Book Review: Women in Early Imperial China
Hinsch’s theme of the book seems to be directed at the idea that stable society was determined on women’ patrilineal kin, and their performance of social roles within their kin. He outlines many aspects of women’s lives during the imperial china such as the kinship, Wealth and Work, Learning, Rituals and Cosmology. After reading the book I came to the conclusion that Hinsch depicts in his book that social stability is in favor of men. Hinsch, starts off by giving an insight of the early Chinese dynasties; Zhou, Qin, Western Han and the Eastern Han. Much of that chapter covered dynasties failure and the establishment of following dynasties. One can tell that the author wants to build readers knowledge on understanding the imperial dynasties before exploring women in imperial china. Many aspects of that chapter was covered in our class.
The mention of Hinsch comparison of Eastern Zhou states possible fate of becoming united like it happened in the European countries, was intriguing. I find …show more content…
Many thinkers also believed that the wisdom a mother imparted to a son was likely to be moral rather than intellectual. This allowed for illiterate women to play an important role on educating their children. It was interesting also to see that Confucius idea was that a woman could have knowledge. It is interesting to see those two different ideas clashing during the Han Dynasty. Women for the most part were illiterate but some prominent figures from elite families did become scholars. Ban Zha, was one of those prominent figures who also pushed education for women in later imperial times and arrival of female scholars and she started the progressive movement. I found it interesting how many works of women were lost, and much of the surviving works only survived because they happened to be quoted in historical works, this depicts the unimportance of women writing during imperial
Hinsch’s theme of the book seems to be directed at the idea that stable society was determined on women’ patrilineal kin, and their performance of social roles within their kin. He outlines many aspects of women’s lives during the imperial china such as the kinship, Wealth and Work, Learning, Rituals and Cosmology. After reading the book I came to the conclusion that Hinsch depicts in his book that social stability is in favor of men. Hinsch, starts off by giving an insight of the early Chinese dynasties; Zhou, Qin, Western Han and the Eastern Han. Much of that chapter covered dynasties failure and the establishment of following dynasties. One can tell that the author wants to build readers knowledge on understanding the imperial dynasties before exploring women in imperial china. Many aspects of that chapter was covered in our class.
The mention of Hinsch comparison of Eastern Zhou states possible fate of becoming united like it happened in the European countries, was intriguing. I find …show more content…
Many thinkers also believed that the wisdom a mother imparted to a son was likely to be moral rather than intellectual. This allowed for illiterate women to play an important role on educating their children. It was interesting also to see that Confucius idea was that a woman could have knowledge. It is interesting to see those two different ideas clashing during the Han Dynasty. Women for the most part were illiterate but some prominent figures from elite families did become scholars. Ban Zha, was one of those prominent figures who also pushed education for women in later imperial times and arrival of female scholars and she started the progressive movement. I found it interesting how many works of women were lost, and much of the surviving works only survived because they happened to be quoted in historical works, this depicts the unimportance of women writing during imperial