The Issue of Inequality

Imperial clanswomen entered marriage with considerable resources of their own. Apart from their official dowries and such gifts that their families and friends (or the emperor) might have bestowed on them personally, the most

noteworthy were noble titles. These ranged in rank order from the exalted commandery princess (chün-chu ) and county princess (hsien-chu ) mentioned above, through lady of virtue (shu-jen ), lady of eminence (shih-jen ), lady of excellence (ling-jen ), respectful lady (kung-jen ), lady of suitability (i-jen ), lady of peace (an-jen ) to the humblest title, child nurturess (ju-jen ).^[20] In our group of fourteen (not counting the princesses), one was named consort of state (kuo-fu-jen , no. 7), one was a commandery lady (no. 3), two were ladies of suitability (nos. 9 and 14), two ladies of peace (nos. 12 and 15), and four were child nurturesses (nos. 13 and 16-18). In four cases no titles were mentioned (nos. 6, 8, and 10-11).

Commandery and county princesses received biannual clothing allowances plus monthly cash and grain stipends. From Hung Mai's example of a county lady receiving a stipend of almost one hundred strings of cash, it is clear that allowances could be substantial (JCSP 3.14:4a-b). Although no stipends are mentioned for the lesser-ranked ladies, all titled clanswomen were granted recruitment privileges for their sons, which apparently were different from the earlier-mentioned privileges for their husbands: all could have one son or grandson named to receive official rank upon their deaths, and commandery and county princesses could also name offspring after they had attended two suburban sacrifices—the former could name four, the latter one (CYTC 2.14:531).

Titles as such were not unique to clanswomen; wives of clansmen and important officials were also titled. But few other wives from nonclan families could begin to match the influence that was the clanswomen's by virtue of their imperial connections, influence that some put to use. The emperor Kao-tsung (r. 1126-62) rebuked one princess for repeatedly asking him to promote her husband and on another occasion gently chastised an elderly princess for favoring her own son over her stepsons, although this did not stop him from meeting either of their demands (SS 248:8782, 8775).

In addition, the rights and privileges of early Sung princesses were at odds with some of the basic patriarchal principles of Chinese society. They lived, not with their in-laws, but in the mansions provided upon marriage. In the late 1060s the Wei-kuo great senior princess (no. 42) brought her mother-in-law, who had been living alone since her son's marriage, to live in a guest-house and plied her with delicacies (SS 248:8779). Half a century earlier the Yang-kuo great senior princess (no. 43) had been ordered by her brother, Chen-tsung (r. 997-1022), to use female ritual forms (fu-li ) when visiting her father-in-law's mansion (SS 248:8773). That she was commanded to do what other women did as a matter of course is explained in the biography of the Ching-kuo great senior princess (no. 30):

In the old system, the imperial son-in-law reduced his father to the genealogical level of sibling. At the time [the princess's husband, Li] Tsun-hsu's father,

Chi-ch'ang, was deathly ill, and on Chi-ch'ang's birthday the princess visited him using a daughter-in-law's rituals (chiu-li ). The emperor [Chen-tsung] on hearing of this, secretly sent various clothes, a precious belt and utensils to help him live long. (SS 248:8774)

The Sung had inherited a system that claimed imperial prerogatives overrode considerations of generation and gender. But this did not sit well with the dynasty's Confucian principles, so the emperors themselves led the change, Indeed, as early as 1064 the imperial clan's etiquette regulations stated that "imperial clanswomen shall all serve their parents-in-law and their husband's relatives as if they were from the families of subjects" (SS 115:2739).

Such a rule only highlighted, however, the dilemma of reconciling the clanswomen's status as offspring of the Son of Heaven with their roles as wives and daughters-in-law. In the eyes of their (male) critics and biographers, there were two related problems. One was a belief that the clans-women, by virtue of their luxurious and sheltered upbringing, tended to be arrogant and spoiled. Although there was undoubtedly some truth to this perception, it should be noted that scholar-officials of the eleventh century had little sympathy for aristocratic life-styles. But even when the clans-woman was a model wife, the power and privilege of her imperial connection could be problematical for her husband's family. The tension between the competing inequalities of gender subordination and political hierarchy was hardly unique to imperial clanswomen, but it was acute for them and thus central to our understanding of their marriage relationships. In the remaining pages of this chapter I examine several specific cases stemming from these problems and consider the responses to them.

Both arrogance and imperial influence were evident in the case of the Yen-kuo princess. A favorite daughter of the emperor Jen-tsung, she had received a lavish dowry in 1057, described above, when she married Li Wei, the nephew of Jen-tsung's late mother the Chang-i empress (and therefore her cousin). She was given the unprecedented Yen-kuo title in 1061 despite protests that the designation was not mentioned in the ritual writings (SMCTI 33:2b-4a). Despite this special attention—or possibly because of it—an air of notoriety surrounded her. In 1060 she was criticized for using her influence to obtain a promotion for her wet nurse's (ju-mu ) nephew (SHY:TH 8:11b). The following year a controversy erupted between the princess and her husband's family that greatly upset the aged emperor and ended the marriage.

