Photo “A Myriad of Books” by Zhang Cheng

by Zhang Lanyue (Alice)

Read the Faculty Introduction.

In The Republic, Socrates famously criticised the role and function of poetry in a just and ideal city and concluded that he “acted properly” when he gave it the sentence of exile (Plato 607b). However, around the same time as Socrates, in ancient China, the native counterpart of poetry, shi (詩), did not face a similar start during this sprouting period of literary criticism. Instead, these short Chinese verses that originated with music were held in high regard both by Confucius as an essential multi-purpose textbook, and by the “Great Preface,” the most authoritative statement on shi in traditional China since the Han Dynasty (Owen 37), as what reflected the governance and moral status of the time. Naturally, this distinct contrast brings out the question of what caused such differences. What protected early Chinese poetry, or shi, from Socrates’ criticisms and the sentence of exile?

Socrates criticized poetry from mainly three aspects: 1) misrepresentation of gods, 2) lack of truth and knowledge, and 3) corruption of the reasoning mind. He accused all poets of lying as the tales they told included unjust and evil deeds done by gods; a straightforward falsity in a religious context for it directly contradicts the very conception of a god, who is good and “the author only of good things” (Plato 380c). Thus, accepting poetry, which at the time was considered stories of the past, already poses negative influences on one’s capacity to distinguish reality and unreality (382b). Socrates went on to argue that poetry is thrice removed from the truth and contains no knowledge (597e). For he believed that poetry only imitates the appearances of the living world, a world that only consists of replicas of the transcendental, incomprehensible truth. He also believed that these illusions only appeal to emotions and desires, the irrational and inferior part of the mind (605a). It arouses strong emotional responses such as fear, sorrow and pity and impulsive desires like passion and love. Being surrounded by poetry corrupts the superior and rational part of the mind, only leading to a more miserable life.

The reason why shi did not receive such criticism has at least two layers. On the one hand, shi has distinct characteristics that differentiate itself from being the complete equivalence of poetry. The content of shi, its non-narrative nature and how the images connect to the mind diminish its potential to represent any figure, divine or mortal. On the other hand, such characteristics, combined with other historical and cultural factors, determined how shi was regarded by the earliest social elites, thinkers, and literati who existed even before the emergence of literary criticism, whose view on shi constituted the very basis of its status in the Chinese literary tradition. Shi came into being without much emphasis on its nature, meaning or values, then it was used as educational materials by the Confucians who first viewed it as a text worth analysis, and its emotional effects were recognised as appropriate and beneficial. In this sense, all three aspects of Socrates’ criticism already did not apply when shi became the foundation of the traditional Chinese literary tradition.

Shi and its Characteristics

Similar to how the concept of poetry has changed from epics, dramas and lyrics in the ancient Greek context to what we understand today as a subcategory of literature, shi has gone through similar semantic developments over time, such as adopting the role as the Chinese translation for “poetry” in the face of western influences. Even though these changes in concepts and the growth of related literary traditions can all be traced back to the original meaning and the earliest perceptions that are based on such meaning, for the sake of clarity and the purpose of this essay, hereon, the definition of shi will be limited to solely its initial form, i.e., the Book of Songs (shi jing 詩經), the earliest anonymous Chinese poetry collection and the foundation of traditional Chinese poetics. 

From the start, the first point of Socrates’ criticism does not apply to shi as shi does not involve any representation or depiction of deities. The “Great Preface” describes the nature of the three sections of shi: the first section feng (風) records the affairs and social climate of a state and is connected to the experience of individuals; the second section ya (雅) talks about the affairs of the whole world (according to the recognition of the people at the time) and common customs; the last sections song (頌) praises the manifestation of full virtue and communicates these great deeds to the divine (Owen 48-49). There is no involvement of gods in the first two sections which are about the affairs and customs across the world in ancient Chinese’s eyes as their focus is on the earthly. In the only exception song, there is the existence of a non-anthropomorphous and mostly non-anthropomorphic god Heaven (tian 天), which inherently would have required a different system of representation compared to the much personified ancient Greek gods and their very active and involved presence in the epics. However, Heaven is never the direct object of praise in song. Instead, those hymns chant about the first kings’ virtues and the flourishing of the state under their reigns, only mentioning that their legitimacy is from Heaven (for example, see “Shi mai” 時邁 and “Chang fa” 長發). This divine presence only plays the role of appointing the first kings and beginning their legacy. It is the first and supposedly great kings whose names and deeds song praises. 

