Dagongbao And Women's Liberation In The Last Years Of The Qing Dynasty

From the end of the Qing Dynasty, women's liberation movement, which aimed at changing the situation that women were oppressed and discriminated against, was triggered off by the influence of western democratic ideology. Under the reign of feudal autocracy, the ethics, mail domination and female subordination, had permeated all aspects of the society and formed an important part of Chinese cultural psychology, so there is tough work ahead and a long way to go for us to change women's living condition, requiring attention and support from the people of all social strata. In order to understand the outline of women's liberation of that time, based on the study of Dagongbao, the thesis analyses the different opinions and effects coming from Dagongbao . The paper falls into four parts: The first part expounds the efforts that Dagongbao makes on counter-foot-binding. On the one hand, it discloses harm that foot-binding brings to individual and nation in order to change people's traditional ideas. On the other hand, it instructs the local counter-foot-binding movement, suggesting that the officials should take food-binding as their duty and demanding the officials and gentry to work together. Meanwhile it uses easy language, takes the readers' opinions seriously and maintains the counter-foot-binding standpoint. The second part introduces views and practice of Dagongbao on women's education. First, it disseminates importance of women's education theoretically; Second, it instructs setting up of girl's school including the teaching content, the running of school and participators; At last, its master helps the three Lü sisters and opens girl's school .All of this promotes the development of girl's school directly in Zhili Province, having an influence on the peripheral locality. The third part is about Dagongbao's position on women's association. It points out the necessity of being social, at the same time it guides women's association to carry out the activity. The forth part evaluates influence and limitations of Dagongbao on women's liberation. It illustrates the reasons why women were oppressed to waken the feminine ego-subject sense. With the aid of mass media, it erects the new female image who is self-reliance, daring to struggle with conservative strength. But in the course of propaganda, it overemphasizes the educational concept of training a good wife and loving mother and has an intense traditional female virtue and narrow understanding of women's rights, showing its limitations.