Academic literature on the topic 'Footbinding'

Ten years after Dorothy Ko’s study that shifted the understanding of footbinding fundamentally (Ko, 2007), Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates’s ground-breaking research on footbinding will again change our knowledge of this practice for good. Through exploring the long-neglected subject of rural women’s footbinding, Bossen and Gates argue that the reason for the demise of footbinding in village China is not because of fashion, beauty, sex, education or a political campaign. Instead, women stopped this practice because of industrialisation, which inevitably drove them out of the business of domestic, sedentary textile-production.

We provide evidence contrary to long-standing general expectations that before 1949 most Chinese women married up the social hierarchy and that footbinding facilitated this hypergamy. In our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more women married up than down, but in all regions, the majority did not marry hypergamously. Moreover, for most regions, we found no statistically significant difference between the chances of a footbound girl versus a not-bound girl in marrying into a wealthier household, despite a common cultural belief that footbinding would improve girls' marital prospects. We do find regional variation: Sichuan showed a significant relation between footbinding and marital mobility. Nevertheless, our evidence of the basic economic circumstances of rural women's marriages from several of China's regions, including Sichuan, supports a different cultural belief as relevant to the lives of most women: marriage among equals. These results have implications for understanding pre-1949 Chinese gender relations and rural life as well as for theorizing social causation.

碩士
國立臺北藝術大學
建築與文化資產研究所
104
Shoes, with a long history, were invented initially for practical use such as for protection and keeping warm. As civilizations continue to develop and society further expands, shoes have become more than a simple necessity as they also present the habits and customs of a nation, and have become one of the symbols of the social class system. One evidence is the appearance of bound feet, which was derived from females being the inferior class in the Chinese feudal system, but which is also the representation of the first fashion trend in Chinese history which was considered a standard of beauty during that time and in which women seek for self-fulfillment by self-infliction. As one of the three forms of abuse in China, bound feet were considered a tool of repressing and materializing females. The processing of binding feet brought great pains just like being tortured, hence the saying, “a pair of bound feet cost a pool of tears”. However, this custom had existed for a thousand years thus the reason for such is worth deeply exploring. Besides, this trend of bound feet pushed embroidery to its highest form of intricacy. Consequently, both the three-inch shoes and the pants were made by hands full of women’s ingenuity. The hope of attracting people with one’s feet not only paved the way for elegance in shoe design, but also indicated the position of women in Chinese history. Through literature review, field survey and model analysis, the study discusses why traditional society preferred small feet, and further gives a background on shoe design from the related relics. Then the study extends to the physical abnormalities caused by binding feet and analyzes cases objectively, aiming to clearly show the history related to such custom.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
歷史學研究所
90
Mrs. Archibald Little as an Educator and Activist with Emphasis on Her Anti-Footbinding Activities Gregory A. Wagner 王貴格 The end of the twenty-first century has seen a marked interest in footbinding, literature by Victorian women and works by sojourners in China. As Mrs. Little falls into all three categories, she has made a prime candidate for research by various specialists in Chinese and comparative literature studies. As an author, both her novels and non-fictional works often had an underlying educational purpose or fundamental cause. In any case, her novels were usually inspired by real people who were suffering real social injustices. Later in China, in addition to writing novels, she published non-fictional works on her travels and subjects on China. Starting in 1895, she concurrently wrote monographs and advocated against footbinding by joining the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese (SDCK or Guangxuehui 廣學會 in Chinese) and by organizing the T’ien Tsu Hui 天足會. Throughout her life, Alicia hoped to remain busy, but in a productive, humanitarian manner. To date, five other biographies on Mrs. Little exist, all of them in English. Two of them were written by the same author, Elisabeth J. Croll. The first of the five was written in 1970, and is quoted by the other three authors. However, the other three works were published around the same time and do not quote each other. As Mrs. Little’s Intimate China and In the Land of the Blue Gown contain semi-autobiographical materials, four of the articles primarily quote these two works, while some also cite the North China Herald《北華捷報》, a newspaper published in Shanghai. The relevant articles on Mrs. Little are as follows: 1. Nigel Cameron’s Barbarians and Mandarins: Thirteen Centuries of Western Travellers in China, Chapter 17 “Mrs. Archibald Little: Unbind Thy Feet!” 1970. 2. Elisabeth J. Croll’s “Like the Goddess of Mercy: Mrs Little and the Natural Foot Society” in ed. David S.G. Goodman, China and the West: Ideas and Activists, 1985 (1990). 3. Elisabeth J. Croll’s Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands: European Women Writers in China, Chapter 2 “An Intimate View of Chinese Women: ‘The Chinese Goddess of Mercy’ and against Footbinding, Mrs. Archibald Little,” 1989. 4. Susanna Hoe’s The Private Life of Old Hong Kong: Western Women in the British Colony, 1841-1941, Chapter 19 “Mrs Little and Big Feet,” 1990. 5. Susan Schoenbauer Thurin’s Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907, Chapter 6 “Orientalizing Feminism: Mrs. Archibald Little (A.E.N. Bewicke),” 1999. In sum, reading the chapters on 艾利西亞 比尤伊克 / Mrs. Archibald Little by Croll’s Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands and Thurin’s Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907 will provide the best introduction to 艾利西亞 so far. Nigel Cameron’s article gives a nice, short summery into 立德夫人’s personality. Unfortunately some uncensored, sarcastic statements taint his chapter with slightly misogynistic, biased and misleading jabs directed at her and other women as well. Susan Thurin, one of the other biographers refers to one of his attacks to be “an artifact of a past era.” Elisabeth Croll’s shorter work is too brief to cover the complex life of and writings by 立德夫人. Luckily, her longer article makes up for the shorter one’s brevity. Susanna Hoe’s monograph focuses on expatriate women in Hong Kong, but 立德夫人’s time in Hong Kong was brief. In general, these biographers need to stress more the 自強運動 and how it affected the efforts of 立德夫人 and her Natural Foot Society. About eight years after she arrived in China, with the encouragement and support of Reverend Dr. Timothy Richard and Reverend Dr. John Macgowan, Mrs. Little’s senses of sympathy and justice would make her determined to join the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge and organize the T’ien Tsu Hui in an attempt to eradicate footbinding. However, unlike her professional writing career, her time and energy at the T’ien Tsu Hui was offered completely on a voluntary basis with no monetary compensation being received. Through meetings and literature, Mrs. Little would educate both foreigners and native Chinese about the various complications that arose from footbinding. Because the establishment of her organization happened to coincide with China’s loss to Japan, many reform-minded people were easily persuaded to join her cause. Promptly, the Chinese formed their own anti-footbinding societies, and the movement gained in both range and speed. Only the coup by Empress Ci Xi 慈禧太后 slowed the progress from such societies, but even she changed her mind and also encouraged the abandonment of footbinding in 1902. By the time she left China in 1907, Mrs. Little was confident that the practice of footbinding was a dying one. In Chapter 1 of my thesis, I introduce other works on Alicia Bewicke and attempt to provide insights into her personality and background as an author during the Victorian times. Chapter 2 covers the novels that she composed, many of which were based on true people’s experiences. Each novel, however, also usually contained an underlying cause or issue that Alicia felt needed to be rectified. Chapter 3 introduces some of her works on Chinese studies. Except for a Chinese legend, the rest of such works were either diaries or non-fictional topics on China. Chapter 4 reveals her own and her Natural Foot Society’s relations with the SDCK. Chapter 5 discusses her administrative and organizational activities with the T’ien Tsu Hui 天足會 that she organized. Chapter 6 introduces the literature that the T’ien Tsu Hui used to create a negative public opinion regarding the practice of footbinding.