But that alone does not guarantee that shi is completely free from being criticized as misrepresenting, for it could still be misrepresenting mortal figures like the past kings and nobilities, which is also condemning in the feudalist society of the time that practices ancestor worship. Shi’s potential associations with the idea of it representing any specific figures are further severed by other characteristics. First of all, compared to epics and dramas, shi is generally non-narrative. “Shi articulates what is on the mind (zhi 志),” thus stated in the Book of Documents (Shang shu 尚書), records of words of kings and important ministers of the ancient past. It is the canonical statement on the nature of shi, almost as authoritative as if God had defined poetry in Genesis (Owen 26, 27). Shi is the manifestation of zhi; it is not a product of imitation made by a poet, nor tales about the ancient past. Zhi is a state of mind, a relation to certain things, occurrences, or possibilities in the physical world (Owen 28). It is often stirred by the encounter with an object or sight, hence many poems in shi begin with a description of natural phenomena. Zhi is involuntary in the sense that it is not under the control of one’s will (Owen 27), thus shi, the articulation of it is devoid of the same potential for artistic deliberation and narration that are essential for building a representation of a certain figure.

There is also no definitive mapping between images and their meanings in shi, which is shown in the three “modes of presentation” (Owen 45): fu (賦), bi (比), and xing (興). Fu is any unfigured sequence that directly expresses and explains zhi; bi indicates the images that play the role of metaphors and similes; xing refers to the image that stirs a kind of mood, or rather, zhi (Owen 46). The existence of any images in shi is associated with the articulation of zhi; moreover, the relationship between images and what they could indicate or evoke is not definitive nor specific. The objects described in the poems and the human situations they express are viewed as “belonging to the same category of events” (Yu 399). An image of the physical world can be compared to or naturally awaken any state of mind. Nevertheless, what kind of zhi it is trying to stir is not a consensus shared by the poet and the reader. Those links are not created or manufactured by anyone’s will (Yu 399). Thus, the images in shi essentially lack representational power, they only serve as something that speaks to the mind.

How Shi Is Regarded

The origins of shi started with court music. It was first collected and edited by the ministers of music as a part of the rites and music system (liyue zhidu 禮樂制度) in the Zhou Dynasty that helped maintain social order, emotional bonds and harmony (Hong 1). This initial role as the verses for ritualistic music in court already separated the poems themselves from the contexts and intentions behind their creation to an extent, transforming them into a relatively more neutral and flexible medium that served the zhi of who uses them, rather than of who created them. 

From the records in Zuo zhuan (左傳), during the late Zhou Dynasty when both feudalism and the rites and music system were collapsing, shi had become independent from music and developed into a social language and diplomatic discourse among the ruling class and social elites through the form of quoting (Hong 49). “Unless you study the Odes [shi] you will be ill-equipped to speak” (Lau Confucius 16.13). Excerpts from shi were so frequently quoted without contexts as a vessel to express the mind of the speakers to the point that to communicate without shi would be viewed as some sort of social deficit among the higher classes. What it indicates is that around this seedling period of traditional Chinese poetics, any original values and meanings carried by shi itself were not of great concern, if any at all. What mattered was the literal meaning of each line and, more importantly, how it could be connected to the zhi of the speaker. When the verses became the shi we recognize, they already did not involve any concerns for truth and knowledge or its influences on people, for it was generally regarded as a tool and medium to articulate the zhi of the speaker. In that sense, shi was already free from the more epistemological aspect of Socrates’ criticism before traditional Chinese poetics even began to emerge.

Then came the earliest Confucians who first started to regard shi as a text worth analysis on its own and set the major tone for classical Chinese literary traditions.           Similar to Socrates, the Confucians acknowledged the emotional and irrational impacts of shi, but to them, it was not worthless or damaging to one’s rationality. Confucius commented on the first poem of shi, “Guan ju” (關雎) and called the emotions it expressed “joy without wantonness, and sorrow without self-injury” (Lau Confucius 3.20). The potential negative and destructive effects emotions and desires have on people were also recognized by Confucius, yet poems like “Guan ju” were deemed as only expressing moderate and appropriate emotions, which then instead were beneficial for cultivating good morality and virtues, hence also why shi as a whole to him never “swerving from the right path” (Lau Confucius 2.3). 

