| The purpose of this dissertation is to redefine the parameters of Chinese social history by taking the experiences of women into account. Three aspects of the social life of women in seventeenth-century Jiangnan are analyzed: education and literacy, mobility and social networks. The writings of gentry women and commoner daughters groomed for the demimonde are primary source materials, supplemented by accounts kept by their fathers, husbands, lovers and sons.; Orthodox Confucian education in Ming-Qing China admonished women to adhere to the cult of chastity and to subject to the patriarch. This study shows, however, that such norms were internalized only to a limited extent. When mothers and, occasionally, professional teachers took charge of educating girls in the inner chambers, they preferred a curriculum that concentrated on poetry, defying the prescriptions in the orthodox precepts.; The writing and circulation of poetry allowed gentry and commoner women to construct a private female culture. We discern three types of such women's communities--the "familial", "semi-familial" and "extra-familial"--based on membership composition. These networks interacted with male networks on various levels, but maintained their separate identity based on the members' shared experiences as women.; The existence of high female literacy rates and career opportunities for educated women confirms our conventional image of seventeenth-century Jiangnan as economically prosperous and culturally advanced. The emergence of a female culture distinct from that of men's, however, challenges the received notion that late imperial Chinese culture was developing into an integrated whole. |
