True to Her Word

The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial ChinaBy WEIJING LU

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2008 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5808-6

Contents

List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………….ixAcknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………….xiChronology………………………………………………………………………………………xvIntroduction…………………………………………………………………………………….1Part One. History………………………………………………………………………………..191. Moral Heroism and Craving for Extremes: The Ming Period (1368–1644)……………………………212. Putting Young Heroines in the Spotlight: The Seventeenth Century……………………………………493. The State and the Social Webs of Exaltation: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries………………….68Part Two. Choices………………………………………………………………………………..1014. Dissuading the Resolute: The Families of Faithful Maidens………………………………………….1035. Dying for an Ideal: The Choice of Suicide………………………………………………………..1296. A Young Life, a Long Journey: Living as a Faithful Maiden………………………………………….167Part Three. Ideology……………………………………………………………………………..2117. Old Rituals and New Questions: The Faithful Maiden Debate………………………………………….213Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………247Appendix: Faithful Maidens Reported in Qinding da Qing yitong zhi (Siku quanshu edition)…………………257Character List…………………………………………………………………………………..261Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………..269References………………………………………………………………………………………315Index…………………………………………………………………………………………..335

Chapter One

Moral Heroism and Craving for Extremes The Ming Period (1368–1644)

IN HIS ESSAY denouncing the faithful maiden practice, Mao Qiling (1623–1716), a leading scholar of his day, charged that the practice was never recorded in the Six Confucian Classics, the twenty-one histories, or any other writings that were worth mentioning by cultivated men, so it bore no authority in history. Many of Mao’s contemporaries did not share his position, but even the eminent scholars who spoke highly of faithful maidens agreed with his observation about the scarcity of early records on the subject. Faithful maidenhood was a new phenomenon, they claimed, one that separated their own time from that of the ancients, and one that had suddenly surged forward out of obscurity.

Indeed. Even though scattered precedents found their way into historical records, faithful maidenhood did not appear to have offered young girls much appeal before the thirteenth century, nor had it attracted attention from the state and the literati. Significant signs of change marked the thirteenth century as a turning point in the discourse on the faithful maiden practice, paving the way for the faithful maiden cult to grow. However, the faithful maiden phenomenon would not have grown into an empirewide cult had it not been for the special conditions of the Ming era. During the Ming, the practice both evolved into a cult amid a cultural fascination with extraordinary behavior in the name of morality and corresponded closely with the Confucian elite’s anxiety over moral deficiency and the surge of moral heroism in the political realm. The rise of the faithful maiden cult thereby underscores a close correlation between the changes in the so-called women’s quarters and in the political and cultural realms, illuminating young women as actors who shaped the culture of their time.

Zhen and Zhennü: The Linguistic Origin

“Zhennü” (literally, “a zhen woman”), translated in the context of this study as “faithful maiden,” was not a late imperial concept. It predated the Ming by more than two thousand years, originally with a wider application. The key character, zhen, as it first appeared in oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty (sixteenth–eleventh centuries BCE) and in the Book of Changes, means “to divine.” In most Zhou (eleventh century–771 BCE) through Former Han (266–8 BCE) texts its usage had been expanded to encompass the moral attributes of a human being: upright, appropriate, unbending, and consistent. A gender-neutral attribute, zhen was applied as much to men as to women. But how zhen was manifested in action was gender specific. In the Mao Commentary on the Book of Songs, the oldest existing authority on this Confucian classic (dated to the third century BCE), a zhennü is described as a woman who would not marry someone who did not suit her or who would not submit to a vicious man.

The classic textbook of women’s moral education in imperial China, Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan) by Liu Xiang (77?–6 BCE), provides us with another venue to analyze the gendered meanings of zhen and zhennü in its time. In this text, exemplars praised for their zhen disposition include widows who rejected remarriage and wives who refused to leave husbands who were ill with a terminal disease or who neglected them. However, the attribute of zhen was also associated with actions taken under other circumstances. Lady Zhenjiang, the consort of King Zhao of Chu, for example, declined to leave her terrace though threatened by floods, as she had agreed with the king that she would answer only to a summons that came with the king’s identification tally. “A principle for a zhennü is not to breach an agreement, and the brave should not fear death,” she declared. When the messenger came back with the king’s tally, the terrace had already collapsed and she had been carried away by the currents and drowned (see Figure 1.1). In another example, a woman known for her zhenyi (uprightness and constancy) attribute refused to carry out her wedding because her fiancé’s family had not completed the appropriate rituals for the marriage. The frustrated family sued her, and she ended up in jail. But she still would not change her mind. It is the way of a zhennü that she “prefers to die rather than agree to a marriage that fails to complete even just one of the rituals” (yi li bu bei, sui si bu cong).

