Abstract:

Examining the differences in content and narrative strategies in various versions of the Biographies of Chaste Females in Yueqing County Annals in the Ming and Qing Dynasties as the core material, this paper attempts to analyze the transformation of the connotations of female virtues and the gentry’s intentions about female virtues discipline in different times. There are three conclusions. Firstly, since the middle Qing Dynasty, there had been a trend of diversification in the connotation construction of female virtues: besides the “loyalty and chaste”, which was the only orientation in the Ming Dynasty, “virtuous mothers” such as OUYANG Xiu’s mother with “Di training” were included in the middle Qing Dynasty, and “talented women” in the late Qing Dynasty. Thus, it is necessary to rethink the dominant understanding in the academic circle that the connotation of female virtues tended to be “narrowed down” towards the single orientation of the “loyalty and chaste” after the Ming Dynasty. Secondly, two phenomena in the construction of female virtues since the middle Ming Dynasty, that is, advocating virtuous mothers and criticizing the women who were addicted to Buddhist and Taoist beliefs and adopted children from a different clan, have to be understood in the context of social environment. Thirdly, female virtues discipline did have its practical concern since the writing of chaste females played an important role in maintaining social, political and cultural order in local society. Since the New Culture Movement, we have been used to attacking the concept of chastity merely at ethical level and consequently failed to explore its material foundation and explain why the ancient people in general advocated female virtues.