Technology, commentary and the admonitions for women.

Abstract

The following is an analysis of the Admonitions for Women (Nu Jie) by the Later Han Dynasty scholar, Ban Zhao. It examines the historical context for its composition, applying not only one literary template, that of the instructional text, the technological treatise, but also Confucian Commentary. Through this process, the Admonitions emerges as a sophisticated philosophical tract that combines not only several literary traditions, but applies them to a new, unique audience: elite women. In so doing, Ban Zhao challenges assumptions of women's roles, expectations of women, and enlightens her readers as to what might be really happening among her contemporaries. Thus, this treatise comprises not only Ban Zhao's ideals for women, but indicates what they were not doing (hence the necessity for her tract). Finally, literary, philosophical and historical contextualization offers a new look at many gendered readings of the material, in effect re-contextualizing in a more nuanced and layered approach.

Key Words: Women in the Han Dynasty, Literary Analysis, Chinese Philosophy

Introduction

 
   "I, the unworthy writer, am unsophisticated, unenlightened, and by 
   nature unintelligent, but I am fortunate both to have received not 
   a little favor from my scholarly Father, and to have had a cultured 
   mother and teachers upon whom to rely for a literary education as 
   well as for training in good manners. More than forty years have 
   passed since at the age of fourteen I took up the dustpan and the 
   broom in the Cao family [her husband's family]. During this time 
   with trembling heart I feared constantly that I might disgrace my 
   parents, and that I might multiply difficulties for both the women 
   and the men of my husband's family. Day and night I was distressed 
   in heart, but I labored without confessing weariness. Now and 
   hereafter, however, I know how to escape from such fears." (1)