If liu Xiang, a scholar of the Western Han Dynasty, reads the later "Biography of the Daughters of Lie", he may be frightened like when he loved Jun when he watched "Midnight Murder Bell", thinking that he was reading a horror novel, or a brand new version that he had never seen before.
How wild are these stories of The Legend of the Daughters?
The New Book of Tang records that Fang Xuanling, the prime minister, was once seriously ill and worried that his life would soon be over, so he said to his wife Lu Shi, "Wife, don't be a widow for me after you die, and serve your future husband well." Lu Shi heard the crying, entered the tent, dug out an eyeball, and ran out in blood, indicating to Fang Xuanling that he would never marry someone else.
Later, Fang Xuanling was well ill, and the husband and wife were harmonious and respected each other.
▲ Now more well-known is the story of Fang Xuanling's fear of his wife.
There is a story in the "Biography of Song Shi Lienu" that the Kaifeng woman Zhu Shi, a girl with a household registration in the capital, married a city scoundrel who drank and gambled all day. The family was poor, and the Zhu clan could only sell towels and shoes and provide for their husbands alone, but this brother was a dou who could not be supported, and finally broke the law and was exiled to Wuchang.
Zhu's parents wanted their daughter to remarry, but Zhu Ning refused to comply, hanging himself before her husband left, which was praised for a while.
There is a Wang Liewo woman in the "Biography of Ming Shi Lienu", who wanted to be martyred after her husband died, and her family guarded against her suicide, and later she heard that jasmine was poisonous and could kill people (the history books wrote so), so she asked people to send jasmine flowers to her room every day. A month later, in the middle of the night, she drank poison and committed suicide, dying at the age of 23.
There is also a Zhang family, dead husband to hang himself, was saved by the family, she took the axe and cut off her left arm, or was saved by the family. Winter came, it was freezing cold, Zhang Shi saw that his family began to relax, ran to the river, crashed into the ice, and threw water to die.
These self-harming women are nothing more than pursuing two words- chastity.
Some scholars believe that the so-called "Biography of Lienu" in this kind of canonical history is "based on the standard of martyrdom, from the perspective of chastity, from the point of view of chastity, from the point of view of keeping the festival, and the record of the virtuous martyrs, which is called the biography of Lienu, which is actually the biography of the martyrs."
Liu Xiang of the Western Han Dynasty, of course, could not have known that these "Biographies of The Daughters of Lie" in later generations were based on such violence and distorted human nature.
If Liu Xiang knew, he might still have to scold (100 dirty words omitted here), and then say, your thing is also called "The Biography of the Daughters"?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01. </h1>
In the stereotype of many people, women in ancient history books are bound by feudal etiquette and the concept of chastity, and their status is low, and most women have no sense of existence in historical narratives.
Not only in the East, but also in the West, some people joked with the word "history" that history is "His story" (his story). However, this sentence is obviously ironic, in the West, the word "history" is derived from ancient Greek, and it is also the work of the same name by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus - "Historia", which originally means "investigation, inquiry", and this pot man does not memorize.
Back to our Greater China. In fact, the fact that women in ancient China were ignored by the history of the feudal rites of male superiority over female inferiority was also a gradual development process, which was not the case at first.
Influenced by the legacy of the pre-Qin Dynasty, Sima Qian's "Records of History" of the Western Han Dynasty included the deeds of many outstanding women, who were not bound by confucian ethics.
Lü Hou, the wife of Liu Bang of Han Gaozu, assisted her husband in fixing the world and took charge of the imperial government as empress dowager. Sima Qian did not forget to praise her as an excellent female politician in the "Records of History", and wrote separately into a volume of "Benji", which reads: "The high queen of the female lord is called the system, the government does not leave the house, the world is in a state of decay, the punishment is rare, the sinner is Xi, the civil affairs are harvested, and the food and clothing are nourished." ”
Since the end of the Qin Dynasty, the situation in which the people have not had a good life has become history during the reign of Lü Hou.
▲Portrait of Lü Hou.
