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

by Grace S. Fong

"Grace Fong has written a wonderful history of female writers’ participation in the elite conventions of Chinese poetics. Fong’s recovery of many of these poets, her able exegesis and elegant, analytical grasp of what the poets were doing is a great read, and her bilingual presentation of their poetry gives the book additional power. This is a persuasive and elegant study." ―Tani Barlow, author of The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

"In this quietly authoritative book, Grace Fong has brought a group of women poets back to life. Previously ignored by scholars because of their marginal status or the inaccessibility of their works, these remarkable writers now speak to us about the sensualities, pains, satisfactions, and sadness of being a woman in a patriarchal society. Professor Fong―a superb translator of Chinese poetry, prose, and criticism―has rendered the works of these women in a way that is true both to our theoretical concerns and theirs." ―Dorothy Ko, author of Cinderella’s A Revisionist History of Footbinding

"Professor Fong approaches the poetry of Ming-Qing upper-class women as a social-cultural activity that allowed these women to manifest their agency and assert their own subjectivity against the background of virtual and actual networks of fellow female poets. As the distillation of more than ten years of research by one of the leading scholars in this field, this work is a timely contribution that eminently deserves our attention. Given the inclusion of translations of some of the texts discussed, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the reading of women’s poetry of the Ming-Qing period." ―Wilt Idema, Harvard University

Herself an Author addresses the critical question of how to approach the study of women’s writing. It explores various methods of engaging in a meaningful way with a rich corpus of poetry and prose written by women of the late Ming and Qing periods, much of it rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China and the United States. The volume treats different genres of writing and includes translations of texts that are made available for the first time in English. Among the works considered are the life-long poetic record of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic poetry of the concubine Shen Cai.

Taking the view that gentry women’s varied textual production was a form of cultural practice, Grace Fong examines women’s autobiographical poetry collections, travel writings, and critical discourse on the subject of women’s poetry, offering fresh insights on women’s intervention into the dominant male literary tradition. The wealth of texts translated and discussed here include fascinating documents written by concubines―women who occupied a subordinate position in the family and social system. Fong adopts the notion of agency as a theoretical focus to investigate forms of subjectivity and enactments of subject positions in the intersection between textual practice and social inscription. Her reading of the life and work of women writers reveals surprising instances and modes of self-empowerment within the gender constraints of Confucian orthodoxy. Fong argues that literate women in late imperial China used writing and reading to create literary and social communities, transcend temporal-spatial and social limitations, and represent themselves as the authors of their own life histories.

Genres: China, Chinese Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2008

Reviews

[Academic_Lagomorph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concubine Shen Cai in the 1700s could learn to write poems from her principal wife, published poetry collections so popular that multiple copies are preserved in different parts of China. She also learned calligraphy from her principal wife, and was in such demand it was sold to Japan. And then she wrote, if there’s a next life, I still want to be a woman. I cried reading that sentence in her poem.

[貝晨珊 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The generalising and often cherry-picking nature of this book has left me unsure regarding the scientific value it has. However, the literary works consulted by the author may prove to be a great source for my own research one day. I will come back, then, and reconsider my opinion on this book.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say the thing that really struck me about this book was the sheer ammount of books written and published by women writers, especially when you consider the equivalent in English history. There were huge volumes of collections of women's poetry that had been printed since the 14th century and women decided to edit and publish their own collections of poetry from the 16th. There were thousands of published women poets before the 20th century which I found most remarkable. Also not all of these women were elite women but some were self taught and had started their lives on the equivalent of the working class end of the social scale.

The structure of the book is very nice. She looks in depth at the writings of one woman whose work was published after her death Gan Lirou (1743-1819). This woman's poems were autobiographical that she'd written throughout her life celebrating and commisorating the different things she'd experienced, a lot of which were quite tragic. Fong translated only key moments rather than the whole collection (as there were far too many poems) but with the background she supplied even these gave a good insight into the woman's life and feelings. Fong also included the original Chinese as well as the translations which was very helpful. The poems show her playing an active role in "official matters" as well as religious matters. Praying for rain in 1807, which was mentioned two years later in the local gazette (46). She also regretted not being able to participate in the examinations and reap the same success as her brothers (48)This is something she writes about both in her 20s and in her 70s. Despite her orthodox approach to her gender roles she still seems them as limiting.

