Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China

253 Pages·2008·2.18 MB·English

by  Grace S. Fong

h
(Continued from front flap) CHInESE LITEr ATUrE/HIST ory e Herself an Author addresses the critical
and social inscription. Her reading of r question of how to approach the study
“ Grace Fong has written a wonderful history of female writers’ participation in
the life and work of women writers s of women’s writing. It explores various
the elite conventions of Chinese poetics. Fong’s recovery of many of these poets,
reveals surprising instances and modes her able exegesis and elegant, analytical grasp of what the poets were doing e f methods of engaging in a meaningful
of self-empowerment within the gender is a great read, and her bilingual presentation of their poetry gives the book l way with a rich corpus of poetry and
constraints of Confucian orthodoxy. additional power. This is a persuasive and elegant study.” f prose written by women of the late
Fong argues that literate women in late H Ming and Qing periods, much of it
— Tani Barlow, author of The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism a
imperial China used writing and reading ersel rediscovered by the author in rare book
to create literary and social communities, n collections in China and the United
a n a u t h o r
“ In this quietly authoritative book, Grace Fong has brought a group of women
transcend temporal-spatial and social States. The volume treats different genres
poets back to life. Previously ignored by scholars because of their marginal status a
limitations, and represent themselves as of writing and includes translations
or the inaccessibility of their works, these remarkable writers now speak to us
the authors of their own life histories. u of texts that are made available for the
about the sensualities, pains, satisfactions, and sadness of being a woman in a
first time in English. Among the works
t
patriarchal society. Professor Fong — a superb translator of Chinese poetry,
Herself an Author, the culmination prose, and criticism — has rendered the works of these women in a way that is h considered are the life-long poetic record
of more than ten years of archival true both to our theoretical concerns and theirs.” of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal
o
research, will be of interest to scholars, kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic
— DoroThy Ko, author of Cinderella’s Sisters:
researchers, and students of Chinese and A Revisionist History of Footbinding r poetry of the concubine Shen Cai.
comparative literature, history,
and culture, as well as women’s and Taking the view that gentry women’s
“ Professor Fong approaches the poetry of Ming-Qing upper-class women as
gender studies. varied textual production was a form of
a social-cultural activity that allowed these women to manifest their agency
cultural practice, Grace Fong examines
and assert their own subjectivity against the background of virtual and actual
in g women’s autobiographical poetry
networks of fellow female poets. As the distillation of more than ten years e
Grace S. Fong is associate professor of of research by one of the leading scholars in this field, this work is a timely la nd collections, travel writings, and critical
Chinese literature at McGill University. te er discourse on the subject of women’s
contribution that eminently deserves our attention. Given the inclusion of im , a poetry, offering fresh insights on
translations of some of the texts discussed, the book provides a comprehensive p g
introduction to the reading of women’s poetry of the Ming-Qing period.” eria enc women’s intervention into the dominant
l y male literary tradition. The wealth of
— wilT iDema, Harvard University c , a
h n texts translated and discussed here
in d
a w includes fascinating documents written
Jacket art: Portrait of Shen Cai by the woman painter Wang Liang. rit gender, agency, and writing by concubines — women who occupied
Adapted by Lin Fan and Margaret ng. in a subordinate position in the family
g
Jacket design: Snizik Marketing & Design, LLC | (www.snizik.com) and social system. Fong adopts the
in late imperial china
notion of agency as a theoretical focus
to investigate forms of subjectivity and
fong enactments of subject positions in the
intersection between textual practice
University of Hawai‘i Press (Continued on back flap)
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu .
g r a c e s f o n g
038_05_M.Herself_Jacket.indd 1 1/30/08 11:25:57 AM
Herself an Author
Frontispiece. Portrait of Shen Cai (b. 1752) gracing her literary collection
Chun­yulou ji, painted by the woman painter Wang Liang. The two friends corre-
sponded on issues of poetic style (see Chapter 4). Courtesy of Shanghai Library.
Herself an Author
Gender, Agency, and Writing
in Late Imperial China
Grace S. Fong
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
© 2008 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fong, Grace S.
Herself an author : gender, agency, and writing in late imperial China / Grace
S. Fong.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3186-8 (alk. paper)
1. Chinese literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. Chinese
literature—Ming dynasty, 1368–1644—History and criticism. 3. Chinese
literature—Qing dynasty, 1644–1912—History and criticism. I. Title.
PL2278.F66 2008
895.1'099287—dc22
2007043304
This publication has been supported in part by a grant from
Arts Insights, McGill University.
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
This book is dedicated to
my mother, Tse Quan­chun­ (1909–1996),
who taught me how to write characters as a child
in­ our village Hop An­ Lei (n­ow Zilicun­ in­ Kaipin­g, Guan­gdon­g),
recen­tly design­ated a World Heritage site,
an­d to my teachers Professors Yeh Chia-yin­g an­d Wayn­e Schlepp,
who taught me classical Chin­ese poetry an­d poetics.