The "Chronicle of History" writes that during the period of Emperor Wen of Han, the folk maiden Chun Yu Ti wrote to save her father and requested the abolition of corporal punishment, before his father regretted that he did not have a boy in his family; wrote that the rich Qianjin Zhuo Wenjun had just been widowed, and was moved by the piano music played by the great talent Sima Xiangru, and eloped with him regardless of the world's vision; wrote that Emperor Wu of Han's mother, Wang Xian, first married to the ordinary peasant household Jin Wangsun, had a daughter, and then entered the palace and was favored by the crown prince Liu Qi (Emperor Jing of Han).
In recording the lives of these women, Sima Qian never attached importance to chastity, and even did not shy away from the secrets of the royal family, even if it was the empress dowager's remarriage.
In the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, a scholar wrote the earliest work in China's historical books that specifically described women's deeds, that is, Liu Xiang's "Biography of The Daughters of Lie".
Although Liu Xiang was a Confucian scholar, his purpose in writing the Biography of the Daughters of Lienu was to promote positive energy, more to indoctrinate the meaning, rather than to oppress women, which was related to the fact that the Zhao Feiyan sisters were favored by Emperor Hancheng at that time.
Zhao Feiyan was on a par with Yang Guifei of the Tang Dynasty, and was called "Huan Fei Yan Thin", but this absolute empress had a very poor reputation, and after being favored, she completely released herself and caused chaos in the harem. Liu Xiang couldn't take it anymore, so he wrote this book to educate her and introduce some outstanding women in history.
The Qing Dynasty historian Zhang Xuecheng commented on this: "The so-called daughters of later historians are also said to be martyrs, and Liu Xiang's narration is also the meaning of the list. ”
Historians after the Sui and Tang dynasties were stunned to write the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" as the "Biography of the Spirited Women", and took chastity as the first criterion, which was contrary to Liu Xiang's original intention.
▲ Jin Gu Kaizhi's "Biography of The Daughters of Lie".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02. Can I eat it? </h1>
The Western Han Dynasty Liu Xiang's Biography of the Daughters of Lie was divided into seven parts: Mother Yi, Xianming, Renzhi, Zhenshun, Jieyi, Dialectical Tong, and Evil Concubine, which recounted more than a hundred women.
These seven types of women have their own advantages, they are either talented women with both moral integrity and ability, or beautiful women who fall for the country, or ordinary working women, and may even be snake and scorpion women who are "jealous and confused, and treacherous".
But no matter whether they are beautiful or ugly, good or bad, as long as they leave their footprints in history, they should be included in future generations. Although Liu Xiang was shackled by Confucianism and did not oppose feudal rituals such as chastity and righteousness, in his view, maternal etiquette, virtuousness, and benevolence were the most important criteria, and he wanted to write about "female column" instead of "martyr woman".
In this version 1.0 of "The Biography of The Daughters of Lie", there are many stories that we are familiar with.
Mother Meng in the "Mother Ceremony" chapter raised her son Meng Ke (that is, Mencius) to grow up alone.
Xiao Mengke was mischievous, and when he lived with his mother near the grave of someone else's family, he learned to play the funeral process with his friends, which made his mother sad. In order to educate her children, Meng Mu took him to live near the market, and Xiao Meng Ke learned to do business with merchants, and became infected with the atmosphere of a market servant. In the end, Meng Mu had to move her family to the side of the academy, and meng Ke finally calmed down and followed the students to learn the etiquette of scriptures.
Meng Mu was relieved and said, "This is where the children live." ”
This is the allusion to the "Three Migrations of Meng Mu", people read out the virtuousness of Meng Mu, and no one has seen people make up stories about Meng Mu's chastity.
▲Meng Mu Sanqian statue.
In addition, in the "Xianming" chapter, King Xuan of Zhou's wife, Jiang Hou, heard that King Xuan had mistaken the upper court because of his lust for her beauty, so he asked the Son of Heaven for sin and encouraged King Xuan of Zhou to be diligent in political affairs and achieve the name of Zhongxing.
