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The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period
The Sung Dynasty (960-1279) was a paradoxical era for Chinese women. This was a time when footbinding spread, and Confucian scholars began to insist that it was better for a widow to starve than to remarry. Yet there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. In this thoroughly original work, one of the most respected scholars of premodern China brings to life what it was like to be a woman in Sung times, from having a marriage arranged, serving parents-in-law, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to deciding what to do if widowed.
Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them.
Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth.
Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them.
Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth.
356 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1993
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About the author
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
186 books24 followersPatricia Buckley Ebrey is an American historian specializing in cultural and gender issues during the Chinese Song Dynasty. Ebrey obtained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1968 and her Masters and PhD from Columbia University in 1970 and 1975, respectively. Upon receiving her PhD, Ebrey was hired as visiting assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She became an associate professor in 1982 and a full professor three years later. She is now a professor at the University of Washington.
Ebrey has received a number of awards for her work, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Ebery's The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period received the 1995 Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Her 2008 work, Accumulating Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong, received the Smithsonian Institution's 2010 Shimada Prize for Outstanding Work of East Asian Art History.
(from Wikipedia)
Ebrey has received a number of awards for her work, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Ebery's The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period received the 1995 Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Her 2008 work, Accumulating Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong, received the Smithsonian Institution's 2010 Shimada Prize for Outstanding Work of East Asian Art History.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 30, 2012
This monograph for general audience best congeals Patricia Ebrey’s effort to bring women into the discussion of social history of Song China (976-1279). Despite the lack of Song sources by the women, Ebrey is able to glean almost all available Song sources about women such as legal cases, funerary biographies, medicinal literature, paintings, poems, marriage proposal, philosophical writings, etc. Based on critical readings of these collected material, Ebrey, for the first time, brings to us a plausible and synthetic account of Song women, the social contexts of their lives primarily through the lens of marriage, and how they negotiated within the system, participated with the social trends, and acted upon opportunities in the time of drastic social changes like the development of printing and market economy and cultural changes like Sinification of Buddhism and the revival of Confucianism. More importantly, by bringing women into the picture, as Ebrey has demonstrated, one is encouraged to not only ask new questions about kinship, economy, and culture but also provoked to engage with more elusive issues like “sexuality, jealousy, and gender symbolism” in the future research (p. xiv).
Ebrey organizes this monograph thematically with the first chapter “Separating the Sexes” successfully tackles the dominant Song gender symbolism of women in the inner quarters and men out fighting in the world. Marriage is the central lens in her investigation of the inner quarters and women’s lives. Focusing on marriage allows Ebrey to achieve at least two things. First, it allows her to get away as much as possible the patriarchal gaze and to bring women’s perspective into the picture. Second, using marriage as a “cultural framework encompassing a variety of partly contradictory and often ambiguous ideas and images” Ebrey is able to highlight the opportunities of agency for women to participate, negotiate, and build a more satisfying life (p. 8). In so doing, family becomes a social context where people, especially women as wives, concubines, mothers, and in-laws, “negotiated their relations with one another, often pursuing different interests and thus coming into conflict” (p.9). Following this novel research methodology, Ebrey provides plausible arguments for women’s active participation (if not bringing out change themselves) in the turn to uxorilocal marriages, the increasing size of dowries, as well as the spread of foot-binding as a pursuit for beauty and competition with concubines and courtesans.
Motherhood and widowhood were the two areas that best manifest women as actors instead of objects to be acted upon. Despite the dangers and difficulties associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, because of the Chinese emphasis on family values that celebrates motherhood, women were able to gain satisfaction through educating and bringing up their children with relatively less ambivalence than other female roles. Widowhood, on the other hand, was plagued by structural vulnerabilities due to the lack of a male protector. However, the absence of men also brought about opportunities for widows to choose to remain celibate, continue the family line through adoption, engage more with family business, lead their families into prosperities, and retain control of their dowries—activities and decisions they had to make largely by themselves drawing supports and ideas from existing social norms and precedents.
