Selected Product:
| The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period
Paperback
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: University of California Press
Release Date: 1993-12-01
ISBN-10: 0520081587
ISBN-13: 9780520081581
List Price: $25.95
Average Customer Rating:
 | |
Three Kingdoms: Chinese Classics (Classic Novel in 4-Volumes)
ISBN-10: 7119005901
ISBN-13: 9787119005904
List Price:$44.95
China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture
ISBN-10: 0804723532
ISBN-13: 9780804723534
List Price:$31.95
Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 (Daily Life)
ISBN-10: 0804707200
ISBN-13: 9780804707206
List Price:$20.95
Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China
ISBN-10: 0804723591
ISBN-13: 9780804723596
List Price:$27.95
China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China
ISBN-10: 0300026390
ISBN-13: 9780300026399
List Price:$20.00
|
To use our price comparison to get the cheapest price, please click on the "Find the Cheapest Price" button located above for The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (ISBN-10: 0520081587, ISBN-13: 9780520081581).
At this time we have not yet written a review for The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (ISBN-10: 0520081587, ISBN-13: 9780520081581). Please continue to keep checking back to this page as we are constantly adding reviews.
Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
The Sung Dynasty (960-1279) was a paradoxical era for Chinese women. This was a time when footbinding spread, and Confucian scholars began to insist that it was better for a widow to starve than to remarry. Yet there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. In this thoroughly original work, one of the most respected scholars of premodern China brings to life what it was like to be a woman in Sung times, from having a marriage arranged, serving parents-in-law, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to deciding what to do if widowed.
Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them.
Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth.
Comprehensive
| Customer Rating: | | This book presents a comprehensive portrait of the lives of women in Sung China (960-1279 AD). The author explores such topics as marriage, dowries, rites and celebrations, women's work, husband-wife relations, motherhood, widowhood, concubines, and match-making. Because of the need to rely on written materials for much of the information, and because literacy was restricted mainly to the educated and upper classes, the book naturally contains many more details about the lives of rich women than of the poor. Nevertheless, Ebrey was still able to distill some information about peasant women and families as well. The book will appeal to anyone interested in women's studies, Chinese history, or Asian area studies. |
|