碩士
國立臺北教育大學
台灣文學研究所
95
This essay tries to rethink the discourse of anti-footbinding and free love in Japanese Rule period. Anti-footbinding movement has long been seen as a symbol of women liberation. By analyzing the solicit essays of “The Damage and the solution of anti-footbinding” set by Taiwan Daily News(Taiwan Ri Ri Xin Bao) in1915, we can find that the discourse of anti-footbinding is a new discipline for women. On the other hand, Free Love is claimed by Taiwan modern intellectuals as also a main issue for women liberation. The making of such discourse is based on the attitude of enlightenment. This essay will reconsider the relation of power among “male gentry and traditional literati”, “male modern intellectuals” and “Taiwan women” by analyzing Changhua Romance in 1926. This incident is be expressed by male modern intellectuals as “a deviation of the idea of liberation”. Under the conspiracy of male gentry, traditional literati and traditional intellectuals and male modern intellectuals, this woman involved in Changhua Romance was forced to keep silence, the agency of gendered subaltern was oppressed. Besides, the theme of the demotic novels in 1930s’ is “free love”. Such texts use the comedic narrative, express the modern men wishing to make their own family. They can combine the idea and reality, holding their fates on their own hands. These male bourgeoisie not only have experienced the current of “free love” in 1920s’, but also inherited the legacy of patriarchy from their elder generation.