Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers by N. Harry Rothschild (review)

Harry N. Rothschild's Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers provides useful sources for readers who are interested in Chinese History, Chinese Philosophy, Women's Studies, or Feminist Studies. With his specialization in Tang history and the study of Women and Gender in China, the author is well qualified to write in the field of Women's Studies during the Tang dynasty. His previous book Wu Zhao, China's Only Female Emperor demonstrates that he is an outstanding expert of the study of Emperor Wu Zhao. In his new book, the author uncovers a sacred connection between Wu Zhao and the culturally revered female ancestors, goddesses, and paragons from different religious traditions. He finds that this sacred connection strongly bolsters Wu Zhao's authority and leadership in the spiritual and political realms.

From this book, readers who are interested in the history and development of Chinese thought will see how Wu Zhao broke the barrier of different religions in the Chinese tradition, deftly put Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism together, and created her discourse power and female worship by seeking agency from those female exemplars in various religious traditions. Readers who are interested in Women and Religion can find from this book how Wu Zhao glorified women's creativity, reproductive power, motherhood, leadership, and sovereignty through worshiping her female deities.

Wu Zhao's relationship with her female deities, however, is not passive. It is strategic. In a historian's perspective, the author finds that Wu Zhao decided who could be placed in her pantheon and how long the female divinity could stay. The relationship of Wu Zhao and her female deities actually changes at the different stages in her career. Driven by political purposes, Wu Zhao's worship of particular goddesses always serves her needs. For instance, in the early period of her political career, Wu Zhao performed rituals for worshiping the First Sericulturist Leizu for four times. The author not only narrates the process of the ritual vividly, but also interprets Wu Zhao's motivation and purpose of performing the ritual in depth.

Because the First Sericulturist Leizu symbolized the womanly vocation of silk weaving, Wu Zhao's worship of the silk goddess right after her tenure as empress helped her establish herself as a women's exemplar that reinforced women's traditional gender roles. She empowered herself as a female through her respect and devotion to women's work, for silk weaving was not only a representation of a woman's contribution to family and economy, but also a symbol of women's good virtues (pp. 61–69).

Connecting herself to the silk divinity was one of Wu Zhao's best ways to show her virtues and extend her political influence in her early political career. The author also discovers that after Wu Zhao became the Grand Dowager she had stopped worshiping the silk goddess. Instead, she placed greater emphasis on the First Agriculturist Shennong, for "it was no longer politically expedient to remind court and country of her complementary, feminine roles" (p. 71).

This book offers a unique perspective in terms of the relation of gender, religion and politics. According to Serinity Young, the editor of An Anthology of Sacred Texts by and about Women (1993), religion is essential to interpretations of gender, "because religion has the authority of the divine or of the ancestors or simply of tradition" (Young, p. x,). Through picturing and analyzing Wu Zhao's pantheon, the author demonstrates how Wu Zhao recovered and reconstructed women's religion for her purpose of self-empowerment in politics. In her pantheon, there are female deities from myth and folklore, Confucian exemplary women, Daoist goddesses, and Buddhist devis. These female exemplars of various religious traditions, on the one hand, symbolize women's political leadership, and on the other hand, they sanctify Wu Zhao's rule as an empress first, then an empress dowager, and...