In the "Debate" section, the orphaned women of Qi Guo Jimo are ugly in appearance, and the reason why they are called "orphaned women" is because they are ugly and "three to the countryside, five to the inside", and no one is willing to take them in. She was very enterprising, and dared to write to King Qi Xiang to warn him how to choose the prime minister, and after being summoned, she talked with King Qi for several days about state affairs. King Qi is not a appearance association, and finds that she is a talent, and arranges a blind date for her by the way.
Liu Xiang's "Biography of The Daughters of Lie" is all-encompassing, just in response to the sentence "Women are made of water" in "Dream of the Red Chamber", and the women he wrote were as tender and changeable as water, full of vitality of life, unlike the later "Biography of Lienu" where the whole text was a "dead" word.
After Liu Xiang's Biography of the Daughters of Lie, Fan Ye of the Southern Song Dynasty for the first time wrote a single biography of women outside the imperial family when compiling the Book of later Han. Since then, the twenty-four histories have been added to a "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", and there are thirteen histories in the main history with the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie".
"The Book of the Later Han Dynasty and the Biography of the Daughters of Lie" has not yet changed its flavor, fan Ye still adheres to Liu Xiang's standard of pluralism, as long as there are female students with stories, they have the opportunity to be selected.
Fan Ye also didn't care about the woman's chastity, he said: But the search is especially high, and there is no need to focus on one. "He had a quest for beauty rather than a perverted emphasis on chastity, and the women he chose were mostly talented and virtuous.
Among the more legendary women in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty is Cai Yan (i.e., Cai Wenji).
Cai Wenji married three times in her life, and if you look at the standard of blindly promoting chastity in the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" after the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it is impossible to be selected, but Fan Ye looks at her talent of "erudite and talented, and good at musical rhythm".
This talented woman's life was very unfortunate. Cai Wenji had a marriage in her early years, married to Wei Zhongdao, who was from the Hedong family, and later had to return home to be widowed because of the early death of her husband. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Wenji's father, Cai Yong (蔡邕), was involved in the Dong Zhuo Rebellion and was imprisoned and executed, and with the chaos in the world, she was taken captive by the Xiongnu King Zuoxian in the midst of war.
During the Xiongnu tribal period, Cai Wenji gave birth to two children for the Xiongnu, and for twelve years she was lonely and lonely, only accompanied by Saiwai Hudi. It was not until Cao Cao unified the north and remembered his friendship with Cai Yong that he sent someone to the Xiongnu to redeem Cai Wenji and arrange for her to remarry Dong Qi.
Fan Ye is Cai Wenji's little fan, and after telling the tragic life of a generation of talented women, he called repeatedly: There is a trace of end, and there is a sense of leisure. Ou Mingfeng is fierce, Zhao I Guan Tong. "It's the right posture for star chasing.
In the Sui and Tang dynasties, historians criticized Cai Wenji, and the "Biography of Lienu" also began the first transformation into a "biography of a spirited woman".
▲ Qing Li Jian's "Wen Ji Si Han Tu".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03.Sui tang: Down with Cai Wenji! </h1>
The Tang Dynasty historian Liu Zhiji was a big coffee, and friends familiar with the history of historiography must have heard of his book "Stone".
However, Liu Zhiji was a straight male cancer, and he especially despised the "Biography of Lienu" in the "Book of Later Han", he said: "Weizong (Fan Yezi) Book of Han, the biography of "Lienu", Xu Shu is disdainful, and Cai Yan sees the book, and wants to make Tong Guan contain it, will be accurate? ”
In Liu Zhiji's eyes, a three-married woman like Cai Wenji did not observe the way of women and should not be included in the history. On the contrary, another Eastern Han female poet Xu Shu, even if her talent is not as good as Cai Yan, should be ranked ahead of her, at least people adhere to chastity.
Xu Shu also has poetry passed down, but Liu Zhiji praised, mainly Xu Shu when her husband died and her family forced her to remarry, "disfigured and did not marry, mourned and hurt her life", and defended her chastity with disfigurement and grief.
