The Chinese virago
Subtitle: a literary theme
By: Yenna Wu.
Series: Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ;; 40
Publisher: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University; distributed by Harvard University Press; Harvard University Asia Center
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 312
Subjects: Women in literature.; Chinese literature -- History and criticism.; Women -- China -- Social conditions.
Description: Drawing from a broad array of literary, historical, dramatic and anecdotal sources, Yenna Wu makes a rich exploration of an unusually prominent theme in premodern Chinese prose fiction and drama: that of jealous and belligerent wives, or viragos, who dominate their husbands and abuse other women.

Focusing on Chinese literary works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she presents many colorful perspectives on this type of aggression, reviewing early literary and historical examples of the phenomenon.

Wu argues that although the various portraits of the virago often reveal the writers' insecurities about strong-willed women in general, the authors also satirize the kind of man whose behavioral patterns have been catalysts for female aggression.

She also shows that, while the women in these works are to some extent male constructs designed to affirm the patriarchal system, various elements of these portraits constitute a subversive form of parody that casts a revealing light on the patriarchal hierarchy of premodern China.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-288) and index.