True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China by Weijing Lu (review)

158 Journal of Chinese Religions True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China WEIJING LU. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. xiii, 347 pages. ISBN 978-0-8047-5808-6. US$60.00 hardcover. Weijing Lu’s erudite study, True to Her Word, adds extra depth and sophistication to our understanding of the phenomenon of “female chastity” in China. In an earlier study, T’ien Jukang argued for an association between male anxiety over the imperial examinations and a higher incidence of widow suicide.1 However, Susan Mann has pointed to female despair as the key factor in widow suicides.2 Matthew H. Sommer and Janet M. Theiss have mined archival material concerning legal case studies bearing on issues of female chastity and widow suicide.3 Both these studies illuminate the shifting role of the state in defining and rewarding cases of widow chastity. Weijing Lu’s study is distinct from previous investigations in that she concentrates on the “faithful maiden” (zhennü 貞女) phenomenon, that is, those who remained faithful to their betrothed fiancé, either by refusing to marry and remaining celibate throughout their lives, or by following the fiancé in death. The faithful maiden cult apparently began in the thirteenth century but only became firmly established in the sixteenth century amongst elite classes. The Chinese state mostly encouraged the cult, which then became increasingly prevalent, particularly in the affluent Lower Yangzi region. Some male literati condemned the cult as excessive and a violation of ritual, but other elite males celebrated the heroic chastity of the faithful maidens even more than that of the faithful widows. Literati regarded the cult of the faithful maiden with awe—it called for a display of extreme virtue and fidelity that even men trained in Confucian learning could rarely attain. Within a two hundred year period, the Qing government honored six thousand faithful maidens with memorial arches, including one thousand who had committed suicide after the death of their betrothed. To the state and male elite, these women epitomized the highest standards of morality, their fidelity to their husbands or betrothed symbolized the paradigm of loyalty to the state that was the ultimate goal of Confucian learning. Drawing on court “veritable records” (shilu 實錄), gazetteer entries, literati writings, representations of faithful maidens in drama and fiction, and poems written by faithful maidens, Weijing Lu offers a detailed contextualization of the cult from the Yuan through to the late Qing. Each type of primary source examined here has intrinsic limitations. The “veritable records” give only imprecise information about the faithful maidens and literati writings tend to be stereotypical eulogies. The maidens’ poetry follows the conventional lines 1 Male Anxiety and Female Chastity (Leiden: E. J.Brill, 1988). 2 Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 24-25. 3 Matthew Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), chapter five; Janet M. Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: the Politics of Chastity in EighteenthCentury China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Book Reviews 159 of women’s suicide poetry. Nonetheless, the sheer richness of the material, when interpreted in combination, allows for a nuanced and fascinating portrayal of the motivations of the faithful maidens and their impact on society and intellectual debate. Lu develops her argument in three major sections. In Part One, “History”, she traces the progression of the faithful maiden cult from the Ming to the late imperial period. In Part Two, “Choices”, she focuses on the familial context within which the drama of the faithful maidens was played out, case studies of faithful maidens who chose the route of suicide after the death of the betrothed, and parallel case studies of the alternative route of life-long celibacy, either in the family of the betrothed or in the natal family. Part Three deals with the ideological debate about the propriety or otherwise of the cult of the faithful maiden amongst Confucian literati. The Appendix sets out the numbers of faithful maidens as reported in the Qinding da Qing yitong zhi 欽定大清一統治. This documents the preponderance of faithful maidens in southern provinces such as Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Guangdong. The cult was particularly active...