Women Writers in China: We are all good girls now

Chang, Kang-i Sun and Haun Saussy, eds. Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

I liked the introduction to this anthology, which is broken up into rhetorical questions like "why women writers?" and "why poets?" The editors have really good answers to these and other questions that briefly illustrate the 'play of gender' in society by means of the tradition. A good wife, for example, once consoled her husband's failure on his examination by quoting a poem about how good girls do better than bad girls in the end. There is nothing queer in a wife comparing her husband to a good girl in the Chinese tradition; in fact, she is riffing off a famous poem by Du Fu, who most readers understand to have been comparing the good girl to himself. And Du Fu in turn relied on a long tradition of disappointed men who figured themselves as misunderstood 'good girls,' going back to the ancient apocryphal disappointed civil servant, Qu Yuan.

Given that tropes of female poets like the proverbial 'good girl' (jia nü 佳女) are so important to men and women alike, it is a relatively simple matter to show that actual female poets are also important to men and women alike. The 'real women' seem to become most interesting during the Ming and the Qing, when readers apparently eagerly devoured whole anthologies of poetry by women.

There's a good girl: Concubine Ban

The first poems in the short section of poets from "ancient times" are by 'Favorite Beauty Ban" (Ban jieyu) 班婕妤 (seen here turning down the Emperor's palanquin, lest she look like a hussy, from The Admonitions Scroll). The famous "Song of Resentment" (Yuan ge xing 怨歌行) was just elegant poutiness -- meh, but surely outdone by the longer, more elevated "Rhapsody of Self-Commiseration" (Zi diao fu 自悼賦). My favorite lines included,

Whether awake or asleep, I sighed repeatedly	每寤寐而累息兮
I'd loosen my sash and reflect on myself	申佩離以自思
I spread out paintings of women to serve as guiding mirrors	陳女圖以鏡監兮
Consulting the lady scribe, I asked about the Odes	顧女史而問詩
Saddened by the monition of the hen that crows，	悲晨婦之作戒兮
I lamented the transgressions of Bao and Yan	哀褒閻之為郵
I praised Huang and Ying, wives of the Lord of Yu	美皇、英之女虞兮
Extolled Ren and Si, mothers of Zhou	榮任、姒之母周
Although stupid and uncouth, and unable to emulate them	雖愚陋其靡及兮
Dare I still my thoughts and forget them? (translated by David Knechtges, pp. 19-20)	敢捨心而忘茲？

I love the idea that you need to loosen your clothing a bit to relax and think about yourself as a self. I could see myself turning on the computer after that, or reading a book, or watching some television. Ban the Concubine pulls out some paintings of really great women and some of really awful ones, and thinks hard about what their life stories mean for her own. I'd say the central tension here is over how to best be "good," and especially whether a girl can be too smart for her own good. Ban's mastery of highly elevated Chinese can only mean that she is very smart indeed, but still she tells us she is "stupid and uncouth." Is that what she really thinks? Or had calling yourself stupid already become a trope in self-reflection by Chinese women?