Teachers of the Inner Chambers

This pathbreaking work argues that literate gentry women in seventeenth-century Jiangnan, far from being oppressed or silenced, created a rich culture and meaningful existence within the constraints of the Confucian system. Momentous socioeconomic and intellectual changes in seventeenth-century Jiangnan provided the stimulus for the flowering of women's culture. The most salient of these changes included a flourishing of commercial publishing, the rise of a reading public, a new emphasis on emotions, the promotion of women's education, and, more generally, the emergence of new definitions of womanhood. The author reconstructs the social, emotional, and intellectual worlds of seventeenth-century women, and in doing so provides a new way to conceptualize China's past, one offering a more realistic and complete understanding of the values of Chinese culture and the functioning of Chinese society.

ISBN 0804723591   Pages 384 ISBN13 9780804723596 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Stanford University Press   Weight (grammes) 567 Imprint Stanford University Press   Published in Palo Alto Format Paperback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 30 Nov 1994   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress HQ1767.K6   Spine width (mm) 26 DEWEY 305.420951   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC20

Introduction: gender and the politics of Chinese history; Part I. Social and Private Histories: 1. In the floating world: women and commercial publishing; 2. The enchantment of love in The Poetry Pavilion; Part II. Womanhood: 3. Margins of domesticity: enlarging the women's sphere; 4. Talent, virtue, and beauty: rewriting womanhood; Part III. Women's culture: 5. Domestic communities: male and female domains; 6. Social and public communities: genealogies across time and space; 7. Transitory communities: courtesan, wife, and professional artist; Epilogue; Reference matter; Notes; Index.

"Ko challenges simplistic depictions of women as victims and argues that within their social and cultural constraints, a women's literary culture developed that transcended public and private spheres and redefined womanhood. . . . This multifaceted book is a breakthrough in the study of women as part of Chinese cultural and social history."--"Choice"

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