Gentlemen's Prescriptions for Women's Lives: A Thousand Years of Biographies of Chinese Women by Mou Sherry J

Author:Mou, Sherry J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317469933
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Filiality and Revenge

Three biographies remind us that both married and unmarried daughters would readily risk their lives in expressing their filiality and loyalty to their parents. When the widowed Ms. Liu saw that her brother not only did not take care of their father but also squandered the family assets, she often returned to her parental house to weave in order to provide for her father (biography 10). After her brother was executed and the father was ordered by the throne to commit suicide at home, she told the officials that her father was indeed innocent and was incriminated because of his son. Her petition was so moving that even the emperor lamented with her.

Princess Nanyang’s filiality to her father-in-law, Yuwen Shu, at the beginning of the biography is complicated by the political events unfolding outside her marriage (biography 2). Shortly after Yuwen Shu died, her brother-in-law Yuwen Huaji rebelled and murdered her father, Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty.32 Her husband, Yuwen Shiji, meanwhile surrendered to the newly established Tang dynasty. Later, during his return to the west, Yuwen Shiji asked to see the princess and reunite with her as husband and wife. The princess replied, “We are enemies now. The only regret I have now is that I can’t kill you myself. Then again you indeed were not a part of it, when the rebellious murder happened.” When Yuwen Shiji insisted on seeing her, the princess threatened to commit suicide. What is highlighted in the biography is the princess’s filiality and loyalty—filiality to her father-in-law and loyalty to the lost dynasty that used to be her parental family. Conjugal relationships do not seem to have a place in the princess’s state of mind, overwhelmed by sorrow over having both her family and country annihilated.

Finally, blood revenge for one’s father is condoned by the emperor. When Wang Shun was only seven years old, her father was killed by his cousin and the cousin’s wife (biography 7). She raised two younger sisters on her own and talked them into avenging their father’s death with her. After they killed the murderers, all three went to an official, each claiming to be the one responsible for the killings. The district official could not decide what to do, so the case was presented to the throne, which pardoned their offenses. As mentioned before, blood revenge on account of filiality almost always wins sympathy from the public as well as the officials, as happened here.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.