University of Hawai'i Press
Chapter Title: In Praise of Martyrs: Widow-Suicide in Late-Imperial China
Chapter Author(s): KATHERINE CARLITZ
Book Title: Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture
Book Editor(s): Victor H. Mair, Nancy S. Steinhardt, Paul R. Goldin
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press. (2005)
Stable URL: https:
www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvn6qz.84
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the notion of widow-fidelity is an old one in Chinese culture: widows who refused to rema
y
are praised in Chinese texts dating from well before the Common Era. Starting with the Han
dynasty, the Chinese state honored such widows, since a wife’s loyalty to her husband’s family
could be used to symbolize loyalty to the empire itself. Nevertheless, widow-fidelity was an ideal
mostly honored in the
each before the fourteenth century. In the twelfth through the fourteenth
centuries, China’s intellectual elite
ought Confucian teachings back to the fore after centuries of
Buddhist ascendancy, and they made the ideal of wifely fidelity central to their vision of Confucian
society. By the middle 1500s, local histories in every Chinese county and prefecture contained
chapters praising the virtuous widows of the community. About a third of the women in these
chapters were honored for suicide. No Chinese government today praises widow-suicide or dis-
courages the rema
iage of widows, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century emperors, even as
they praised widows who did not rema
y, tried to discourage them from following their husbands
in death. But the essays below show us how the suicide of young widows was not only praised but
omanticized in the sixteenth century, with effects that linger in popular attitudes today.
The essays below are by Wang Jiusi (1468–1551), a poet and playwright from Shaanxi Province
in north-central China, whose
ief official career was cut short by early-sixteenth-century court
upheavals. The friendship between Wang Jiusi and Kang Hai, another Shaanxi poet and historian
whose career paralleled Wang’s, has been legendary for centuries. The two are known for thei
devotion to wine, women, and song (a hundred courtesans helped cele
ate Kang Hai’s sixtieth
irthday), but less well known are the ties of tragedy that bound the two men. Wang’s daughte
was the first wife of Kang Hai’s son Kang Li, and her death in childbirth was soon followed by
the deaths of Kang Li; Kang Li’s second wife, Yang Shengrong; her
other Yang Song; and Yang
Song’s wife. Wang Jiusi wrote epitaphs for them all. The two epitaphs presented here are pre-
served in The Collected Works of Wang Jiusi (Mei po ji).
Essays praising virtuous widows were a standard subgenre of writing by educated men. Thou-
sands of such essays are extant from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the similarities between
our two examples show us that Wang Jiusi, however profound his grief, was writing in a highly
conventional style. The standard essay praising widow-suicide has a built-in tension: parents o
parents-in-law must force or cajole the young widow to rema
y or at least remain alive, whereas
the young widow must resist them to the point of death or disfigurement. This element of resist-
ance made a space for women to use the icon of the faithful widow as a proof of moral worth,
especially after the Manchu conquest of 1644, when men and women alike called themselves
“faithful widows” to the fallen Ming. But the literature in praise of faithful widows is overwhelm-
ingly male, which raises complex questions about power, gender, and the appropriation of
women’s voices. Late-Qing evidence suggests that women committed suicide to punish those
who damaged their reputations, a far more aggressive gesture than what we read here. But per-
haps it took pathetic portraits like these to make the ideal of widow-suicide culturally accept-
able.—KC
72 | In Praise of Martyrs:
Widow-Suicide in Late-Imperial China
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462 | In Pra ise of Mar t yrs : Widow-Suic ide in L ate -Imper ia l China
“Biography of the Martyred Wife of the Yang Family” ( Yang liefu zhuan)
The martyred wife of the Yang family was the daughter of the Director of Revenue Kang
Dechong, of Wugong County. She was given in ma
iage to Yang Song, an outstanding Lingbao
County student. In the jichou year of the Jiajing reign period (1529), Yang Song’s younger siste
had ma
ied the Wugong County student Kang Li, and when Kang Li died and Yang Song’s sis-
ter committed suicide, Yang rushed to her side. In his grief, he began to cough up blood. Fo
three years he continued to cough up blood intermittently, until he finally died on the fifteenth
day of the tenth month of the xinmao year XXXXXXXXXXWhen his illness reached its crisis, his own wife
Kang promised to follow him in death.
