Tracing the Lives of Chinese Women during the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644

The lives of Chinese women during the Ming were usually conveyed in a limited number of sources: gazetteers, epitaphs, biographies of virtuous women, accounts of nuns, and the occasional poem or prose piece. Often, the lives are described as fitting categories such as a dutiful daughter, a loving wife or devoted mother. In recent decades, scholars have expanded our understanding of these lives from various perspectives. My own recent research has focused on re-evaluating individual biographies through corporate (family) identities. In this paper, I will be exploring an aspect of women’s lives as read through Confucian five cardinal relationships, the cornerstone of all social relationships in late imperial China as well as the building block for larger, corporate biographies. These relationships focus on the key nexus through which people lived their lives: father-son (or parent-child), ruler-subject, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother (or sibling-sibling) and friend-friend. In this paper, I will examine the women of the Yang family of Xindu, Sichuan of the 15^th and 16^th centuries. I will focus attention on Huang E (1498-1569), a famous female poet, her mother (Madame Nie), and her mother(s)-in-law. My interests are to reconstruct women’s lives in a more complex set of familial, social and political relationships so as to enrich our understanding of the family and society in late imperial China.