The trouble began when the princess was drinking one day with a eunuch, Liang Huai-chi, who served as her house manager, and saw her mother-in-law, Lady Yang, watching her. Infuriated, she beat Lady Yang, who then reported the matter to the emperor. Jen-tsung found his daughter and Liang

to blame and apparently ordered him and another eunuch removed from her household.^[21] But when the princess then became hysterical and suicidal and tried to set her palace on fire, the emperor relented, although over the protests of Ssu-ma Kuang and other officials. The princess's palace supporters, after spying on Li Wei and trying unsuccessfully to gather incriminating evidence on him, nevertheless approached the emperor with unspecified accusations against Li. Jen-tsung's first response to this was silence, but after appeals by the empress and an attendant to the memory of his mother, he finally acted (this was in the first month of 1162) by confining the princess to the palace, sending Li Wei out as prefect of Wei-chou (in Ho-pei-hsi), sending Lady Yang to live with another son, exiling Liang Huai-chi, and dismissing various eunuchs who had been involved (HCP 196:4b-5b). This did not end matters, however. Once in Wei-chou, Li was apparently framed on charges of embezzling grain from the public granaries and exiled, while Liang Huai-chi's exile was canceled (SMCTI 33:6b-7b). In response to Li Wei's disgrace, his brother submitted a petition for him requesting a divorce, stating that "Wei is ignorant and stupid, inadequate to receive Heavenly grace, and so asks to be given a divorce." Before the emperor concurred, however, Ssu-ma Kuang delivered a passionate defense of Li. Reminding the emperor that the original intention behind the marriage had been to honor them, Ssu-ma stated: "Now Wei has been separated from his mother, their family has become outcast in its affairs, great and small are grieving [for them], and it may even [reach the point that they will be] unable to make a living" (HCP 196:6a; SMCTI 33:8a). Appealing once again to the memory of the Chang-i empress, whose death anniversary had just past, Ssu-ma asked for Li's return and greater acknowledgment of the princess's guilt. His appeal succeeded. The emperor demoted the princess to the lesser title of I-kuo princess (the only such demotion to occur in the Sung), citing her ill manners, troublesomeness, and disobedience (STCLC 40:215). He also granted the divorce but gave Li Wei two hundred liang of gold as a sign of his esteem (HCP 196:6a-b), saying, "Men of wealth and nobility need not all be imperial sons-in-law" (HCP 196:6a-b). He might have added that those who were need take great care.

Thirty-two years later another princess's marriage relations became a point of controversy, though in a different way. The Ts'ao-kuo princess,^[22] one of the emperor Shen-tsung's three surviving daughters, was married in 1090 to Han Chia-yen, the son of the late chief councillor Han Ch'i (1008-75) and brother of Han Chung-yen (1038-1109), who headed the Bureau of Military Affairs from 1092 to 1096. The marriage, which was imperially ordered to honor the memory of Han Ch'i (SS 248:8780), was not a great success. Han was reportedly "lacking in decorum and disrespectful" toward his wife and would spend the night away from their residence without warn-

ing. As a punishment, he was censured and exiled to Ch'i-chou in Huai-nan-hsi (HCPSP 9:6b).

Then in a remarkable memorial, the outspoken P'eng Ju-li came to the defense of Han Chia-yen (SMCTI 33:8b-10b). P'eng begins with the familiar argument that the governance of the state, the family, and the husband-wife relationship are interrelated, stating: "If the distinctions between husband and wife are not proper, then when [the ruler] desires that his family affairs be ordered, the family's governance will fail, and as for desiring that the state be ordered, such a thing has never happened" (ibid., 9a). The ideal relationship, he suggests, is epitomized by the king's daughter in the Book of Odes, of whose wedding carriage it was said: "Are they not expressive of reverence and harmony,—The carriages of the king's daughters?" (Legge 1960:35). This may seem obscure, but P'eng explains that, "While the magnificence of the king's daughter's carriage and clothes are fitting for one who is noble and proud, she still upholds the way of the wife, and that is what makes her beautiful. Serving [her husband] she is subordinate, though originally she was above him" (SMCTI 33:9a). P'eng then turns to the case at hand, observing: "Now, because Chia-yen has been unable to subordinate the imperial princess, he has been discarded. This is a case of the wife gaining victory over her husband. If wives are able to gain victory over their husbands, then sons will defeat their fathers and subjects will defeat their ruler. If this source is once loosed, the stream will grow until it cannot be stopped" (ibid., 9a-b). Again, slightly later, he cautions: "Now if you cause wives to deceive their husbands, then in human relations [people will] revolt against their superiors, and customs will decay among those below" (ibid., 10a). Arguing that "small disputes" of a day and night should not be allowed to harm the "great love of a lifetime," P'eng ends by urging the emperor not to oppose his married relatives, so that his great ministers would then not dare to oppose him; thus might the stability of the state be ensured (ibid., 10a-b).