Her parents-in-law were aware of her plans. Her father-in-law was Yang Shu’an, the Provincial
Administration Commissioner, and her mother-in-law was Lady Xu, daughter of the Minister of
Ritual, Xu Xiangyi. Again and again they implored her not to die, but to remain with them and
make a name for herself as a filial and faithful widow. “Wouldn’t that be admirable?” they said.
“Why do you stu
ornly insist on dying now, so as to become famous later? And aren’t you even
thinking about your daughter?”
But Martyr Kang replied, “I know nothing of fame; I know only that I have a husband. When
I die, do not grieve for me. And if not even I am to be pitied, how much less should you pity my
daughter!” Back and forth the words flew, but in the end Kang would not consent to live.
When her parents-in-law saw that she was unpersuadable, they could do nothing but weep
together, and set the servants to watch over her. But the servants treated this as a matter of no
great concern. Whatever crisis she might reach, where was she likely to get poison? Her parents-
in-law also trusted in her safety. What they did not know was that as soon as Yang Song had
ecome ill, Kang had purchased arsenic. On the twentieth day of this month, she seized he
opportunity and secretly took it with water, and then lay down. The servants were unaware of
what she had done. After some time, they noticed that her eyes were bulging and her face was
ed. When they called her there was no response, and only then did they realize that the crisis had
a
ived. They ran to inform Lady Xu, and everyone rushed in with antidotes, but they were
unable to save her. She was twenty-three years old.
Ah, how heroically virtuous! She had prepared in advance her burial clothing and everything
needed for her funeral, and she gave up parental love for the sake of righteousness. Her counte-
nance was not at all pertu
ed or disorderly, but dignified and calm, as though the spirits attended
her in death. She resembled Kang Li’s wife exactly. How remarkable! How extraordinary! The
Kang and Yang families had interma
ied for generations, and this must have influenced both
young women to sacrifice themselves. And their own natural endowments must have played a
ole as well. Otherwise how can we account for cases like that of Ro
er Zhi and his virtuous
other Hui, born of the same womb but so utterly different in conduct?1 Then how much more
must this be true of the girls from these two families? In any case, the fame of both houses will
endure for generations upon generations.
The Historian observes: Alas! Who among us does not die? But if we rank the dying, there
are those who esteem death lightly as a pigeon’s down, while to others it is as heavy as Mount
Tai. Consider, for example, Fan Zhi, one of the original courtiers of the Song dynasty.2 The sec-
ond Emperor Taizong esteemed him greatly, but remarked, “How regrettable! His only fault lay
in not giving the life he owed to his sovereign Shizong. This was indeed shameful.” How can a
Fan Zhi be compared to our heroine, the very epitome of virtue, whose like is so rarely seen in
history?
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In Pra ise of Mar t yrs : Widow-Suic ide in L ate -Imper ia l China | 463
“Epitaph for Yang Shengrong, the Martyred Wife of the Kang Family”
(Kang liefu Yang shi mu zhi ming)
My son-in-law was the student Kang Li (courtesy name Zikuan) of Wugong County.3 When he
died and was buried, I composed his epitaph. Now his second wife Yang has taken poison to sac-
ifice herself for him. Kang Li’s father, the historian Kang Hai, sent a messenger rushing to tell
me, saying, “The pain of her death penetrates my very heart and bones; how can I bear to speak
of it? But she cannot go without an epitaph, so I dare to trouble you once again.” When I heard
this I could not restrain my tears. Can it really be that another young woman has died, just like
my own daughter?
Kang Li would never countenance immoral behavior, saying that Heaven was certain to pun-
ish lewd or villainous deeds. Thus he never, in his twenty-two years of life, contravened the Rites.4
Heaven must have decided to reward him by giving him this virtuous wife. But what moved he
to martyrdom? Surely it was the beauty of character with which Heaven endowed her. She would
not repudiate the teachings of her father and
others.
The ancestral home of the Yang lineage was the Hongnong region (the home of the Han-
dynasty founder), and the Yangs were descended from the Han-dynasty Defender-in-Chief Yang
Zhen. Our heroine’s great-great-grandfather served as a Censor-in-Chief, and her grandfathe
also had a post in the Censorate. Her father, the Provincial Administration Commissioner Yang
Shu’an, was ma
ied to Lady Xu, the daughter of the Minister of Ritual Xu Xiangyi. They had
four sons and four daughters, and our heroine was the youngest daughter.
She was born