Refiguring women: Discourse on gender in China, 1880-1919

This study focuses on the changes of ideas of womanhood in China at the turn of the century. It traces the discourse on womanhood from the 1880s to the 1910s and discusses how Chinese men and women redefined womanhood through a discourse which grappled with conflicts between new and traditional notions of womanly principles.; Chapter one examines the traditional pattern of discourse on women and the three elements of womanly tao, womanly te and women's learning (nu-hsueh). Chapter two discusses how Western missionaries introduced a new concept of womanhood to China and influenced women's learning. Chapter three looks at the discourse on women by certain elite Chinese men, how they connected their political ideals with a redefinition of womanhood. Chapter four deals with new roles that women played as well as their new images, conduct and opinions. Chapter five examines these new women's discourse on women's issues and their main activities during the Revolutionary era. Chapter six looks at the first several years of the Republic when a backlash against women's rights in the press followed the failure of the women's suffrage movement. Chapter seven traces a renewed radical discourse on women's issues from 1915 to 1919, which harshly attacked all traditional practices and beliefs. Though few new issues were introduced at this stage, the core of traditional womanly principles--womanly te and women's learning--was shaken.