The next chapter looked at the poetry written by concubines (as opposed to nice respectable wives). I thought it was a bit of an interesting descision to seperate out the writing of the women dependent on their relationship with men. But in doing so there were some interesting things revealed. Like the concubines were often helped write poetry by the "wives". It seemed that these women, freed from the responsibility of running the household would have more time for their studies. Several of the concubines themselves expressed preference in the 18th century saying that they "would rather be concubines to men of literary talent, rather than as a principal wife to a man of wealth" (67). One of the poems "Songs of selling a daughter" ends with a great deal of anger or anguish,
... For a hundred years it will be difficult to wash away the disgrace of being a maid
Rtaher than sell the daughters body,
Why not eat her flesh?
Eating the daughter's flesh will fill the parents' stomachs.
Selling the daughter - the daughter's heart will never feel fulfilled, even in death (68)

However, another poem written by an old woman to a neighbour girl expresses satisfaction with her gender ending with the lines "I just wish that it will always be like this, even in my next life I still want to be an old woman". I've recently become fascinated with the transgender idea of rebirth, and how you could be reborn as a man, and all the different implications that this brings about. But I like that this woman was so satisfied that she didn't want to change.

The third chapters, authoring journeys, looked at women's travel writing (both wives and concubines). The problem with this chapter was most of the examples used were poetry, and the prose describing the journals was put in an appendix at the back. I would like to have seen this brought into the main text. Though it seemed like an interesting enough topic to have at least a whole book on the subject. The women writing were not sheltered either from the horrors they encountered, some were injured in battle, one was injured in a battle many times trying to save her husband and wrote about wanting to be a woman warrior like Mulan.

The last chapter examines women's anthologies and women as editors, and as I have already mentioned earlier was very enlightening.

I borrowed a copy of this book from SOAS as it's only availble in hardcover for almost £50. It's a shame a paperback version hasn't been released for half that as it would be a fantastic book to reach a wider audience and deserves to be read by more people.

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a very bad feeling about this book and my bad feelings came true. The way the author writes is mostly fine, but she also uses these "high" words that are just difficult to understand for me even if this were written in my mother tongue.
At the beginning I was still undecided as to whether I should continue with this book or not. The problem is the author suddenly switching to using words that I cannot understand without looking them up even though she mostly writes normally.
I skipped the entire first chapter, a biography is just not what I came for. The chapter on concubines as poets was a lot more interesting than the prior one that was a biography. Sometimes these concubines were more "free" because they weren't required to have the same duties as a primary wife (in Qing times they were considered minor wives) albeit their positions were much more precarious. And later it was stated that they were on the same level as male slaves. The earliest and most common term for concubine is gie, shown in early texts such as the Book of Changes and the 4th century BCE Zuo zhuan. In late warring states the character was used in the sense of female slave, and correlated with chen (male slave), and so shows the low status of concubines.
If this author could just avoid using these odd sentences. It is interesting to read about the differences between the life of a concubine and a courtesan and how the former had more opportunities (because of more safety) to use literary skills in which might have been trained as a courtesan. And it makes sense that since this one here was sold by her parents she has no filial obligations anymore. However, I skipped the rest of the chapter as the author once more starts with a biography, that was not what I came here for.
Apparently it was basically an obligation for men to be outside the house and as a consequence travel became an almost inseperable aspect of the life of the literati-scholar-official and of the merchant.
When the book switched to focus on specific women, I hoped for the best and sadly it did not come true. Sure those female poets also considered rural folks to be a symbol of lost innocence or naturalness and it was interesting, but the author could not stop writing so oddly. The book had its really good sides, but I did not care about these mini-biographies and all the other stuff. And the author slipping into this odd language time and again was also bad. Overall, this was not a good experience.