To the Confucians, the stirring of emotions and desires intertwined deeply with the sprouting and cultivation of compassion. When asked about how to govern like a true king, Mencius suggested the king try and understand the needs of his people by generalizing his own fondness for materials and desires to them (Lau Mencius 1B5). The seed of benevolence lies within the very universal feelings of compassion, as basic as not being able to bear witness to the suffering of an infant (Lau Mencius 2A6). Emotions and desires are the original, natural motivations for a person to genuinely empathize with and care about others, and such actions are the core of a benevolent man and a humane king. The emotional effects shi has on people were not seen as corruptive and did not face similar accusations raised by Socrates; instead, it even gained some educational values because of such effects as it can serve as a natural guidance to cultivate better qualities.

Thus, from a Confucian perspective, emotions and desires do not innately contradict the concept of a better man; they are the soil for virtues, which requires proper guidance through education which shi is an important part of. One must be stimulated by shi, and then learn and perfect themselves through rites and music (Lau Confucius 8.8). To Confucius, aside from xing, shi can also “show one’s breeding, to smooth over difficulties in a group and to give expression to complaints”; it can serve the fathers and the lords and teach a wide knowledge about the living world (Lau Confucius 17.9). It is an educational material that can help cultivate virtues, practice social and diplomatic skills, and learn about the literary (Hong 70). Mencius frequently referenced shi to advise and educate the kings on the Confucian and humane way of ruling as shi praised the past deeds of virtuous lords and conveyed knowledge about benevolence. Verses describing the influences of setting a good example communicate the compassionate methodology of governance: “to take this very heart here and apply it to what is over there” (Lau Mencius 1A7). Lines praising the virtues of ancient kings by depicting universal submission represent the idea that people will submit willingly and sincerely to the influence of morality, but not to force (Lau Mencius 2A3). Just like this, justified by the good old days, the harmonious reigns of virtuous kings of the past, shi became a textbook about the correct paths and virtues valued by early Confucians. When such a tradition passed down to the Western Han Dynasty, the government appointed shi to be one of the official subjects with scholars and officials dedicated to the study of shi. Around the period, the “Great Preface” established its values and purposes in traditional Chinese poetics and became the starting point for every student of shi from Eastern Han to Song Dynasty (Owen 37). By the time when the foundation of traditional Chinese poetics was built around shi, it already played an essential role in social, moral, and public education through its expression of moderate emotions and desires as well as virtues from the ancient past. Such an understanding and application of shi also protect it from similar criticism of lacking knowledge or containing destructive emotional effects.

Conclusion

Many internal and external factors played into why shi did not face the similar criticism that poetry faced in its earliest period before its initial status was established in the respective literary traditions. It is not a question that can be comprehensively answered in one single essay. Many related questions are worthy of further explorations to better explain this interesting phenomenon between the two literary traditions, such as why shi did not take the form of narrative poetry that is commonly found in many oral traditions like the ancient Greek epics, why the court would want to collect them for rituals, why no one before Mencius thought about the zhi of the unknown authors, etc. Each section of the final complex explanation should hopefully present itself in the clear form of causes and effects, but the chain between certain aspects might as well be arbitrary, just happened to be the way it is, and the relevant questions might never be answered.

Nevertheless, the fact that shi is distinctively different from poetry contributes to the drastically different roles they played in the earliest social and political life of each culture. The characteristics of shi and how it was regarded originally interact with each other; both helped protect shi from criticisms similar to what was raised by Socrates around the time it became an object of study, influencing how it would develop after the foundation of a literary tradition was established.

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Works Cited

Hong, Zhanhou 洪湛侯. Shi Jing Xue Shi 詩經學史 [The history of the study of shi jing]. Zhonghua Shu Ju, 2002.

Lau, D.C., translator. Confucius: The Analects. Paperback bilingual edition ed., Chinese
University Press, 2002.

—. Mencius. Revised and bilingual edition ed., Chinese University Press, 2003.

Owen, Stephen, editor. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Harvard University Press, 1992. 

Plato. The Republic. Translated by Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott, Norton, 1985.

Yu, Pauline R. “Allegory, Allegoresis, and The Classic of Poetry.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, 1983, pp. 377–412. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2719105.

Read “What Protected Early Chinese Poetry from Socratic Criticism?”.

