Gender and relationship roles in the analects and the Mencius

Asian Philosophy

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 115-132

  Chan, Sin Yee ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249155989     PISSN: 09552367     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09552360050121119     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. TUNG CHUNG-SHU (1984) Ch'un-ch'iu fan-lu (Taipei, Commercial Press).
2. For discussion of the complementary relationships of yirt/yang in the Book of Changes, see Hsu Fu-kuan (1961) yin-yang wu-hsing kuan-nien chih yan-pien chi jo-kan yuo-kuan wen-hsien ti cheng-li shih-tei yu chieh-shih ti wen-ti, Wen-chu p'ing-lun, 12(19-20).
3. See CHU HE (1973). Chou Lian-hsi chih (Taipei, Commercial Press). Here Chu Hsi associates males with yang and goodness, and female with yin and evil. Due to the practice of the Chinese language which generally puts yin before yang, male before female and good before evil, a literal reading of the quotation causes confusion.
4. See AMES, ROGER & HALL, DAVID (1988) Chinese sexism in: Thinking From the Han (Albany, State University of New York Press);
5. BLACK, ALISON (1986) Gender and cosmology in Chinese correlative thinking, in: CAROLINE BYNUM, STEVAN HARRELL & PAULA RICHMAN (Eds) Gender and Religion (Boston, Beacon Press);
6. GUISSO, RICHARD (1981) Thunder over the lake: the Five Classics and the perception of woman in early China, in: RICHARD GUISSO & STANLEY JOHANNESEN (Eds) Women in China (New York, Philo Press);
7. and RAPHALS, LISA (1998) Sharing the Light (Albany, State University of New York Press).
8. In making this claim, I am sharing the traditional assumption that the Analects basically represents the ideas of Confucius himself. This assumption however is currently challenged by the ground-breaking book, BROOKS, BRUCE & BROOKS, TAEKO (1998) The Original Analects (New York, Columbia University Press). The authors argue that the Analects is largely an accretion of the works of Confucius' later followers spanning between 500 and 249 BCE. I have no ambition to address their challenge in this paper. I shall just point out that since they attribute only chapter 4 of the Analects to Confucius himself, almost all the Analects passages I quote in the paper are interpolations according to them. Note also that 1 shall still occasionally refer to other Confucian texts besides the Analects and the Mencius for clarification and elaboration.
9. For a discussion of the concept of gender, see OAKLEY, ANN (1972) Sex, Gender and Society (New York, Harper and Row).
10. See note 4 above. See also PAO CHIA-LIN (1979) Readings in Chinese Women's History (Taiwan, Cowboy Publishing).
11. GUISSO, Readings in Chinese Women's History, op. cit., note 4, p. 59.
12. LEGGE, JAMES (Trans.), CHAI C. C. & Chai, W. (Ed.) (1967) Li Chi: Book of Rites (New York, University Books).
13. Some interpreters believe that these two separations, especially the first one, were not strictly observed. See RAPHALS, Li Chi: Book of Rites, op. cit., note 4, ch. 8 and 9 for the argument as well as a fuller elaboration of the two distinctions. Hsu makes a similar observation
14. Based on the analysis of other Confucian texts, Susan Mann and Lisa Raphals also conclude that the functional distinction is the more important one in the early Confucian conception of gender. See MANN, SUSAN (1991) Grooming a daughter for marriage, in: RUBIE WATSON & PATRICIA EBREY (Ed.) Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, (Berkeley, University of California Press);
15. and RAPHALS, Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, op. cit., note 4, pp. 212-213.
16. AMES & HALL, Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, op. cit., note 4, pp. 98-99 make a similar observation.
17. This interpretation is found in CHU HSI, (1983) Ssu-hsu Tse-chu (Peking, Chung-hua shu-chu);
18. LIANG CHENG-TING (1973) Meng-tzu chin-ku (Hong Kong, Shanghai Publishing)
19. and YANG PO-CHUN (1989) Meng-tzu shih-chu (Hong Kong: Chung-hua shu-chu).
20. HSU SHEN (1973) Shuo-wen chieh-tzu (Taipei, Polin shu-chu), p. 638.
21. BLACK, Shuo-wen chieh-tzu, op. cit., note 4, p. 170.
22. D. C. Lau also observes that the holding of office and study are the twin activities inseparable from the concept of a chun-tzu LAU, D. C. (1979) Confucius, The Analects (New York, Penguin), p. 31).
23. In depicting the women of seventeenth-century China, Ko comments, 'Since literacy and knowledge of the Classics constituted the gateway to bureaucratic appointments and hence political power, reading and writing were deemed, at least in theory, an exclusive male privilege'. Ko, DOROTHY (1994) Teachers of the Inner Chambers (Stanford, Stanford University Press), p. 53.
