View source for Talk:Signifying Bodies: The Cultural Significance of Suicide Writing by Women in Ming-Qing China By Grace S. Fong

This is really interesting. Could you format it a little bit so that it is easier to read? [[User:Dekeo|Dekeo]] 18:52, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


An asset to a woman's marriageability?  I somewhat find this point interesting as the point of women learning to read was to help them be married. I am not completely familiar with the Chinese ways of marriage back then, but if I remember correctly, men were forced to present some sort of gift (or payment) upon marrying a bride.  Chinese women also often had arranged marriages to help them advance in social standing.  Was this not the same concept as what happened later in the poems written where a woman was to be sold into marriage? It does not say sold into prostitution, but marriage...interesting concept, in my opinion.   

I wonder how the women would feel, knowing they were going to commit suicide but wanting to finish writing poems about their life first. It seems a little odd to me to have a VERY premeditated suicide.  Who knows how long these writings took? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?  

I am also very surprised, in all honesty, at the response of the soldiers when they try to rape one woman who jumps into the river (the author's aunt) and the soldiers leave the rest of the women alone, fearing the same result.