published_or_final_version / Fine Arts / Master / Master of Philosophy

toc / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Historical consensus has labeled the educational reform efforts of China's scholar-officials in the second half of the nineteenth century as merely reactions to external circumstances and therefore has concluded that these reforms were "failures". The youthful revolt against Chinese cultural traditions, which culminated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, has frequently been cited as a clear demonstration that previous educational reforms had failed. However, when viewed as the intellectual phase of the revolutionary process, reform activities among members of China's bureaucratic and scholarly elite in the four and one half decades from the 1860s to the early 1900s can be seen as limited, but definite, successes, initiated from within the traditional society and assisted by the introduction of Western secular knowledge by Protestant missionaries.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

This research analyses Qing women's writings and paratexts to explore how women applied their agency to re-shape the nature of everyday practice in the boudoir, arguing that dutiful activities were not only responsibilities for the fulfillment of womanhood, but also a location for self-expression and a channel to cross the boundary of private sphere and public society. The main body of this study examines activities concerning rong 容 (appearance) and gong 功/工 (achievements/work), the practical aspects in side 四德 (four womanly virtues) defined in the Confucian values. In the part about women's appearance, this research will examine women's self-adornment and looking in the mirror, and in the part about women's work, it focuses on garment making and cooking. On this basis, this study rethinks the connotation of "four virtues," and further explores women's agency manifested in their everyday details in the late imperial period. Scholars in gender history and women's literature have conducted fruitful studies on multiple aspects of women's daily life, such as women's production and consumption, material life, household duties, literary pursuit, leisure activities, and social communications. This research attempts to examine a less-studied aspect of women's self-representation: their subjective experience in the practical aspects of the "four female virtues." How did common practices about rong and gong relate to women's opinion on body and material, inspire their emotions, and reflect their rich inner reality? How did women empower themselves through these everyday activities and in turn transform duties into a platform of self-construction and self-expression? This research focuses on the Qing dynasty, a transitional period in history that bridged traditional and modern China, to explore how women's agency was constructed in, manifested through, and embedded in the commonest everyday domestic practices. Specifically, this research focuses on four particular activities that represented rong and gong: self-adornment, looking in the mirror, garment making, and food management. I argue that women in the Qing dynasty not merely fulfilled but also tactfully transformed the Confucian expectation of "four virtues" through common practices in the everyday, and in the meanwhile, they empowered themselves by creating personally meaningful worlds within the inner quarters.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of History