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.

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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