disciplined the younger, the mother-in-law beating the young wife. The wife had no rights until she had a son. All women were subject to the authority of husbands, brothers, and finally sons. Although this traditional family was related to the agrarian economy, its effects on women were more severe than in western European peasant societies, because in the evolution of Chinese society women could never inherit. There was no possibility of protection coming from her father’s family in opposition to the way in which her husband was treating her, through the property which she owned. In the upper classes she had a trousseau and in the lower classes there was marriagepurchase. True, the wife’s family might apply pressure but if they weren’t powerful wives could be sold as they had been bought and even rented out. Helen Foster Snow, in Women in Modern China , says:
the Chinese family resembled nothing so much as a primitive matriarchal clan in which the father had taken the place of the matriarch and spent his whole time trying to hold his usurped position supported by force and strict ‘rules’ of ancestral etiquette. He calls himself the father and mother of the family, a most indicative term. 1
Thus conflict between husbands and fathers, sons and fathers, children and parents, was severely restricted. Probably the real strength of this family was in the middle strata of Chinese society. Upper-class women developed the arts of diplomacy and romantic intrigue; the lower peasant woman in the south had a certain independence which came from her economic contribution as a farming hand. There were of course some regional differences too.
The impact of imperialism and industrialization weakened the authority of the father and husband but did not provide a solution for the wife and daughter. Opium brought in by British trade could cause the breakdown of the father and force the mother into a more active role, but it also brought a shortage of food and a permanent escape for the man. Economic development undermined the traditional family cell; though the old structure continued, it became increasingly intolerable to the young. Mao told Edgar Snow in Journey to the Beginning that when he was thirteen his father arranged a marriage with a bride six years older than he was. The point of marrying young boys in this way was to use the girl’s labour in the household before the boy was mature enough for the ceremony actually to occur. Mao had often come into conflict with his father and taken refuge with his mother, who was also persecuted by the authoritarianism of the father. Rather than marry he ran away from home and wouldn’t come back until his father gave in.
The right to a love-match became a really important issue for the young of both sexes, not only in the new bourgeoisie but in peasant and proletarian families. Just before the revolution in the 1940s, Marion J. Levy noted various factors which had eroded male authority in the Chinese family. 2 Amongst them were such diverse factors as women’s work in the towns, coeducation, the emergenceof a youth culture, romantic love and the Communist Party. She observed that beating had become less common and that mothers-in-law were finding it more difficult to control the young wives. There were frequent complaints of bickering in families. These conflicts were not based on significant issues but rather on the desire to test positions. Wives and mothers-in-law were jockeying for support from male members of the family. Because the institutional authority of the mother-in-law over the young women had broken down but not yet gone, it was difficult to settle these power struggles either way.
Before the nineteenth century, apart from suicide, sexual intrigue, fantasy, and religion were the only ways women could escape. Isolated writers protested against the oppression of women from the sixteenth century onwards and in the eighteenth century women poetesses demanded equality for
the Chinese family resembled nothing so much as a primitive matriarchal clan in which the father had taken the place of the matriarch and spent his whole time trying to hold his usurped position supported by force and strict ‘rules’ of ancestral etiquette. He calls himself the father and mother of the family, a most indicative term. 1
Thus conflict between husbands and fathers, sons and fathers, children and parents, was severely restricted. Probably the real strength of this family was in the middle strata of Chinese society. Upper-class women developed the arts of diplomacy and romantic intrigue; the lower peasant woman in the south had a certain independence which came from her economic contribution as a farming hand. There were of course some regional differences too.
The impact of imperialism and industrialization weakened the authority of the father and husband but did not provide a solution for the wife and daughter. Opium brought in by British trade could cause the breakdown of the father and force the mother into a more active role, but it also brought a shortage of food and a permanent escape for the man. Economic development undermined the traditional family cell; though the old structure continued, it became increasingly intolerable to the young. Mao told Edgar Snow in Journey to the Beginning that when he was thirteen his father arranged a marriage with a bride six years older than he was. The point of marrying young boys in this way was to use the girl’s labour in the household before the boy was mature enough for the ceremony actually to occur. Mao had often come into conflict with his father and taken refuge with his mother, who was also persecuted by the authoritarianism of the father. Rather than marry he ran away from home and wouldn’t come back until his father gave in.
The right to a love-match became a really important issue for the young of both sexes, not only in the new bourgeoisie but in peasant and proletarian families. Just before the revolution in the 1940s, Marion J. Levy noted various factors which had eroded male authority in the Chinese family. 2 Amongst them were such diverse factors as women’s work in the towns, coeducation, the emergenceof a youth culture, romantic love and the Communist Party. She observed that beating had become less common and that mothers-in-law were finding it more difficult to control the young wives. There were frequent complaints of bickering in families. These conflicts were not based on significant issues but rather on the desire to test positions. Wives and mothers-in-law were jockeying for support from male members of the family. Because the institutional authority of the mother-in-law over the young women had broken down but not yet gone, it was difficult to settle these power struggles either way.
Before the nineteenth century, apart from suicide, sexual intrigue, fantasy, and religion were the only ways women could escape. Isolated writers protested against the oppression of women from the sixteenth century onwards and in the eighteenth century women poetesses demanded equality for
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