Dealing with disgrace: The negotiation of female virtue in eighteenth-century China

This dissertation examines how norms of female chastity and virtuous behavior for women worked in social practice in eighteenth-century China. The focus of analysis is central court cases from the Qianlong reign (1736-95) involving conflicts over violations of female chastity through rape, assault, or harassment, and women's transgression of orthodox norms through insubordination, remarriage, and adultery.; Chapter one re-examines the significance of the institutionalization of the cult of female chastity and the emergence of a querelles des femmes during the High Qing era, considering the political, economic and cultural circumstances which gave female virtue unprecedented relevance and popularity. Chapter two describes how state, descent group, community and family structures of authority intersected to form local moral communities for the transmission, interpretation and enforcement of ethical norms for women. It analyzes the critical role of reputation in the dynamics of communal conflict over moral issues. Chapter three explores the moral significance of the distinction between the inner and the outer in its multiple forms: as the differentiation between family and public space and activities proper to women and men; as the bodily boundary of chastity which is violated in sexual assault or illicit sex; and as categories of etiquette which define propriety in words and gestures exchanged between women and men. Chapter four analyzes cultural constructions of immoral and chaste women and their social significance for reputation. It demonstrates the use of moral idioms as weapons of character defamation or self-justification in conflicts in the courtroom and in social practice.; Orthodox norms of chastity were indeed accepted as integral to reputation, personal integrity and social order in the family and local communities by women and men across the diverse regions of China. However, in the adjudication of gender-based conflicts and crimes, when judicial officials upholding state orthodoxy interpreted ethical norms and the implications of their abrogation, the fluidity and even relativity of norms in practice becomes clear. The hegemonic effectiveness and resilience of these norms was due largely to their malleability which allowed people to negotiate, interpret and adapt them within certain parameters to suit their own circumstances and priorities.