P'eng clearly thought that Han's shortcomings did not merit his punishment and thus shifted the blame to the princess, presumably for going to her brother the emperor rather than submitting quietly as a good wife should. We do not know whether his memorial, with its veiled threat to the young Che-tsung (r. 1086-1100) (a telling indication of the power and assurance of great families like the Hans) had any effect. What is interesting is his categorical insistence on the authority of the husband and the subordination of the wife, however exalted her family. This subordination, inconceivable for a princess in the early Sung, was largely unquestioned in our cases here of Southern Sung clanswomen. But before turning to them, let us digress briefly to consider one clanswoman whose assertiveness appears not to have interfered with her marriage.

From the time her mother was pregnant and her grandmother dreamed

that a beautiful and brilliantly dressed young girl had descended from space (HCCSC 41:2b), Chao Tzu-chen (1097-1140), as seen in Sun Ti's lengthy inscription for her, had a dreamlike, larger than life character. Although she Was apparently raised outside of K'ai-feng as a seventh-generation descendent of T'ai-tsung, not an imperial mourning kin, her family seems to have commanded considerable respect. At her birth she was given presents by five families, and she married Yang Ts'un-chung (1102-66) from a prominent Tai-chou family of generals. At the time of the Jurchen invasion, with her husband away in the wars, Tzu-chen was instrumental in aiding local defense forces in Liang-che (after the family moved south, which is not mentioned), providing shelter for loyal soldiers, feeding the hungry, as well as directing the education of her children inasmuch as she was well educated in poetry and writing (ibid., 2a-3b). When the court was established in Lin-an, she became friendly with the imperial children, was given twice-monthly visiting privileges at the imperial palaces and five "national lady" titles. During the illness that led to her premature death, the emperor ordered her treated by imperial doctors (kuo-i ) (ibid., 1b).

Most interesting, however, were Tzu-chen's private activities. Through her stress on her children's education, Tzu-chen is credited with the civilianizing of the family, for her two sons both received chin-shih degrees and had successful civil careers (ibid., 4b, 5b). She was a devout Taoist "whose only delight lay in the study of the Yellow Emperor and Lao-tzu" (ibid., 4a). With a monthly stipend from her titles, which at one point accumulated to ninety thousand cash, she was also a noted philanthropist, providing relief to the hungry during a famine, supporting more than one hundred poor families on land she owned, and, most remarkably, providing the dowries of eighty-three orphaned young women (ibid., 4a-b).

With her many activities and accomplishments, Chao Tzu-chen was hardly typical of even privileged clanswomen or wives of high officials. Assisted by her clan status, she was able to use the opportunities created by the war and resettlement of the court and, through her ability and the force of her character, to make a mark for herself in Lin-an society of the 1130s. Still, one might ask how it was that she avoided the kinds of marital problems that we have seen above. That her husband was away at war (in all he fought in more than one hundred engagements and eventually rose to command the capital army) and was thus seldom at home undoubtedly helped (Ch'ang et al. 4:3163-64). But even more important is that her successes did not interfere with her acting as a model wife and mother, at least in the eyes of her biographer. Tzu-chen is praised for her humble life—eating simple food and doing laundry—in the years before the war when her husband, though talented, was ill-humored and without official rank (HCCSC 41:2b). As we noted earlier, she is credited with directing her sons' education and commended for running a serious and proper household establishment (3a). Together with

service to one's in-laws (which is not mentioned, perhaps because her father-in-law and his father both died early in the Jurchen war), these were the essential tasks of the Sung literati wife. As we shall now see, it was mainly for these activities that Southern Sung clanswomen were praised.

If Chao Tzu-chen could be said to represent the imperial clanswomen at their social and political apex, Lady Chao (no. 6; 1121-58) in an equally remarkable way might be said to represent them at their humblest. A sixth-generation descendent of T'ai-tsung and thus not a mourning kin, she became at the age of eighteen sui the second wife (chi-shih ) of Hung Shou-ch'ing, an official from a large and prominent Jao-chou family.

