic of Female Suicide

Epilogue

A Note on Archival Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Character List
Index