Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (review)

Reviews 495 Susan Mann. Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xii, 326 p. Hardcover, isbn 0804727430. Paperback, 0804727449. Susan Mann has produced a truly interdisciplinary study by making use ofthe various approaches taken in different areas ofChinese studies and incorporating ideas from women's studies in Europe, thereby building on the strength ofscholars preceding her. She has utilized the comparatively well-developed resources of Qing studies that have appeared in Chinese studies in the last two decades covering a wide range ofdisciplines, including anthropology, political history, social history, religion, literature, and women's studies. She has also adopted a comparative approach, employing the perspective of European labor history to explain why women's work in Qing China was confined to die family. Another feature I find outstanding is that she does not limit herself exclusively to the woman's point ofview, but uses gender as a point of analysis, thus affording her work a more balanced vision. By limiting her canvas to the eighteenth century, Professor Mann has been able to paint an agreeably detailed picture ofbroader scope than would have been possible had she attempted to describe the lives ofwomen throughout the entire Qing dynasty. Unlike her colleagues in Qing women's studies, she has gone beyond die confines of the literary and cultural world. The main parts ofher book deal with gender, life courses, writing, entertainment, work, and piety. Not only do diese sections cover a wide spectrum of topics ofinterest; they also introduce different classes ofwomen—for example, peasant women in "Work" and courtesans in "Entertainment"—than are normally encountered in similar studies. In "Gender," while her discussions of state policy and official attitudes toward women offer litde diat is new, Mann provides an interesting insight into the question ofhow mobility and migration during the Qing affected women. On die basis of several demographic studies ofdiis period, she is able to provide a clearer picture ofmigration and population mobility and dieir ramifications for women. The topic of "Life Course" is an innovative point of entry to the study of women, given that most research in this area tends to focus on young adult women, since it necessitates a comprehensive look at all the stages ofdevelopment in a woman's life. It is a pity, though, that Mann does not offer a more detailed description offootbinding, simply because this important event was such a© 1998 by University traumatic and inescapable experience for many girls—and not only those belongofHawaii Pressmg t0 me gentry. Because ofthe changes in lifestyle that footbinding demanded, it seems to me diat die entire process ofthis practice, which dominated the lives of so many girls, should be treated in full, phase by phase, in all its distasteful de- 496 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 tail,1 and should include the ambivalent feelings of the mothers and the reactions of the girls. We should be grateful, however, for the treatment given to the lives of middle-aged and older women, for whom growing old was often a liberation. Freed from the labor of housekeeping, childbearing, and child-rearing and, in most cases, no longer responsible in old age for the care of in-laws, women could at last feel completely comfortable about pursuing their own interests and aspirations . The provision in this chapter for a discussion of the "life course of elite men" is an interesting point of reference and comparison. The chapter on "Writing" encompasses both the writing of men on women during this period and women's own writing. In the writing of men on women, Mann calls our attention to two sympathetic but nonetheless different attitudes toward women: that of Zhang Xuecheng and that ofYuan Mei. One cannot help but notice the discrepancy in the space devoted to the views on women between these two men ofletters. Zhang Xuecheng, who emphasized a woman's role as moral teacher and role model to men and children, and loyal friend and good assistant to her husband, receives a much more in-depth treatment (six pages), while Yuan Mei, who stressed the talents and importance ofwomen in the area of aesthetics, is given...