Lanyue’s essay is the second of three major essays required of all students in my PoH course on the concept of literature. The course’s objectives are undeniably ambitious. It aims for students not only to deeply understand the concept of literature by probing its cultural origins, particularly its intricate relationship with the classical Greek notion of poetry and its entanglement with modern conceptions of art, but also to foster a fruitful dialogue with the literary culture and tradition from which the majority of my students originate. Aware of the intellectual challenges inherent in such cross-cultural comparisons, I ensured that the goals for the second essay assignment were modest. Students were expected to draw directly from what they learned in class as well as the provided readings to write a minimum 1000-word response to one of two questions concerning the conceptualization and/or internal reception of the shi in ancient China as compared to ancient Greek “poetry.” No external research was necessary.

Lanyue went above and beyond the set expectations. Her essay not only exceeds the minimum required length by more than double, but also incorporates excellent ideas from external scholarly sources found through her own research. Although, as she sanely and humbly acknowledged in the conclusion of the essay, the breadth of her chosen topic cannot be fully addressed within the confines of a short response paper, she explicates the distinctiveness of classical Chinese poetic genres and relevant key concepts with remarkable clarity and effectiveness. The essay’s introduction adeptly sets the stage by introducing key claims and ideas; these are then logically and rigorously developed in the main body; the sources and quotations used are all carefully selected and effectively integrated into the text. Undoubtedly, readers unfamiliar with the subject matter will find much to gain from the wealth of information and insights woven into the essay. I commend Lanyue for both her thoughtfulness and her writerly success.

—Chen Lin, Clinical Associate Professor in the Writing Program

Photo “NA” by Annie Church

by Julie Wu

Read the Faculty Introduction.

In his widely celebrated film Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang Yimou portrays the withering of concubines in their toxic competition for the master’s sexual favor in early twentieth-century China, lamenting over patriarchy’s ferocious enslavement of women’s sexuality. Among all the victims mired in endless torment, the fourth mistress Songlian, an assertive former college student, bizarrely complies with sexually exploitative rituals in the traditional Chinese courtyard (Zhang). However, beneath Songlian’s façade of everyday subservience lies her agenda to seize control of the household through the master’s sexual partiality. The ambivalent power dynamics underlying women’s ostensible submissiveness also occur in Lessons for Women composed by Ban Zhao, the most influential female scholar in the Eastern Han dynasty. In this behavior manual for young wives, Ban pedagogically appeals to her female descendants to abide by oppressive Confucian norms in the household. Yet, her simultaneous advocacy of education for women substantially challenges the then-Confucian doctrine. A close examination of Songlian and Ban Zhao’s seemingly paradoxical deeds reveals that women’s apparent obedience in Confucian patriarchy not only helps them reconcile their existence but also empowers them to subtly undermine the omnipresent oppressive forces.

Confucian discourse permeated the social fabric of the Eastern Han dynasty, the time when mainstream scholars established women’s subordination to men as both natural and fundamental to the “ordering of society,” as Lin-Lee Lee insightfully describes in “Inventing Familial Agency from Powerlessness: Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women” (L. Lee 52). Ban’s narrative in Lessons for Women echoes this suppressive trend in her justification of the wife’s unconditional submission to the husband. In chapters two and three, Ban compares the relationship between the husband and the wife to that between “yang and yin,” two antithetical yet interrelated principles regulating the natural world in Chinese culture (Swann 180). As she claims, the quality of yin that women represent in the male-female relationship is inherently “yielding” (Swann 181). Here, Ban delineates submissiveness as women’s intrinsic attributes by adopting the “essentialist gender definitions” that Jana Rošker observes in “Confucian Humanism and the Importance of Female Education: The Controversial Role of Ban Zhao” (Rošker 25). This narrative helps Ban rationalize the wife’s absolute subordination to the husband, as she argues that the “natural order” of the family would be disrupted if the wife fails to “serve her husband” (Swann 181). In short, in Lessons for Women, Ban not only complies with but also staunchly supports the dominant Confucian discourse by advocating for women’s subservience in domesticity. 

However, a close examination of Ban’s life trajectory reveals her compliance as a strategy to terms with the social pressure imposed on her special identity. With a prestigious family background and profound knowledge of Confucian classics, Ban ascended to great political power as a lead royal consultant for Empress Deng (Rošker 26). At that time, considering the Confucian zeitgeist’s reluctance to women’s involvement in “traditionally masculine activities” (L. Lee 52)—for example, Ban’s political clout in her alliances with Empress Deng could easily provoke male politicians’ antagonism (Rošker 27). Facing the imminent threat to her political career, Ban’s “public acknowledgment” of women’s secondary status in society outwardly expresses her “loyalty towards the patriarchal state,” as Rošker analyzes in her discussion of Ban’s obedience to Confucian rules (Rošker 27). Hence, Ban’s allegiance to patriarchal values on the surface conceals the subversive aspect of her participation in politics, shielding herself from social restrictions. 