Even though Ebrey’s monograph is geared toward a general audience, many of the issues she touches upon provide good incentives for further research. For example, in her discussion of upper-class wives in chapter six and widowhood in chapter ten, she mentions the close affinity of women with Buddhism and their frequent interactions with nuns and eminent monks. Though she never mentions this explicitly, one is left to wonder whether upper-class wives played an important role in the Sinification of Buddhism, especially the rise of Nan Chan (Southern Chan) in Southern Song through their sponsorship. Even though we may not have historical access to many of the women’s stories, Ebrey’s monograph not only discredits the flat image of deferral women in Song China but also represents a new trend to engage with both women’s studies and Chinese culture as a whole.
Ebrey organizes this monograph thematically with the first chapter “Separating the Sexes” successfully tackles the dominant Song gender symbolism of women in the inner quarters and men out fighting in the world. Marriage is the central lens in her investigation of the inner quarters and women’s lives. Focusing on marriage allows Ebrey to achieve at least two things. First, it allows her to get away as much as possible the patriarchal gaze and to bring women’s perspective into the picture. Second, using marriage as a “cultural framework encompassing a variety of partly contradictory and often ambiguous ideas and images” Ebrey is able to highlight the opportunities of agency for women to participate, negotiate, and build a more satisfying life (p. 8). In so doing, family becomes a social context where people, especially women as wives, concubines, mothers, and in-laws, “negotiated their relations with one another, often pursuing different interests and thus coming into conflict” (p.9). Following this novel research methodology, Ebrey provides plausible arguments for women’s active participation (if not bringing out change themselves) in the turn to uxorilocal marriages, the increasing size of dowries, as well as the spread of foot-binding as a pursuit for beauty and competition with concubines and courtesans.
Motherhood and widowhood were the two areas that best manifest women as actors instead of objects to be acted upon. Despite the dangers and difficulties associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, because of the Chinese emphasis on family values that celebrates motherhood, women were able to gain satisfaction through educating and bringing up their children with relatively less ambivalence than other female roles. Widowhood, on the other hand, was plagued by structural vulnerabilities due to the lack of a male protector. However, the absence of men also brought about opportunities for widows to choose to remain celibate, continue the family line through adoption, engage more with family business, lead their families into prosperities, and retain control of their dowries—activities and decisions they had to make largely by themselves drawing supports and ideas from existing social norms and precedents.
Even though Ebrey’s monograph is geared toward a general audience, many of the issues she touches upon provide good incentives for further research. For example, in her discussion of upper-class wives in chapter six and widowhood in chapter ten, she mentions the close affinity of women with Buddhism and their frequent interactions with nuns and eminent monks. Though she never mentions this explicitly, one is left to wonder whether upper-class wives played an important role in the Sinification of Buddhism, especially the rise of Nan Chan (Southern Chan) in Southern Song through their sponsorship. Even though we may not have historical access to many of the women’s stories, Ebrey’s monograph not only discredits the flat image of deferral women in Song China but also represents a new trend to engage with both women’s studies and Chinese culture as a whole.
October 12, 2011
LOVED learning more about women in Chinese history!
December 28, 2022
read for a research project; ordinarily would not have put this on my goodreads but the fact that i read this cover to cover is an achievement to me
August 13, 2024
Read this for a history course I’m taking on women and family traditions in pre-modern China. This book was very informational!
July 2, 2019
An important study of women in old imperial China. Very interesting look.
November 10, 2024
Loved this book. It didn't only explain marriage and love in those times and associations, philosophies connected to it but also the cultural context.
Read
July 23, 2025没读完，读到30%左右。除了这本还尝试读了这个系列的缠足和江南才女（大概5%-10%），都不太喜欢。感觉每个作者都透露着某种历史学者强调要理中客的叙事方式。建议姐妹要读的话就把这个系列当历史专著来读吧，如果当做女性写作的话可能会比较失望。
January 28, 2015
I had to read this for my History 349: Women of East Asia class in university this semester. It was very informative for reading about the lives and duties of women in Sung dynasty China. The only problem I had with this text is that the author mostly focused on higher society and didn't discuss lower class society. Overall, a fairly interesting read.
November 20, 2016
A completely new way to view women in history. Agency, agency, agency.
September 29, 2016
Most interesting study
August 9, 2022
Read for Women and Gender in Chinese History (Spring 2021).
April 6, 2022
非常详细，关于入赘的部分有点惊到我，当然也有很多内容看得我气个半死=^=
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews