Three-inch golden lotuses : achieving beauty through violence -- A brief history of footbinding -- Footbinding and the cult of the exemplary woman -- Edible beauty : food and foot fetishes in China -- Silken slippers : footbinding in Chinese erotica -- Binding, weaving, chatting : female bonding and writing -- From golden lotus to Prime Minister : a woman's tale living from mouth to mouth -- The fabric of masquerade.

Changing clothes in China : fashion, history, nation / Antonia Finnane.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-342) and index.
Introduction: Fashion, history, nation -- Ways of seeing -- Fashions in late imperial China -- Soldiers and citizens -- The fashion industry in Shanghai -- Qipao China -- Her brother's clothes -- The new look in the new China -- Dressed to kill in the Cultural Revolution -- Breaking with the past -- Conclusion: Fashion, history, time.

Women's place in Chinese history / Hu Shi -- Female rulers in ancient China / Yang Liansheng -- Feminist thought in ancient China / Lin Yutang -- Influences of foreign cultures on the Chinese women / Chen Hengzhe -- The Chinese woman past and present / Zeng Baosun -- Chinese women's fight for freedom / Song Qingling -- Historical roots of changes in women's status in modern China / Li Youning -- Opposition to footbinding / Zhang Mojun -- Remembrances of an elderly aunt / Chen Hengzhe -- When I learned how to cook / He Xiangning -- Remembrances of the May Fourth Movement / Deng Yingchao -- The family prison / Xie Bingying -- My escape from hardship to a free life / Xiuying -- Sorrows of a factory worker / Lu Lan -- A village schoolteacher / Fu Yixing -- Scientific entrepreneurship / Hongying -- Struggling against discrimination in business / Anonymous -- Shenshen / Xiangcun -- Problems confronting an ideal couple / A Rong -- Mother's books / Pan Qijun -- Why I parted with Tang Na / Jiang Qing -- My life in the imperial palace / Li Yuqin -- A young nurse in Manchuria / Chen Xuezhao.

Foreword / Bonnie Smith -- The Borders of Sung China (960-1279) -- 1. Separating the Sexes -- 2. Meanings of Marriage -- 3. Making a Match -- 4. Rites and Celebrations -- 5. Dowries -- 6. Upper-Class Wives as Inner Helpers -- 7. Women's Work Making Cloth -- 8. Husband-Wife Relations -- 9. Motherhood -- 10. Widowhood -- 11. Second Marriages -- 12. Concubines -- 13. Continuing the Family Through Women -- 14. Adultery, Incest, and Divorce -- 15. Reflections on Women, Marriage, and Change.

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.--OCLC note.
Another copy Gleeson library.

This first book-length study of gender relations in the Lower Yangzi region during the High Qing era (c. 1683-1839) challenges enduring late-nineteenth-century perspectives that emphasized the oppression and subjugation of Chinese women. Placing women at the center of the High Qing era shows how gender relations shaped the economic, political, social, and cultural changes of the age, and gives us a sense of what women felt and believed, and what they actually did, during this period.

Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women's participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.

After an introductory chapter that evaluates the historiography of Chinese women, the book surveys High Qing history, charts the female life course, and discusses women's place in writing and learning, in entertainment, at work, and in religious practice. The concluding chapter returns to broad historiographic questions about where women figure in space and time and why we can no longer write histories that ignore them.

Splendid slippers : a thousand years of an erotic tradition / Beverley Jackson.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 178-180) and index.

"This volume is an extraordinary exploration of footbinding that encompasses Chinese art and mythology, social and political history, and truly exotic eroticism. The author's vast collection of historical and contemporary photographs, plus 40 full-color "portraits" of her most prized slippers, creates a uniquely poignant and evocative panorama."--Publishers note.

The treasure was her tiny feet. -- The three-inch golden lily. -- Splendid slippers for lotus feet. -- Gilding the lily. -- Spinning cloud silk for the gods. -- A night at the opera. -- Sex and the bound-footed girl. -- Sacrifice at the altar of beauty. -- The end of an era. -- One door closes, another door opens.

Women in early imperial China / Bret Hinsch.
Originally published: Boston : Harvard University, 1994.
Ph. D. Harvard University, 1993.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-229) and index.
Introduction -- The context: early imperial China -- Kinship -- Wealth and work -- Law -- Government -- Learning -- Ritual -- Cosmology -- Conclusion.