Women Roles in Ancient China

P1: Confucius greatly esteemed ancestral rites and related family virtues such as filial piety. He hoped that through practice of ritual everyone would learn to fulfill their duties of their roles. A women’s role were primarily kinship roles. It was incumbent on women to accord with the wishes of men. Confucius’s follower Mencius declared that the worst of unfilial acts was a failure to have descendants. In later centuries this emphasis on the necessity of sons led many to be disappointed at the birth of a daughter.  Women were at the bottom of the Confucian hierarchy. For Confucians, spiritual development begins at home, and the home traditionally has been seen by Confucians as the paradigmatic arena of social relations. Social relations, of course, are rarely exchanges between equals, in the Confucian view, but instead tend to be interactions between superiors and inferiors. The ideal Confucian state, with it “natural” hierarchy of ruler and subject, mirror the home, with its “natural” hierarchy of husband and wife, and older and younger children. Women were expected to demonstrate obedience before all other virtues, and at every stage of life. At no point in life under Confucian view were autonomous and free of male control.

P2: Sometime during the Han Dynasty in the centuries after Confucius, it became common for writers to discuss gender in terms of yin and yang. Women were yin and the men were yang. Yin was soft, yielding passive and tranquil whereas yang was hard, active and dominating. Day/night, summer/winter or death/life were natural processes that occurred to the interaction of yin and yang. Thus, society pushed that the differences between men and women in terms of yin and yang stressed that the differences were part of natural order and not because of social institutions artificially created by human beings. In yin and yang the two concepts at hand complement each other, but are not necessarily equal. Thus, it is only natural for men to lead and women to follow. If women (yin) were to gain the upper hand it would upset the balance of nature and society. However, this did not mean that women had no influence in a household. For example, in source 17 (Women’s Virtues and Vices) Mencius walked into a room and saw that his wife was not appropriately dressed and would not speak to her because she was an improper woman. His wife spoke of this to his mother and the mother spoke to Mencius that he should have shown indication that he was nearby or would enter the room. It is not her fault she was not ready as he did not give her the chance to prepare herself for him. After listening to his mother Mencius took by his wife. This shows that men are not always in the right and sometimes a woman is needed to guide him and groom him in becoming a proper man.

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