1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910807870003321

Autore

Theiss Janet M. <1964->

Titolo

Disgraceful matters : the politics of chastity in eighteenth-century China / / Janet M. Theiss

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004

ISBN

0-520-93066-5

1-59734-581-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (299 p.)

Disciplina

176/.0951

Soggetti

Chastity

Women - China - Social conditions

China Social conditions 1644-1912

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-274) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- PART ONE: The Chastening State: The Qing Chastity Cult in Ritual, Law, and Statecraft -- Prologue: A Chaste Barbarian Martyrs Herself on the Imperial Frontier -- 1. Defining Gender Orthodoxy for a Multiethnic Empire -- 2. Statecraft and Gender Order in the Qianlong Reign -- PART TWO: Female Virtue and the Politics of Patriarchy -- Prologue: A Righteous Husband Plays the Politics of the Wifely Way -- 3. Enforcing Gender Order: Between the Ancestral Hall and the Yamen -- 4. Divided Loyalties: Natal Families and the Exercise of Patrilineal Authority -- 5. Adultery, Incest and the Multiple Meanings of Patriarchy -- PART THREE: Mapping Chastity across Boundaries of Body, Mind, and Space -- Prologue: A Compromised Widow Sacrifices Her Body to Defend Inner Virtue -- 6. The Wages of Wanton Mixing: Violation and Gender Disorder -- 7. "Accommodating Sages": Gender Separation in Social Practice -- PART FOUR: "Being a Person": Female Humiliation and Social Power -- Prologue: Male Impropriety and Female Outrage Lead to a Tragic End -- 8. The Problem of Female Moral Agency -- 9. The Logic of Female Suicide -- Epilogue

Sommario/riassunto

Looking beyond the familiar trappings of the cult of female chastity-such as hagiographies of widows and chastity shrines--in late imperial China, this book explores the cult's political significance and practical



ramifications in everyday life during the eighteenth century. In the first full-length study of the subject, Janet Theiss examines a vast number of laws, legal cases, regulations, and policies to illustrate the social and political processes through which female virtue was defined, enforced, and contested. Along the way, she provides rich details of social life and cultural practices among ordinary Chinese people through narratives of criminal cases of sexual assault, harassment, adultery, and domestic violence.