Concurrently, not only driven by her personal interest, Ban’s apparent submission deliberately undermines Confucianism’s hegemonic constraints on women’s education. The Book of Rites, the accoladed orthodox Confucian classics in ancient China, explicitly states that “only male children should be educated” (qtd. in Rošker 27). To chisel away this rigorous principle without provoking a widespread backlash, Ban capitalizes on the Confucian scholars’ emphasis on the indispensability of a stable marriage in maintaining social order. In Lessons for Women, Ban states that education for girls equips them with “proper customs for married women” (Swann 179). Without knowledge of regulated rituals, as she claims, the wife would not know how to “serve her husband,” thus destroying the “harmony and intimacy” of the marriage (Swann 184). Here, Ban argues that education helps foster “a submissive wife, and an ideal member of her marital family” (L. Lee 55), whose virtue would contribute to a harmonious family and thus consolidate the stability of the society. Hence, leveraging the importance of women’s education to the ritual-regulated Confucian household and society, Ban subtly undermines a pillar of gender subordination during the Eastern Han period. 

The Eastern Han dynasty marked the near-total subjugation of women, requiring them to exert immense effort to attain any semblance of agency. Almost two thousand years after, as the 1911 revolution toppled the Qing dynasty, marking the end of Chinese monarchy, the 1920s witnessed unprecedented progress for women’s liberation, especially in education. As Lianfen Yang documents in “New Ethics and Old Roles: The Identity Dilemma of May Fourth New Women,” the May Fourth movement played a pivotal role in promoting nationwide “co-education [of men and women] at college and social intercourse between sexes” (74). Despite the emergence and thriving of “equality” and “freedom” discourses in urban areas, the vestige of Confucian value still prevailed in traditional Chinese courtyards, mandating women’s “three obedience [to husband, father and son] and four virtues” (Yang 75). Through Songlian’s story, the film Raise the Red Lantern manifests the tension between Confucian social practices and burgeoning revolutionary values that women grappled with in 1920s China. As a former college student forced to become a concubine for a landlord, Songlian gets inundated with these patriarchal values the moment she enters the Chen compound.  

Zhang portrays Songlian’s gradual submission to the sexually exploitative norms in Chen’s compound through his directorial emphasis on the shift of her facial expressions. In Chen’s family, foot massage serves to arouse mistresses’ sexual desire by stimulating their sensitive and private body parts, preparing them to “better serve their man” on the bed (Zhang). Here, women’s sexuality simply constitutes a tool to satisfy the master’s desire, implying the asymmetrical sexual relationship between the master and the mistresses. In both foot massage scenes, Zhang juxtaposes close-up shots of Songlian’s face with the resonating tinkling sound of the massage tools in the background. The change in Songlian’s facial expression thus becomes the sole distinctive element in the two scenes. In Songlian’s first foot massage, she almost imperceptibly frowns her eyebrows with the corners of her mouth turning down, indicating her discomfort (Zhang). Her micro-expressions ground in her aversion to this custom that abruptly stimulates her sensitive parts in front of other people. As Songlian accustoms herself to this exploitative ritual in the household and realizes the sexual privilege this custom embodies, her facial expression experiences a drastic change. The second time Songlian receives the foot massage, she fully closes her eyes with her shoulder relaxed, slowly and deeply inhaling (Zhang). Songlian’s compliance with and even enjoyment of the foot massage implies her “passive demeanor,” as Joann Lee observes in “Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern: Contextual Analysis of Film Through a Confucian/Feminist Matrix” (122). The shift in Songlian’s reaction to the foot message thus marks her acceptance of the sexually exploitative norms operating in the courtyard’s arrangement of concubines’ life. 