In the view of defenders such as Liu Zhiji, the "biography of the daughters of the column" should be the "legend of the martyrs", which should be used to commend these virgin women and martyrs who abide by the three principles and five constants.
The terrible thing is that this kind of thinking has gradually become the mainstream of the Tang Dynasty's official revision history books.
▲ Tang Zhou Fang's "Lady of the Hairpin Flower".
In the "Book of Jin" and "Book of Sui" compiled by the Tang Dynasty, the number of chastity and filial piety in the "Biography of The Daughters of Lie" increased significantly, far exceeding that of other types of women, accounting for more than half of them, and the tragic degree of killing and martyrdom was also unprecedented in Liu Xiang and Fan Ye's "Biography of Lienu".
The Book of Jin has such a story. Zhang Tianxi, who was cool before, had two beautiful concubines, and Zhang Tianxi loved them very much. Later, Zhang Tianxi became seriously ill and asked them, "Why repay me?" ”
The two concubines were usually favored, and they were willing to commit suicide and martyrdom, promising: "If you are not secret, the concubines please die, and offer to sweep the ground, and swear to have no other aspirations." "Then he killed himself. After they committed suicide, Zhang Tianxi's illness improved, so he had to bury them with the etiquette of a woman.
The "Book of Jin" records that the number of people who commit suicide and self-harm in order to keep themselves has increased significantly, and they have repeatedly emphasized chastity, but they have not forgotten those talented women, Xin Xianying, Xie Daoyun and other talented women who have been famous throughout the ages, and still have a place in the "Book of Jin".
However, in the "Sui Shu Lienu Biography", chastity and filial piety became indispensable standards, and the talented women gradually faded out of sight, or even did not mention anything. The compilers should not only emphasize the superiority of men over women, but also instill the concept of "women without talent is morality" and strengthen the mental control of women.
Therefore, later historians said: "When Wei and Sui descended, historians took many things that were overcome and turned upside down, and killed and martyred." ”
Since then, Zhengshi has written the "Biography of The Daughters of Lie", how tragic and how to come, and highlighting a "lie" word.
The Tang Law also changed the "marriage to the husband" in the etiquette into a mandatory rule: if the husband flees without his wife, there is no punishment, and it is less than a certain number of years (usually three years), the wife cannot divorce and remarry. On the contrary, the wife should strictly observe the principles of etiquette, and if she betrays her husband, in addition to being punished, she will be ordered to obey her husband's arrangements and let him abandon him, and become a vassal of the man completely.
You know, the Tang Dynasty was the era of Wu Zetian, but this is obviously not the focus of the Song Dynasty historians.
▲ Portrait of Wu Zetian.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >04.Song and Yuan: The final establishment of the "chastity" standard</h1>
The old and new Book of Tang, compiled in the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty, respectively, inherit the ideas of the previous generations of repressed women.
The Old Book of Tang is more generous, only saying that the world has deteriorated in the chaotic world, and the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" was written to reverse the unhealthy winds: "The last generation is popular, the chastity is lonely, talk about sowing pepper orchids, and use the pot of the bridesmaids." ”
The compilers of the New Book of Tang, Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi, rose to the level of consolidating gangchang ethics, claiming to restore the correct order of "father, son, husband, and woman." In the preface, they state that the criteria for the selection of women are, in addition to chastity, which are filial piety, righteousness, and kindness. In the book, the "fierceness" of women guarding chastity is further increased, which is outrageous.
In addition to the story of Fang Xuanling's wife "culling" mentioned above, there is also Zheng Lian's wife Li Shi.
Li was widowed less than a year after marrying Zheng Lian, and since then she has been wearing cloth clothes and eating vegetarian food for many years, but she often dreams of a man proposing to her. Li Shi thought that his appearance was not fading, too beautiful, so he stained his face with filth all day, no longer groomed and dressed, and it is said that he never dreamed of other men again.
