Women of the Conquest Dynasties: Gender and Identity in Liao and Jin China by Linda Cooke Johnson (review)

With Women of the Conquest Dynasties, Linda Cooke Johnson has provided the field with a wealth of detailed information about women under the Northern Dynasties of the Liao (905-1124) and Jin (1115-1234). Johnson bases her study above all on portraits, both textual and material, of women from the Liao and Jin periods. In addition to examining biographies recorded in the "Virtuous Women" sections of the standard histories and epitaphs found in inscription collections, she provides innovative readings of tomb iconography drawn from archeological excavations. Her research demonstrates that expectations of women under the conquest dynasties often differed in significant ways from those we associate with the roughly contemporaneous Song dynasty.

The book is organized into an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters treat the topics of "Womanly Ideals in the Liao and Jin Periods"; "Liao Women's Daily Lives"; "Jin Women's Daily Lives"; "Sexuality and Marriage"; "Widowhood and Chastity"; "Warrior Women"; and "Private Affairs." A number of central themes run through the book as a whole: the importance of military and political activities in the lives of Liao and Jin court women; the high incidence of (and admiration for) literacy and education in those same women; the persistent significance of steppe customs like the levirate and "following in death" (compulsory widow suicide); and the relative sexual freedom enjoyed by women in Liao and Jin society.

A few individuals loom particularly large in Johnson's discussion. The first empress of the Liao dynasty, best known to history as the Empress Dowager Yingtian (878-953), played a critical role in the establishment of the Liao as a patrilineal dynasty. When others wanted to maintain Kitan tradition, according to which the succession should have devolved to the founder's brothers or younger kinsmen, Yingtian devised a plan to ambush and assassinate them. According to accounts in the standard histories, she also routinely advised her husband on military plans, frequently accompanied him on campaigns, and on several occasions led troops to protect his interests. Most famously, at her husband's death she dramatically declined to observe the custom of "following in death," instead cutting off her right hand and throwing it into his grave. She then proceeded to live for another thirty years, continuing to play an active role in political and military affairs: she successfully manipulated the imperial succession once and attempted to do so a second time.

Another figure who features prominently in Johnson's chapters is the Empress Dowager Chengtian (954-1009), wife of the fifth Liao emperor Jingzong (r. 969-982). Like Yingtian, this empress was known for helping her husband in the management of government affairs, and she more or less ruled in his name during his frequent illnesses. When the emperor died on a hunting trip, the twenty-eight year old Chengtian took over as regent for her young son. By most accounts she ruled ably and effectively, dominating the court (and her son) for more than twenty-five years. She, too, was known for taking to the field as a military leader and was a notable presence at the Liao attack on the Song that led to the Treaty of Chanyuan in 1004. But Chengtian is also a remarkable figure, in Johnson's view, for her long-term romantic affair with one of her chief ministers. The affair is mentioned in a Northern Song diplomatic record and repeated in historical accounts composed in the Southern Song and after, but, as Johnson notes (156), many historians have written off these rumors as efforts by Song writers to discredit the Liao and its powerful female ruler. Johnson, however, argues for the historical plausibility of the affair. The Song accounts indicate that the empress and the minister had been betrothed to one another in their childhood, and Johnson suggests that this prior betrothal, in combination with what she sees...