In any event, once with the Hungs, Lady Chao's good breeding, obedience, and equable behavior made her very popular in the large household, which had some thirty brothers and cousins in her husband's generation, and in time she became renowned in the community at large. Her biographer, Hung Kua (himself a cousin of Shou-ch'ing's), relates that for some thirteen years (until she was thirty) the Hungs feared she would be taken back by her family to be married to someone else. Then, when she was thirty-three, her father, who had just become magistrate of Lin-ch'uan county in Fu-chou, sent his younger brother with a beautiful carriage to fetch her from the Hungs, with the apparent intention of making a better match for her elsewhere. But Lady Chao angrily refused to go, saying, "With my mother-in-law elderly and two sons young and foolish, I dare not trouble my seniors. My parents with various schemes cannot suddenly take me away" (PCWC 75: 6b). Asking his leave, she went back into the house and thereafter devoted herself to Hung family affairs, passing on to others gifts sent by her clan relatives, keeping peace in the women's quarters, and, in particular, nursing her mother-in-law. After she collapsed while dining with her mother-in-law and died at the age of just thirty-eight, she was mourned by one and all. The next year, however, she was posthumously titled and buried in imperial clan tombs (ibid., 7b).

The Hungs' just fears of losing Lady Chao, whose marriage was perfectly valid and legal, points to the high-handedness of clan families and makes Lady Chao's passionate commitment to the Hungs, particularly to her mother-in-law, all the more striking. Indeed, in Hung Kua's eyes she assumes heroic proportions. Having praised her for sticking to her principles when her family tried to reclaim her (ibid., 6b), Hung closes the inscription by comparing her with Po Chi from the state of Sung in the Spring and Autumn period, who, as Sung was being conquered and the palace destroyed, refused to leave the palace without her governess (fu-mu ) and thus perished in the flames (ibid., 7b).^[23] Just as Po Chi was able to act morally despite living in a dissolute age, so Hung marvels that this imperial clanswoman was able to maintain her integrity at a time when arrogance and licentiousness were common in renowned and exalted families.

This theme of virtue in spite of high birth runs like a refrain through many of the inscriptions:

Although born noble and proud, she was frugal not wasteful, respectful not reckless, living in a poor and simple manner. (no. 6; MLCM 6: 47a)

She was totally unlike the children of noble families. (no. 11; CLC 29: 431)

At the time of her marriage, the literati all said, "The wife is of a noble type; they will not necessarily be happy together." However, she was reverent in her wifely rituals; her in-laws praised her filiality; [in acting by] the code of feminine conduct she was serious; towards her [husband's] kinsmen she was respectful. (no. 16; HTHSTCC 158:13b)

She served her in-laws from dawn to dusk . . . People did not know [from her actions] that she had the nobility of a Heavenly clan. (no. 10; CCC 129:10b)

She was by nature noble and pure, without the bad habits of clanswomen. (no. 14; MCC 18:256)

We must take care to avoid assuming that all or even most clanswomen were like those described above. We are after all dealing with the inscriptions of the few clanswomen who for one reason or other had impressed their contemporaries. Besides, phrases such as "the bad habits of clanswomen" could have arisen either from problems families had had with clanswomen as marriage partners or from anticlan bias among the elite. Whichever the case, this evidence is revealing of contemporary attitudes about how married clans-women should behave. They should not be spoiled, they should cheerfully fulfill their roles as wives and daughters-in-law, and they should devote themselves frugally and ascetically to promoting the fortunes of their new families, even when their husbands were leading cultured and leisured lives as private scholars (see, for example, CCC 129:10b-12a). To cite one last example, Chao Ju-i's (no. 13) husband, Wang Meng-lung, described their life while he was a struggling examination candidate (he received his chin-shih in 1208) in these terms:

I went through the successes and failures of the examinations no less than ten times, and each time was away from her for a year. [I would return] to find my sons named, my daughters nurtured and suddenly grown up, and I did not yet even know them. But this is just the norm for the wives of literati. Lady Chao forgot that she was a noble imperial clanswoman and delighted in being the wife of a poor literatus. (SHWC 25:11a)

Chao Ju-i's life was a far cry from that of the great ladies of the Northern Sung or of Chao Tzu-chen. It probably reflects the humble circumstances of her own family as much as her husband's, but that is just the point. In the Southern Sung most clan families had declined to modest, though still elite, status and had privileges, but generally not the influence, that followed from

close ties to the emperor and court. For clanswomen to prosper in these changed circumstances, they would have to adopt the attitudes and life-styles of the literati culture, which was coming into its own during the Sung. Although many, perhaps most, of the clanswomen and men may have persisted in their anachronistically aristocratic ways—thus their bad reputation—these women and their biographers pointed the way to the future and in so doing provided a resolution for the tension between the inequalities of rank and gender mentioned above. That the resolution unequivocally affirmed the subordination of women was perhaps only to be expected in a culture in which male achievement was at once essential, yet also in doubt, for their families' fortunes.