By submitting to sexual exploitation and catering to the master’s sexual appetite, Songlian seems to transform into a soulless puppet manipulated by oppressive norms in Chen’s household. Yet, in essence, she strategically uses submission to cope with the conflicts between her past freedom as a college student and her present imprisonment as a concubine. Songlian’s dilemma culminates in her interactions with Feipu, the master’s son with the privilege to attend college. In their first encounter, Feipu directly addresses Songlian by her name when all other people in the courtyard call her fourth mistress. Surprised by Feipu’s recognition of her individuality, Songlian directly stares at him in the face with reserved joy (Zhang). Here, the conversation drags Songlian out of the competition for the master’s sexual favor, reminding her of her past autonomy. Yet, the sparkle immediately extinguishes as Songlian says: “you should not call me by my name,” with her eyes drifting away in melancholy and embarrassment (Zhang). In this scene, Songlian’s sorrow originates in the Confucian household’s relentless annihilation of her freedom: after the transient sense of escape from reality, eternal enslavement awaits. The camera’s occasional shift from the medium close-up shot of Songlian and Feipu to the long shot of the enclosed courtyard they are situated in, along with the low-key lighting, echoes this reality. By reminding Feipu of her status, Songlian submits to her irrevocable and suffocating marital bond with the master, accepting her identity as the fourth mistress. Hence, Songlian chooses submission as a coping mechanism to subdue her longingness for college life and freedom.

Behind Songlian’s apparent submission also lies her attempt to break away from the ever-present constraint inflicted upon her in the household. In the Confucian household, the male master not only plays the role of the husband but also “the patronizing father” whom “all the power” in the household derives from (J. Lee 121-123). In this specific cultural background, from a psychoanalytic perspective, “power is male, is phallus” (J. Lee 123). Then, in this case, only through alliances with male power can Songlian seize agency amidst patriarchy’s pervasive control. In the film, Songlian temporarily succeeds by tricking the master with her feigned pregnancy (Zhang). With patriarchy’s obsession with reproduction, Songlian’s “pregnancy” indicates that she has the master’s “seeds” in her, helping her generate much stronger power than simply catering to the master’s sexual appetite (J. Lee 123). Thus, she could enjoy a foot massage whenever desired, humiliate her maid, have her lanterns lit all day long, and order the second mistress to massage her like a servant (Zhang). By “enforcing these customs and rules on other less powerful women in the household,” Songlian receives privileges from the source of male (J. Lee 121). In short, Songlian retains temporary release from the suffocating oppression of the Confucian household through the manipulation of patriarchal rules and alliances with male power.

However, having been exposed to the taste of true freedom during her short stay at the university, Songlian’s strategy is doomed to fail. Approaching the end of the film, Songlian accidentally blurts out the secret that Meishan, the third mistress, has been cheating on the master, directly leading to the cruel execution of Meishan (Zhang). Witnessing the horrendous death of Meishan, Songlian realizes the impossibility of reaching substantial agency as a female subordinate in the Confucian compound. Her rage against the brutal patriarchal system coupled with her lifelong incarceration ultimately drives Songlian to hysteria. As she becomes the “walking ghost” (J. Lee 126) aimlessly pacing back and forth in the courtyard with her student outfit on and braids, her lunacy helps her escape the cruel reality, bringing her mind back to college life. Zhang’s intensive use of red in these scenes signifies both the madness of Songlian and the relentless and devouring nature of Confucian patriarchy. Hence, even through her strategies of submission to and manipulation of patriarchal norms, Songlian still fails to reconcile her existence in the courtyard and claim autonomy of her life.  

A juxtaposition of Lessons for Women and Raise the Red Lantern unveils that while submission helps women living in absolute subordination partially seek some rights within the system, what they have gained still contains limitations. In Lessons for Women, Ban strategically appeases the dominant Confucian scholars who may vehemently oppose the education of women with her obedient tone. Strictly adhering to the patriarchal principle of women’s subordination to men, Ban successfully calls for the education of women. Ban’s subservience helps chisel away an important pillar of the suppression of women in the Eastern Han dynasty. However, concerning the restrictions imposed by the rigorous patriarchal order at that time, Ban’s agency remains within the patriarchal system, failing to step further. Almost two thousand years later, despite the all-around advancement of society, Confucian patriarchy still reigned in the household. Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern adopts the same strategy as Ban to reconcile her desire for freedom with the oppression in real life. Yet, she attempts in vain to manipulate the patriarchal rules for her own interests, which the failure of her feigned pregnancy and her ultimate madness exemplify (Zhang). Women’s persevering yet bitter struggle for the limited agency that Lessons for Women and Raise the Red Lantern portray seems to be far away from the contemporary world: women are no longer prohibited from entering the public sphere or considered as absolute subordinates to men in China. However, the analysis here entails implications stretching beyond gender inequality to conformism embedded in the Chinese context. As Hsiu-Chuang Deppman analyzes in “Body, Space, and Power: Reading the Cultural Images of Concubines in the Works of Su Tong and Zhang Yimou,” in Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang uses a “critical-realist approach” to delineate people’s everyday life in the current society (126). In this sense, the overwhelming and omnipresent Confucianism that Ban and Songlian submit to sneakily finds new expression in contemporary China, encroaching upon everyone. Society can create a perfect illusion that true egalitarianism would be achieved as long as people temporarily sacrifice their own interest and submit to its order, beguiling every individual into unconditional conformity. Perhaps, what Zhang attempts to warn us in the movie is that: conformism might grant us temporary agency, but what we cede to the subjugator may in turn empower it to ferociously devour us.