The filial daughters in the New Book of Tang and the Biography of the Daughters of Lienu are also mostly hysterical.
Li Miaofa, a woman from Yingzhou (Chongming Island), was separated from her parents during the Anshi Rebellion, and later heard of her father's death and wanted to go home to mourn. She was already married and had a son, so she was blocked, so she cut off a breast to show her determination. After returning to her hometown, Li Miaofa's father had already been buried, and she stabbed her heart with a knife, saying that she must see her father's remains, and the clan had to open the grave, and after opening the coffin, she used her tongue and hair to clean the dust on the surface of her father's body.
The filial daughter eventually built a hut in front of her parents' grave and planted pines to guard the elderly.
The prosperity of Taoism provided ideological support for the standard of chastity in the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" in this period, and the feudal defenders brainwashed the people with theories such as "saving heavenly reason, destroying people's desires", "starvation and death are small, and loss of temperance is big".
In the Yuan Dynasty, the compilers of the "History of Song" also took women who observed the Three Principles and Five Constants as the standard, and there were countless characters who were stubbornly guarding their virginity in the "Biography of The Daughters of Lienu", not only the imperial court rewarded them, built ancestral halls, wrote inscriptions, and erected arches, but also the ordinary people spontaneously expressed their admiration for the anti-human behavior of chaste women.
At this point, the women in the main history almost evolved into "martyrs".
In this context, Li Qingzhao, who is similar to Cai Wenji in both literary talent and life experience, was not selected for the "Biography of The Daughters of Lie", which is also unexpected and reasonable.
Li Qingzhao's evening scenery is bleak, and after experiencing national turmoil and wandering in a foreign country, she has almost no relatives around her. When she saw a clever 10-year-old daughter from a friend surnamed Sun, she said to the girl, "I am old, and I am willing to teach what I have learned in my life." ”
The little girl blurted out: "Caizao is not a woman's business." In a word, the fairy tale is unscrupulous, but how to get a "sad" word.
Li Qingzhao was full of talent, with a free spirit and an independent personality, but she seemed out of place in that era, and the most normal she became an outlier.
After that, Li Qingzhao was also "hacked" for hundreds of years. The apologists criticized her precisely from the matter of chastity, and every day they talked about the confusing remarriage storm of others.
▲Portrait of Li Qingzhao.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >05.Ming and Qing dynasties: the era when the concept of chastity was the most arrogant</h1>
Judging from the criteria for the entry of females into the biography, several types of virtuous women, such as "suicide martyrdom", "swearing to die without marrying", "observing festivals and fulfilling filial piety", are the favorites of the "Ming History", and other types of women have almost disappeared in the "Ming History".
The concept of chastity in the Ming and Qing dynasties has "reached the pinnacle of perfection", believing that "a woman's name is in one body, slightly flawed, and all goodness cannot be hidden." "When a woman has a problem with her virginity, she will fall into the abyss of perdition and be devastated by this discriminatory moral code.
"Ming Shi Lienu Biography" contains a total of more than 260 females, of which the number of martyrs exceeds the sum of the previous generations of "Biography of Lienu", and the ending is a happy woman, which can be counted with fingers.
This is not at all unjust, not that the Qing Dynasty deliberately blackened the Ming Dynasty. According to historian Dong Jiazun, the number of officially registered festival keepers in the Ming Dynasty reached 27,141, 45 times that of the pre-Qin and Yuan dynasties combined, and women in the Ming Dynasty suffered unprecedented oppression.
It was crazy in those days.
In the "Biography of Ming Shi Lienu", in order to keep the Festival of Chastity, some means of the Lienu made people shudder, but the people of the time were proud of it.
Chen Xiang's wife, Ni Shi, was a young widow, and her family was destitute, and she was a female red and adoptive mother-in-law. Hearing that others wanted to tell her about the matchmaker, Ni Shi poured boiling soup on his face until his left eye burst out, and then smeared it on his face with soot, scaring the matchmaker into running away. Ni took care of her husband's family for twenty years, and when her mother-in-law died in her seventies, she mourned and died of hunger strike.
