Research On Women's Image Of Women In The Late Ming Legendary German Type Operas

Female education has experienced systematized and be mature since its naissance in Han dynasty, this trend has a huge impact on feudal society especially in Ming and Qing dynasty. Under the influence of female education and neo-Confucianism, it produced lots of traditional women like Zhenniang in<Xiang Nang Ji> who had loyalty, filial piety, chastity, righteousness and other womanly virtues in early Ming dynasty. But in late Ming dynasty, neo-Confucianism was in decline and trends of thought were piling up, the connotation of womanly virtues had been extended. This paper takes women who have womanly virtues in late Ming drama as the research object, in order to explore the implication of them by reading and analyzing the text.In the first chapter:on the one hand, the definition of ’late Ming dynasty’ is a relatively vague concept, there is no conclusion of the exact time in academia; on the other hand, although female education is systematized, the connotation of womanly virtues has no final verdict. This paper defines the concept of late Ming and womanly virtues, based on this research, find out48plays and59female images in late Ming drama, then express the script name, the author, the character, the performance of womanly virtues and the source of the text by tabulation.In the second chapter:based on reading, the paper focus on exploring the female performance of chastity, virtuous, loyal and righteous, filial piety in late Ming drama. We find out that the number of chaste women accounts for52.5%of the total. It can be seen that chastity is the most important virtue in a patriarchal society.In the third chapter:this chapter follows the previous one, to address the enlightening effect of drama in late Ming and the chastity worship. From the female education, the slogan and action of female chastity, and the chaste probe by male, we can make the conclusion that chastity worship was popular in late Ming. Both in society reality and drama works, chaste female emerged in multitude, female have single-minded emotional pursuit, but more is driven by external social factors.In the fourth chapter:late Ming was in the process of transforming, both social custom and currents of thought were different from the early Ming. The decline of Neo-Confucianism and the spring up of thoughts, ideologists tried to strike a balance between emotion and moral. MengChengshun, ZhouLvjing and other litterateurs were actively looking for a love pattern which starts from emotion, ends with moral.All in all, with the impact of the social custom and currents of thought, the litterateurs praised both the preservation of chastity like GuoShi in<Xun Qin Ji> and starts from emotion, ends with moral, like WangJiaoniang in<Jiao Hong Ji>. Womanly virtues qualified with profound implication.