Contents
Acknowledgments • ix
Introduction • 1
CHAPTeR 1
A Life in Poetry: The Auto/biography of Gan Lirou (1743–1819) • 9
CHAPTeR 2
From the Margin to the Center: The Literary Vocation of Concubines • 54
CHAPTeR 3
Authoring Journeys: Women on the Road • 85
CHAPTeR 4
Gender and Reading: Form, Rhetoric, and Community
in Women’s Poetic Criticism • 121
epilogue • 159
Appendix 1
Gan Lirou’s “Narrating My Thoughts on My Sixtieth Birthday” • 161
Appendix 2
Xing Cijing’s Summary of the Journ­ey from Qian­ • 167
Appendix 3
Wang Fengxian’s The Homeward Journ­ey East • 169
Notes • 179
Glossary • 211
Bibliography • 219
Index • 231
vii

Acknowledgments
Armed with my copy of the indispensable Catalogue of Women­’s Writin­gs through
the Ages (Lidai fun­ü zhuzuo kao) by Hu Wenkai (1956, reprint 1985), I left for Bei-
jing in the summer of 1992 in search of the poetry and prose collections of indi-
vidual women published in Ming and Qing China. I did not know at the time
that this would become a long-term archaeological endeavour involving many
subsequent trips “excavating” in rare-book archives in China for the next decade
and more. In my research on the poetics of gender in the song lyric (ci), I became
acutely aware of the significance, and paradox, of “woman” as signifier and
“women” as active participants in the literary culture of historical China. I was
drawn into what became a prolonged inquiry into the question of how gender is
inscribed and represented in poetry. Starting with the problematic of how male
poets manipulated gendered personae in song lyrics for aesthetic and ideological
effects, I continued with the inverse of the question: How did historical women,
as an ideologically subordinated group, manipulate gendered representation in
their poetry and other writings? To pursue this question, I first had to undertake
the basic task of locating their texts, because many of them survived only in rare
copies held in libraries in China.
In this long journey in search of Ming Qing women writers, I have witnessed
sea changes in the last fifteen years in China. The transformations have been mostly
positive for archival research. For example, libraries and archives have become
open and accessible—gone, for the most part, are the formerly necessary institu-
tional letter of introduction and other bureaucratic requirements that restricted
scholars’ abilities to locate sources relevant for their research. Policies governing re-
production of rare materials are more regularized but more expensive; the rare
book collection of the Shanghai Library moved from an old dusty building on the
side of People’s Park to a new world-class site on fashionable Huaihai Middle Road
in 1997, but with the collection out of reach in storage for several years.
Along the way, the women whose varied life histories and writings I was able
to discover, read, and think about fascinated me and moved me deeply. I would
not have had the opportunity to read their works without the gracious assistance
of many librarians, both in China and elsewhere, who went out of their way to
help me at different stages of my research. I would like to thank in particular Mr.
James Cheng and Mr. Shen Jin (Shum Chun), Harvard-Yenching Library; Mr.
Zhou Yuan, University of Chicago Library; Mr. Charles Aylmer, Cambridge Uni-
ix