The essence of zhen is thus to uphold moral principles or to fulfill promises made according to these principles, firmly, single-mindedly, and consistently, or to use Liu Xiang’s words, to be “concentrated and steadfast” (yi zhuanyi wei zhen). A zhennü was a woman of profound moral rectitude who put her principles before her own life, refusing to bow to intimidation or threat. A fifth-century case in which the state of the Northern Wei (386–556) bestowed the honorific title of zhennü on a young woman confirms that this quality remained at the core of its definition. A daughter from a Sixian family was engaged to a man by the name of Peng, and before their marriage Peng made sexual advances. She reprimanded him, saying that, although they were engaged, they had not received the instruction from their parents to marry, and therefore she would rather die than violate the ritual. Outraged, Peng killed her. Peng was put to death by the imperial court, and the Sixian daughter was honored with the title of zhennü “to make known her virtue.” A comparison between Sixian and a typical late imperial zhennü reveals how much the meaning of the term had changed. In both situations, tensions rose from a young woman’s relationship with her fiancé. However, Sixian placed her allegiance with her parents’ instructions, but a late imperial zhennü disobeyed her parents and saw her fiancé as the ultimate object of loyalty.

From Sixian to the late imperial faithful maidens, history saw the reduction of the applicability of zhen to one realm. Zhennü in the late imperial period became a category reserved largely for unmarried women who pledged loyalty to their first betrothed. As the virtue of zhen for women increasingly came to be concentrated on marital fidelity, its other applications were marginalized. The shifting meaning of zhen attests to a changed emphasis in the late imperial definition of female virtue.

The Early Tales

Prior to the thirteenth century, accounts of a bereaved fiancée who refused to marry another man appeared only sporadically. They diverge considerably in the ways they portray the protagonists, with some extolled for their fidelity and others for their religious efficacy or deeds of generosity. Perhaps significantly, the two earliest cases were recorded in the didactic literature of exemplary women. But even there, the moral messages were not uniform. The first story, recorded in Liu Xiang’s Biographies of Exemplary Women, is said to have taken place in the Spring and Autumn period (770– 476 BCE):

Lady [Weixuan], daughter of the duke of Qi, was on her way to the Wei to marry [the duke of Wei]. When she arrived at the city gate [of Wei], the duke of Wei died. Her nursemaid said: “You may return home.” She did not listen. She thereupon entered the city, observing a three-year mourning for him. When the mourning period was over, his younger brother succeeded as the duke of Wei. He proposed to her: “Wei is a small state, and it cannot afford two kitchens. Please let us share one kitchen.” She did not agree [to marry him]. The duke of Wei sent an envoy to Qi to tell her brothers about it. Her brothers all wanted her to marry the duke, and they told Lady Weixuan their opinion through a messenger. She did not listen to them either. Thereupon, she wrote a stanza: “My heart is not like a stone, / and it will not turn. / My heart is not like a mat, / and it will not roll.”

The cited stanza is contained in “Cypress Boat” (Bozhou) in the “Airs of Bei” (Beifeng) section of the Book of Songs, but the credibility of Liu’s account is nowhere verified. According to the Mao Commentary, the poem was written by a frustrated gentleman whose muddle-headed ruler failed to recognize his virtue. Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the Song dynasty philosopher and a Book of Songs expert, suspected that it was written by an estranged wife who had lost her husband’s favor because of his attraction to his concubines. The question of historical authenticity notwithstanding, the account in Biographies of Exemplary Women shows that the faithful maiden ideal had an early champion. Placing the story in the section “Steadfast and Deferential,” Liu Xiang framed Lady Weixuan’s decision in terms of the moral principle of “uprightness and constancy,” praising her for her adamant adherence to the relationship with her fiancé. Lady Weixuan was to become an inspirational model for many late imperial girls whose basic education included the Biographies of Exemplary Women (see Figure 1.2). The term “cypress boat vow” would come to stand for young women’s resolve to neither remarry nor be betrothed a second time.

A second faithful maiden, as reported by Huangfu Mi (215–82) in his Biographies of Exemplary Women, made her vow of celibacy under entirely differently circumstances. When Luo Jing suffered the death of her father (possibly in an epidemic), her fiancé, Zhu Kuang, took risks to manage the situation for her family and consequently became ill and died. “Out of her gratitude for him, Luo Jing vowed not to marry.” She resisted a man who had taken her siblings hostage as a means to force her into marrying him. “The reason that I give myself to the deceased and vowed not to be betrothed again,” she told him, “is that I am deeply grateful to Zhu Kuang, who died for my father. I have suffered a great deal, and I hope you will sympathize and let me go. If you do not, I will die to preserve my will.” Unlike Lady Weixuan’s, Luo Jing’s choice not to marry was grounded on her personal feelings rather than on the abstract idea of moral propriety. Her act was comprehensible and rational, as the critics of the faithful maiden cult in the late imperial period would see it. In the late imperial controversy, the critics praised Luo Jing as the correct model, in contrast to the young women of their own time who, as they saw it, vowed fidelity for a deceased fiancé for no good reason.

