Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China

海外中国研究丛书

by Dorothy Ko

A Stanford University Press classic.

Genres: History, China, Cultural, Academic, Nonfiction

415 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Dorothy Ko (Chinese 高彦頤) is a Professor of History and Women's Studies at the Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a historian of early modern China, known for her multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional research. As a historian of early modern China, she has endeavored to engage with the field of modern China studies; as a China scholar, she has always positioned herself within the study of women and gender and applied feminist approaches in her work; as a historian, she has ventured across disciplinary boundaries, into fields that include literature, visual and material culture, science and technology, as well as studies of fashion, the body and sexuality.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the period of the very late Ming Dynasty to the early part of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, including the bloody transition between the two. But it speaks to a very different kind of change. During that time, publishing and literary culture flourished. Dorothy Ko's book is about how that period affected traditional women's roles as attested by women writers in the Jiangnan area, where Shanghai would eventually develop into a metropolis. Truisms about Chinese culture are challenged, if not shattered, throughout. Instead of the classic Chinese male poets like Li Po and Du Fu writing about missing each other, the cult of qing (no relation to the dynasty), or romance between the sexes takes center stage, until it slips aside for lush poems composed between female friends. It was an era in which husbands published their wives' annotations of "The Peony Pavilion", in which a heroine dreams of her great love. Dorothy Ko leavens the theoretical framework of the book with istories of women whose poetry was in demand. The two most fascinating are Huang Yuanjie, who travelled around the country supporting her family and apparently lazy husband, selling her paintings and poems, and serving as companion to other women or tutor to the wealthy, and Liu Rushi, sold as a concubine and further sold to a brothel, working her way into the administration of the enterprise. She became a much sought after courtesan and married a scholar. Her paintings were admired for their vigor and she helped edit, and perhaps wrote, the section on women poets in her husband's compilation. At one point, Huang worked in Liu's household--an account says "we looked in the mirror together, we waited for the moon together, we played the zither together."

[Naked Fish · Rating 4 out of 5]

导论和开头几章节非常精彩，融合了多方理论和研究成果。叙事和分析都不弱。偶有逻辑瑕疵，但中心论点没有受到影响。后几章有重复拖沓的感觉。考虑到当时的情况，是一本做出突破性成果的好书。