The Representation of Women in Medieval China: Recent Archaeological Evidence

Vang Studies 17 (1999) The Representation of Women in Medieval China: Recent Archaeological Evidence PATRICIA E. KARETZKY BARD COLLEGE In the West, recent reports have examined the role of women artists of the past to evaluate the art they created and to assess their role in society and in the artistic establishment. In related studies, analytical efforts have focused on the image of women in the arts and how it reveals attitudes towards women and their social functions . In tandem with such studies in the field of Western art history are similar investigations of women in Chinese art.1 However, these efforts are largely directed to the Song dynasty and later times, since earlier periods are characterized by a dearth of evidence. Yet it is widely averred that during the Tang period women played a significant role in society. The recent spate of archaeological evidence unearthed in China allows for a more detailed analysis of the image of women in the Tang era, and this study utilizes these finds to demonstrate the extraordinary degree to which women were represented in the arts. By looking at this new, dated visual evidence, the role of women in the social arena is further defined. Moreover, this paper 1 For art-historical studies there is Flowering in the Shadows, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1990), which has a series of essays on women in the arts in China, beginning with the Song era, and in Japan. It is interesting to note that there is a considerably smaller section on Chinese women than on Japanese . Another collection of essays on women artists is Viewsfrom the Jade Terrace: Women Artist 1300-1912, ed. Marsha Weidner et al. (Bloomington: Indiana Museum of Art, 1988). For historical studies, see Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and Life of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1993); and Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997). 213 Karetzky: Women in Medieval Art seeks to present the role of women in the Tang within the historical context of earlier periods. IMAGES OF W O M E N I N THE PRE-TANG ERA It is not that ancient Chinese history does not record women's activities. Accounts of women are presentthroughout China's literature . However, women stand in the shadow of patriarchal values that make them secondary. History, within the moral strictures of Confucianism, functions didactically, that is, it morally informs. So stories of paragons of virtue and villains of moral turpitude fill the texts. Biographies such as Liu Xiang's Lienuzhuan describe women who aided their husbands or rulers or morally corrupted them. Naturally such accounts are few in contrast with the number of biographies of men.2 Paragons of virtue include Ban Zhao (first century BCE), who brought her brother's historical opus to completion after his death, was a model wife and later widow, and authored a text on moral instruction for women.3 In politics, few women rose to power, and most who did were berated for their usurpation of the throne. For example, Empress Lu of the early Han is described in the Shiji biography written by Sima Qian as harsh and inhumane in her treatment of those who opposed her.4 So too the evil courtesan Meixi of the Xia dynasty and Daji of the Shang were blamed for the fall of the dynasties under which they lived; and there are other moral examples , like Fu Hao of the Shang, whose tomb has been found.5 2 See, for example, the Han history, translated by Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961). 3 Julia K. Murray, "Didactic Art for Women, The Classic of Filial Piety," in Flowering in the Shadows, 29. 4 Watson, Records, 3321ff. 5 See K. Foster, One Hundred Celebrated Chinese Women (Singapore: Asiapac Books, 1994). For Fu Hao's tomb, see Zheng Zhenxiang, "The Royal Consort Fu Hao and 214 Tang Studies 17 (1999) Art was also informed by the Confucian doctrine that dominated most Chinese cultural values. Beginning in the Han Dynasty...