Outside the elite “exemplary women” genre, other scattered sources give away ordinary people’s fascination with faithful maidens, but in these stories folk flavor overwhelmed the didactic message. In the Zhenyuan reign (785–804) during the Tang (618–906), according to one story, a man from Sihui, Guangdong province, was killed by a tiger while collecting firewood. His fiancée, surnamed Wen, “hurried to his funeral, put on mourning garments for three years, and waited upon her parents-in-law diligently and carefully served them delicacies.” Afterward, she felt deeply sad and withdrew to the mountains, cutting off her connections with people. Years later, a mysterious cloud suddenly rose to the sky. A woman appeared in the cloud, surrounded by flags and musicians playing instruments. “[The crowd viewing the scene] burst into cheers, saying that the Wen woman had gone to become a deity.” An Altar of Ascending to Heaven and a Daoist shrine were erected dedicated to Wen. Chen Gongfeng, the twelfth-century narrator of this story, tells us: “For many years morning incense and evening lamps have never gone out in the shrine. At times of drought and flood, the shrine never fails to answer the wishes of the supplicants.” A miracle then unfolded in front of Chen’s own eyes. In the spring of 1133, drought visited the area again. Chen and others, led by the magistrate, appealed to the goddess. The next day a heavy rain fell. In his amazement, Chen commented that the magic power was derived from Wen’s immortal spirit, which corresponded with Heaven. Chen praises Wen for her “pure and upright behavior” and hints that her ascent to divinity was made possible by the merit of her moral deeds. Wen was the first in a string of deified faithful maidens yet to come in the late imperial period, whose virtue lent them mysterious power that turned them into objects of worship.

The theme of supernatural power gave the Wen story a lingering attraction; the enshrinement kept it alive over time. There were less mysterious tales, in which women who remained celibate after their fiancés’ deaths were remembered for donating their wealth for public welfare. In these (originally oral) stories, the faithful maidens did not appear primarily as moral icons of fidelity. They were worshipped, appreciated, or even romanticized for their mystic powers or for their charitable deeds. They lived in local legends instead of empirewide glory; the villagers saw them as exceptional individuals who had done great service to their communities, and it was for this that they were commemorated.

Changing Discourse: The Song and Yuan Periods

If we call these early incidents the prelude, then the thirteenth century opened the first chapter of the official faithful maiden discourse that portrayed these maidens solely as moral objects. Henceforth, myth and religious piety receded, while moral rhetoric pushed its way to the center of the narrative, thanks to the collective efforts of the state and the Confucian literati.

The thirteenth century recorded more faithful maidens than any previous periods, and for the first time in history, the Southern Song (1127–1279) court conferred on them the imperial award of jingbiao. A time-honored practice that dated back to the Han dynasty, jingbiao was one of the central Confucian concepts of governance. It was a measure of ordering society through “educating and transforming [the common people]” (jiaohua), as well as a gesture of imperial benevolence, one principal criterion for a Confucian ruler. The Southern Song court placed faithful maidens among the ranks of virtuous women, applauding explicitly with moral rhetoric their decisions to remain celibate and emphasizing their service to their deceased fiancés and their families. The court, for example, granted a certain Cheng daughter, who was engaged to a descendant of the Song statesman Sima Guang (1019–86), the title of chaste widow (jiefu). It praised another young woman, Ye Nütong in lavish moral terms: “You had been engaged but had not performed the marital ritual when you made a ‘cypress boat’ vow and went to raise his orphan [meaning ‘adopting a son to raise as his heir’]. Years and months have gone by, but your character is like ice and frost, which becomes firmer as time goes by. You have the virtue of the ancient righteous women.” The court conferred on her the title of ruren and decreed that she be rewarded with cloth and wine monthly and her neighborhood honored with the title “neighborhood of the upright woman” (lienü fang).

State recognition of the faithful maiden emerged at the local level as well, carried out by magistrates and by editors of local gazetteers. In the 1250s, for instance, the magistrate of Yuqian county, Zhejiang province, honored the residence of a young woman, Liu, who had been engaged to a jinshi degree holder, with the inscription “lienü fang.” Records of Lin’an (Lin’an zhi, compiled during 1265–74) portrays her as a determined heroine who fought her parents when they tried to dissuade her and threatened them with her suicide. When her frightened parents acquiesced, “she put on coarse mourning garments, and went to her fiancé’s family. She threw herself on his coffin, weeping until she could weep no more.” Possibly the earliest instance of a local government honoring a faithful maiden, the case is especially noteworthy for the ways in which the story was presented: it was told exclusively in light of wifely fidelity, and the narrative is built entirely around the dramatic moments of Liu’s acting out her resolve. The moralistic portrayal bears a striking resemblance to those that we will see in late imperial times.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from True to Her Wordby WEIJING LU Copyright © 2008 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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