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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page paper examining this book by Jonathan D. Spence. Looking at social conditions in seventeenth century China, the paper argues that women in this era were essentially not considered to be people at all. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Wangwomn.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
around the idea of couples rather than singles, which makes the suddenly-single a sort of social outcast. However, widows in twentieth century America have a much less horrific lot than
those in the seventeenth-century China described in Jonathan Spences The Death of Woman Wang, because, however small and easily-neglected the social role for widows may be, our society can still
conceive of life without a husband. This was not the case, however, in the society described by Spence, because a woman without a man literally had no social identity whatsoever.
Spences book, part history and part fiction, tells of a woman known to us only by the name of the male who "owned" her -- for Chinese women had
no identity of their own at that time. While sons were raised to carry on the family name and traditions, daughters were raised only to marry into another family. As
children they were property of their fathers; as brides they became property of their husbands. And yet Spences book describes a situation which goes far beyond the normal behavior
of a patriarchal male toward his subservient wife. The woman Wang is actually murdered for an attempt to get out from under her husbands domination -- and while her situation
was by no means typical of Chinese marital experience, the repressive conditions which made it possible were the cultural portion of every Chinese woman who lived during that era. And
this, again, was a situation created by the fact that a Chinese woman without a husband was unthinkable, a scandal, a disgrace; even an abusive husband was considered, from a
social standpoint, far better than none at all. How was it possible for a society to have so little respect for its women that they would put them in this
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