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Xu Wei’s views on female chastity were rather atypical among his male peers in that he considered widow suicide not necessarily praiseworthy. However, his deep interest in this topic was by no means unusual for a male literatus. In fact, male literati played a crucial role in the cult of chaste women, which reached an unprecedented scale during the Ming dynasty.1 In male literati writings on chaste women—such as biographies, epitaphs, and memoirs—profuse praise of female chastity was often accompanied by laments over the moral deficiencies of male literati. In other words, the heroic deeds of the chaste women, these authors believed, highlighted the failure of educated men, supposedly the moral backbone of society, to live up to their own ethical standards.2 The famous late Ming essayist Gui Youguang (1507–1571; DMB, 759– 761) was quite straightforward in his praise of chaste women, and he simultaneously castigated male moral deficiencies: “Although I grew up near the seashore, I have not traveled to many places. But I have encountered several dozen cases of village women committing suicide for the sake of their deceased husbands, and I have duly recorded these [virtuous] deeds. However , when there was a national crisis, very few high officials chose to commit suicide. Is this because the moral energy of Heaven and Earth privileges women?”3 Gui Youguang appears to suggest that women are by nature morally superior to men. Almost a century earlier, the scholar-official Luo Lun (1431–1478; DMB, 986–985) was even more extreme on this subject: What is the purpose of learning for a gentleman? To enlarge his mind, to restore its [original] brightness, and to perfect its moral integrity. Although they are not scholars, why are only women able to perform such heroic acts? . . . During times of peace, a gentleman would be very upset if he were to be compared to a woman, but during a time of national crisis his behavior pales in comparison with that of a woman. Therefore [one should look for] moral integrity in the [female] 72 Chapter 4 Manhood and Nationhood .> Chaste Women and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty sex rather than the other sex. Why? If only all male literati gentlemen were women, how could any disaster possibly befall the nation? I wrote this account of chaste women to shame those disloyal ministers/subjects.4 As we discussed in chapters 1 and 2, the analogy between a chaste woman and a loyal minister was part of the long-standing rhetorical convention in traditional political discourse. A minister was expected to demonstrate his loyalty to the ruler just as a woman was supposed to prove her chastity to her husband. What bothered Gui Youguang and Luo Lun was a perceived collapse of this analogical relationship: they were convinced that in reality there were far fewer loyal ministers than chaste women. Anxiety over the erosion of this moral analogy began to take on different meanings around the mid-seventeenth century, when the Ming state was violently toppled. The urgent issue of how to prove one’s loyalty to a fallen monarchy seems to have dramatically enhanced the rhetorical power of the familiar trope of chaste women. Death became almost a daily issue many male literati had to confront during the violent dynastic transition. Furthermore , failure to die (not being killed and especially not killing oneself) became a constant source of anxiety for the surviving literati, who still considered themselves the loyal subjects of the fallen Ming (yimin). For the surviving loyalists, writing about the heroic deeds of chaste women inevitably became a redemptive occasion for self-examination as well as apology. It was in such a process of soul-searching that the subtle contradictions inherent in the analogy began to become painfully visible to some of the literati. A hotly debated issue among the Ming literati before the fall of the dynasty was whether it was appropriate for a betrothed woman to commit suicide if her future husband died before they could marry.5 Gui Youguang was representative of those who argued that a woman should not commit suicide for her future husband: “If a betrothed woman, before the marriage takes place, commits suicide or pledges never to marry another man because her future husband has died, she is taking an action that does not accord with the principles of propriety.”6 It was not appropriate, according to Gui Youguang, largely because the woman’s first obligations before marriage were to...

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