Talk: Female Education and the Women in Marriage during the Late Ming Period: A Study on Ye Wanwan’
As a part of the 2022 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Week events, you are warmly invited to a guest talk titled: ‘Female Education and the Women in Marriage during the Late Ming Period: A Study on Ye Wanwan’.
Date and time: 10:00-11:30am, 11 March
Venue: Library Multifunction Room 01
This activity is open to all staff members, please register here.
It will be delivered in Chinese, with interpretation provided.
Outline:
Using Ye Wanwan (叶纨纨) and her work Chouyan《愁言》as a case study, this talk explores the relationship between female education and women in marriage in late Ming. More specifically, it studies how female education affected women’s understanding of passion and reason, and their attitudes towards marriage. Ye Wanwan was raised by her happily-married parents and educated by her mother, Shen Yixiu, who represented a perfect female image of virtue, wisdom, passion and reason. Her life experiences and reading of poem, novels and plays had brought Ye a rational understanding and romantic expectation towards marriage. However, what Ye faced was a seven-year marriage that existed in name only, resulting in her tragic death at the age of 23. Ye’s case shows harsh conflict between a woman's education and her love life when restraints became looser during the late Ming Dynasty.
About the speaker:
Dr. Xi Lifang is a lecturer in School of History at Ningbo University. Her main research interest includes history of Ming and Qing Dynasty, Gender History and Food History.