China Qing era saw rise in female authors, poets, despite broad restrictions on women in arts
Like much of the world, China experienced a notable rise in women authorship during the 19th century, with three poets making a particularly profound impact
From the 18th century onwards, female authors gained unprecedented prominence, from Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters in the West to the rise of significant women writers in Qing-era China (1644-1912).
The increasing prominence of female Chinese authors was driven by Dream of the Red Chamber, an 18th-century masterpiece by Cao Xueqin, widely considered the pinnacle of Chinese fiction and one of the four great classical novels of Chinese history. Cao’s book was so important that a cottage industry of poets emerged, writing works dedicated to the novel.
This trend continued the “rise of the woman writer,” which began during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
Ruofan Zhang from Changchun University in Jilin, in northern China, wrote in a paper dedicated to Qing-era poets. In the work, published by the Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences in early February, she stated:
“When we enter the literary garden of Qing women’s writing, we come into intimate contact with their inner worlds – we may clearly discern their often-obscured modes of existence, listen to their long-silenced grievances and muted cries of resistance, and feel both their anguished collapse and their tenacious struggle within harsh conditions of survival.”
Zhang added that the Qing dynasty saw a “period of awakening” in which women demanded to break free from the fate of a male-dominated society.
However, despite breakthroughs in the arts, Qing society did not achieve gender equality.