Women Tutors: The Culture of Talented Women in Jiangnan During the Late Ming and Early Qing

This book seeks to rewrite the account of traditional women’s history offered by the May Fourth view of history. The great social, economic, and cultural changes of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties fostered the flourishing of a culture of talented women. Key developments included the rise of commercial publishing and the emergence of a mass readership, renewed interest in emotion, greater visibility for courtesan culture, the promotion of women’s education, more opportunities for women to travel, and new definitions of women’s qualities. The book therefore argues that the gentry women of Jiangnan in the late Ming and early Qing were far from oppressed and voiceless. Within a male-dominated Confucian system, these women created a rich and meaningful way of life and culture.

Through the interplay of idealized Confucian theory, lived experience, and women’s perspectives, the author reconstructs these women’s social, emotional, and intellectual worlds through the lens of their daily lives. The book proposes a new method for studying history, one grounded in a concrete understanding of how women lived.