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Works Cited

Deppman, Hsiu-Chuang. “Body, Space, and Power: Reading the Cultural Images of Concubines in the Works of Su Tong and Zhang Yimou.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 15, no. 2, 2003, pp. 121–53.

Lee, Joann. “Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern: Contextual Analysis of Film Through a Confucian/Feminist Matrix.” Asian Cinema, vol. 8, no. 1, Mar. 1996, pp. 120–27. intellectdiscover.com, https://doi.org/10.1386/ac.8.1.120_1.

Lee, Lin-Lee. “Inventing Familial Agency from Powerlessness: Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women.” Western Journal of Communication, vol. 73, no. 1, Feb. 2009, pp. 47–66. Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/10570310802636318.

Rošker, Jana S. “Confucian Humanism and the Importance of Female Education: The Controversial Role of Ban Zhao.” Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 1,  Jan. 2021, pp. 13–29. journals.uni-lj.si, https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2021.9.1.13-29

Swann, Nancy, translator. “Lessons for Women.” By Ban Zhao. Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qin Period through the Song Dynasty, edited by Robin R. Wang, HackettPublishing Company, 2003, pp. 177-188.

Yang, Lianfen. “New Ethics and Old Roles: The Identity Dilemma of May Fourth New Women.” Translated by Feng Shize. Social Sciences in China, vol. 33, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 71–91.

Zhang, Yimou, director. Raise the Red Lantern. Era International (HK) Ltd., 1991.

Read “Weapons of the Weak: How Women’s Apparent Submissiveness Undermines Confucian Patriarchy’s Pervasive Control in Lessons for Women and Raise the Red Lantern“.

Julie Wu, in her final PoH research essay “Weapons of the Weak,” confronts Zhang Yimou’s twentieth-century masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern with Ban Zhao’s second-century BCE  Lessons for Women, with illuminating results. She adroitly harnesses the essay’s broad guidelines—put two course texts “into meaningful conversation”—to serve her specific critical interest: the exploration of Chinese women’s “apparent obedience” to Confucian patriarchy, one nonetheless riddled by “paradoxical” motives and consequences. In doing so, Julie expertly fulfills our PoH’s fundamental essay-writing “musts”: thesis statement is driven by tension and conflict, even “danger”; essay organization unfolds in a tightly knit line of reasoning such that no paragraph may be moved; paragraph main claims all line up sequentially to form the essay’s “spine”; and the conclusion meaningfully addresses the significance—the “So what?”—of the essay’s key insight.

Julie wisely, if ambitiously, chose two texts in which she perceived a consequential, not tangential, relationship, though nearly two thousand years separate them. Even, her essay’s analysis comes to give explicit, even painful, relevance to that wide historical spread, laudably avoiding the ever-present fault line in simplistic “compare and contrast” essays: a mere enumeration of similarities and differences. Instead, aggravated by her sense of paradox in the words and actions of the women in her study—Ban Zhao and Songlian—and their outcomes, Julie plunges into the dark realm of Chinese gender oppression and its costly compromise at once psychological, social and, ultimately, political.

The result is highly original, even daring. Julie’s tight organization and the interconnected, intense unfolding of her argument—each sequential paragraph rooted in meticulous, probing analysis and highly relevant evidence—powerfully anchor the courage and strength of her essay’s closing insight. Extending beyond a historically contingent analysis of gender, Julie finds the “omnipresent Confucianism that Ban and Songlian submit to sneakily [expressed] in contemporary China, encroaching upon everyone.” Arriving at this conclusion, I exclaimed “Wow!” And thoroughly expect many who read Julie Wu’s essay will too.

—Amy Goldman, Clinical Professor in the Writing Program