24. This does not mean that women received no education at all. They did learn about subject matters like domestic duties, appearance refinement and female crafts. In particular, they were educated about the four female virtues: women virtues (fu-te), women words (fu-yen), women looks (fu-yung) and women works (fu-kung). See Book of Rites, op. cit., note 5, chs 4 and 6.
25. There was a conference at Kui Chiu in 651 BC at which the feudal lords agreed that women should be excluded from state affairs. For a discussion of women's political role in the Chou dynasty, see Liu Yung-Ts'ung (1993) Nu-hsing yu li-shih (Hong Kong, Hong Kong Educational Publishing).
26. LEGGE, JAMES (Ed.) (1960) The She King (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press), p. 559
27. For a more detailed discussion of the positive portrayal of women in ancient Chinese texts, see RAPHALS, The She King, op. cit., note 4.
28. BLACK, The She King, op. cit., note 4, p. 184.
29. Chen Ta-chi makes an interesting discussion on the connection between tightness and submission. CHEN TA-CHI (1980) Meng-tzu tai-chieh-lu (Taipei, Commercial Press).
30. Instead of appealing to reciprocity, Guisso explains the superiority of mothers over sons by-referring to the correlation of age and youth. Guisso, op. cit., note 4, p. 60.
31. Sometimes a mother even has the authority to expel her son for serious misconduct. See LI TSUNG-TUNG (1972) Chun-chiu tso-chuan chin-chu chin-yi (Taipei, Commercial Press), ch. 2. The Book of Rites however contains contrasting advice. It prescribes for a woman to follow her son if her husband has died. Book of Rites, op. cit., note 5, ch. 11.
32. For example Cheng-i believed that for women, to die from starvation is a trivial matter in comparison to loosing their chastity, which is a serious matter. CHAN WING-TSI (Ed.) (1967) Reflections of Things at hand (New York, Columbia University Press), ch. 6.
33. Roger Ames disputes this claim of human universality in Mencius. See AMES, ROGER (1991) The Mencian conception of ren xing: does it mean 'human nature?', in: HENRY ROSEMONT, Jr (Ed.) Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts (La Salle, IL, Open Court).
34. Interestingly contemporary feminist political philosophers also challenge the strict dichotomy between the domestic and the political domains. Indeed one reason Susan Okin gives in arguing for the connection between these two domains is akin to that of Confucianism. She claims that family has important political implications because it is the place where we cultivate the capacity of empathy and empathy is an essential component of the cardinal 'public' virtue of justice. OKIN, SUSAN (1989) Justice, Gender and the Family (Basic Books), pp. 9-15.
35. Note that Confucianism already allows the right to divorce, though exclusively to males. According to Shi Chi, even Confucius himself divorced his wife. See LIU TE-HAN, Justice, Gender and the Family Basic Books, op. cit., note 6, p. 91.
36. As pointed out by Lisa Kaphals, the ruler-minister and the husband-wife relationships have often been seen as analogous in early Confucian commentaries. RAPHALS, Justice, Gender and the Family Basic Books, op. cit., note 4, p. 12.
37. TSAI JEN-HOU (1986) K'ung-tzu ssu-hsiang yi-nan san-tse shih-chieh, Legein Monthly, 128(2).
38. Black, K'ung-tzu ssu-hsiang yi-nan san-tse shih-chieh, Legein Monthly, op. cit., note 4, p. 169.
39. The texts only contain references to husbands' divorcing wives (Mencius 4B:30) but not the other way round. 1 will not judge whether this implies the acceptance of the prevailing practice of restricting the prerogative to divorce to husband only. For the practice of divorce, see LIU TE-HAN, op. cit., note 6, p. 87.
40. In Chun Chiu there is another version of the Five Relationships which does include mother -the relationships between father, mother, elder, younger and child. See CHIAO HSUN (1935) Meng-tzu Cheng-i (Shanghai, Commercial Press), p. 227.
41. See PATEMAN, CAROL (1988) The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Stanford University Press);
42. and Okin, The Sexual Contrast, op. cit., note 37.
43. Smith, J. A. & Ross, W. D. (Eds) (1952) The Works of Aristotle (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 716-730.
44. For discussion of Aristotle's view on gender and biology, see Lange, Lynda (1983) Woman is not a rational animal: on Aristotle's biology of reproduction, in: SANDRA HARDING & MERRILL HINTIKKA (Eds) Discovering Reality (Dordrecht, Reidel).