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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9572294" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished Ann Pang-White's 2018 work, The Confucian Four Books for Women, which is her new English translation of the classical Chinese texts collectively known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_for_Women" target="_blank">Nü Sishu</a> ("Four Books for Women").If this sounds familiar, then you might be thinking of my <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2024.701874/post-9529334" target="_blank">recent post</a> about the Lienu Zhuan ("Biographies of Exemplary Women"). That I read two works about women in ancient China is no coincidence; I was actually going to read this text (i.e. the Nu Sishu) first, but in researching it found repeated references to the Lienu Zhuan, and so put that one ahead of this on my reading list. In hindsight, I was right to do so, since the former text referenced the latter multiple times, but I suspect that I would have been better served to have read the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_and_Five_Classics" target="_blank">Sishu</a> ("Four Books"), which are the better-known texts on Confucianism, first since they're referenced much more. As such, I'll likely read them later.As it is, this is what it says on the metaphorical tin: a collection of four different books on women's conduct, written by women for women. What's notable here is how disparate these four treatises are, having been written in the 1st, 9th, 14th, and 16th centuries. It was only in the early 17th century when they were collectively referred to as being the "four books" that women should read (apparently this was done by the son of the woman who wrote the fourth book, and his annotations are also reprinted here as footnotes).The works themselves are an interesting combination of conservative and liberal in their attitudes toward women's conduct, though they move more toward the latter over time. Even then, some of the lessons and attitudes don't sit well with contemporary Occidental values, such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Obediences_and_Four_Virtues" target="_blank">three obediences</a> that are repeatedly reiterated throughout these works (i.e. that women should obey their father when young, their husband after leaving their parents' house to marry, and their sons if their husband should predecease them). On the other hand, the fourth and final book explicitly renounces an idea from the first book that "a woman's virtue is without talent" (i.e. that the most virtuous women are the ones without talent, presumably so they can focus on being good wives and mothers).As it is, it's these liberal elements that characterize Pang-White's take on these works, as she explains in her introduction. Taking exception to what she characterizes as the colonialist aspects of contemporary Western feminism (i.e. that Confucianism's patriarchal nature necessitates its rejection by Chinese women), Pang-White repeatedly points out the progressive elements of Confucian thought found in the Nu Sishu, though she limits this to her overview of the works in question and a few scattered footnotes of her own, never letting it compromise her translation of the texts.Overall, this was an excellent examination of cultural views of women throughout Chinese history, and certainly not uninteresting, but having finished this on the heels of several other very dense treatises, I think my next book will be some decidedly light reading!</blockquote>

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