Another martyr, He Xuan's wife Li Shi, was also young and beautiful and widowed. His father forced him to remarry, Li Shi stabbed it into his ear with a hairpin, "the hand from the fist to the end, the re-extraction, the blood splashed like a note", the brain to make up the picture is very scary. By the time the doctor arrived, she was already screaming for her life.
Another tendency in the Biography of Ming Shi Lienu is the surge in the number of unmarried festival-keeping girls.
There was a "Xiang Zhen daughter", who was given to a family surnamed Zhou in Wujiang when she was a child, and the person was not married, but Zhou Lang hung up. Xiang Shi was actually bent on martyrdom, she waited until the family was asleep, tied her hair with plain silk, and then tied the clothes into knots, and then hanged herself on the beam, and left a suicide note: "Tell your parents that your children are not allowed to serve a day, and now Zhou Lang is dead." ”
Because of the feudal rituals, the Xiang clan was willing to die for Zhou Lang, whom he had never met, also for the so-called "chastity", which was a completely pathological psychology.
When I opened the history books, it was Mr. Lu Xun who said that on each page of the crooked and oblique page were two words -- "cannibalism." The martyr's daughter regarded death as a homecoming, and in today's view, it can only make people sympathize.
The Qing Dynasty did more than that.
The Qing History Manuscript records 559 women, and 294 of them ended their lives by suicide, including virgins and martyrs. They guard their husbands' virginity, but in fact they are subjected to social violence, which is a tragedy of the times, what is there to celebrate?
▲Qing Palace women's costumes. Image source/figureworm creative
Luo Xiang, a professor of "internet celebrities", said: "If freedom is not restricted, it will definitely lead to the exploitation of the strong against the weak." "Just as freedom without borders brings injustice, inequality is predestined under absolute power.
In the narrative of ancient Chinese history, it is far more than women who are persecuted by feudal rituals who are treated similarly.
Sima Qian wrote the "Chronicle of History and Cargo Breeding", which attached great importance to social economy and specialized in recording the rich merchants and giants in history. "The world is bustling, all for profit; the world is bustling, all are for profit", this sentence is deafening. However, in later generations, the history books became more and more contemptuous of merchants because of the ideological tendency of the social class division of "scholars, peasants, industrialists, and merchants".
In this way, the feudal monarchy of the Ming and Qing dynasties ignored the bud of capitalism and missed the Great Navigation Age and the Industrial Revolution.
▲Image source/figureworm creative.
The "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" should have recorded all kinds of legendary women in history, so that they would be among the ranks of the right history like men, rather than advocating the persecuted virginity and martyrs. After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the content of the "Biography of the Daughters of Lie" was constantly distorted, until chastity became the first criterion, and the women of the columns all became the same face, which was the result of the feudal etiquette imposed on the history books.
Fortunately, these dross have long since become the dust of history, and the chastity arch that imprisons humanity has also been shattered. Now, no one should use these outdated concepts to persecute every free and equal soul.
Whether men, women or children, the most precious thing for each of us is our life and our future.
bibliography:
[Han] Liu Xiang: The Biography of Lienu, Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House, 2003
Deng Xiaonan et al., Reader in the History of Chinese Women, Peking University Press, 2011
Shiyu: Women of the Tang Dynasty, Sanqin Publishing House, 2011
Shi Fang: History of Chinese Sexual Culture, Heilongjiang People's Publishing House, 2003
Zhang Yihe: The History of Zhenjie, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1999
Zhang Tao, "Affirmed Denial——— From the Perspective of Women's Suicide in the > of the < Qing History Manuscript and the Biography of The Daughters of Lienu", Qing History Research, No. 03, 2001
Guo Anan: "On the Evolution of the Criteria for female entry in the History of Zhengshi", Master's Thesis of East China Normal University, 2012
Chen Juan: "Research on the Biography of Twenty-Four Women in History", Master's Thesis of Fujian Normal University, 2013