Index IntroductionConfucius and His InfluenceMarriage and Property RightsConclusionIntroductionConfucianism is the core value of Chinese society and has profoundly influenced many other Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. However, it also has a reputation for its repressive and degrading attitude towards women and its history of oppressive practice towards women. The Confucianism we are discussing here is primarily the school of thought of Confucius, Mencius, and Xun Zi and includes its later development into another dynasty. Feminism is the defense of women's rights on the basis of gender equality, which is becoming increasingly conscious along with the #MeToo movement. These two sets of concepts seem to contradict others. Therefore, this article aims to study how Confucianism influenced the status and power of women and the status of women in ancient China. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Confucius and his influence Liji is one of the Four Books. He put together a comprehensive account of all the property rules (li) that were codified during the Warring States and the early Han dynasty. Its contents range from government regulations to detailed instructions on how to run a home or even how to behave. Most of these rules were formulated by the first disciples of Confucius and therefore are expressed and illustrated in the form of anecdotes about Confucius and his disciples. Liji contains much legislation on women's roles and virtues. This text is believed to contain the first formulation of the Confucian code for women, what later became the three obediences and the four virtues. A woman should be obedient to her father before marriage, to her husband after marriage and to her son in case of marriage. widows. Whereas the four virtues instruct women on proper etiquette that shows the excellence of women's virtue, women's speech, women's appearance, and women's work. These four virtues became the important core of teachings aimed at women throughout Chinese history. Her idea that “men are superior and women inferior” and that “the absence of talent in a woman is a virtue” has held women back and influenced the morale of patriarchal society for a long time. According to Li Yun, faithfulness is a particularly important virtue of a wife. Once married to her husband, her lifelong feeling of duty towards him should not be changed, even when her husband dies, she will never marry again. In addition to this, husband and wife built the villa and its apartments, distinguishing between the external and internal parts. The men occupied the outside; the women the inside. In the patriarchal society of ancient China, women only had power in the home, and their power is not comparable to that of men in society. There is a controversial passage in the Analects: “Only nüzi and mean people are difficult to raise. If you are around them, they behave inappropriately; If you keep your distance from them, they will resent you. Although some argue that the nüzi explanation may apply to maids and small children but not to women in general, it is also a fact that the term nüzi has been used to refer to women. In this case, although Confucius' intention in that passage is unclear. However, this step was used to degrade women in the following days. The influence of this patriarchal morality has still affected women in modern society. Women will no longer be responsible in thechildcare and household chores, while men will be the heads of the family. The repression of women had improved as intellectuals were affected by Western liberalism. Influenced directly or indirectly by Western feminists, Chinese reformers denounced the deleterious effects of Confucianism on women. They assumed that Confucianism sacrificed individuals for the good of families and were particularly hard on women. According to the founder of the influential Chinese vernacular periodical New Youth, Chen Duxiu, women would not be able to occupy their rightful place in society as long as they were bound by Confucian teachings such as “Being a woman means submitting,” “Do not disobey never or be lazy in following the orders of parents or in-laws. “Notably, Confucius and Mencius were not as degrading to women as later ones such as the Song Ming neo-Confucians. Confucianism's oppression of women may be largely an addition by later Confucians to the fundamental doctrines outlined by Confucius and Mencius. Degrading attitudes towards women became extreme during the Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism period. During the Song Dynasty, common widows were allowed to remarry after completing three years of mourning for their husbands. According to Neo-Confucian Chen Yi, dying of hunger is a small matter, but losing integrity is a very important matter, which implies that widows who remarry are immoral, while it is okay for widowers to remarry. However, from the Yuan Dynasty onwards, widows of officials were prohibited from remarrying. During the earlier Ming, imperial chastity was greatly expanded. For women who have extramarital affairs, the cheated husband will be allowed to sell to other families but not to the lover. The authorized sale of the wife appears to have been based on the logic that an unchaste wife could legitimately be treated as a commodity, such as a slave or prostitute. Regarding adultery, the code specifies that a woman convicted of adultery must be "sold into marriage", that is, she will be given a second chance to start a new family. However, the magistrates will accept if those women are sold as slaves. Similar logic informed a Yuan law that allowed a “commoner's wife who was discarded by her husband because she had committed illicit sexual intercourse” to become a prostitute, resulting in her renouncing her commoner status and chastity. obligatory that resulted from it. Leaving moral ethics aside, women's sexual autonomy and even personal freedom are completely deprived during the Ming and Yuan dynasties. Being exchanged as a commodity once convicted of adultery is evidence that women's status is lower than that of men and that their rights are violated as men could have several concubines and be free to have extramarital sexual relations. Ancient society had placed high expectations and standards on women and had double standards towards the similar affairs of men and women. The Qing Dynasty had modified the rape law to suppress women more effectively; who allowed the high arts of courtesans to decay; and which largely succeeded in supplanting “a world of rugged practicality and popular sensuality” with a state religion of female chastity. Common and elite women were expected to remain absolutely chaste, and sexual intercourse between a common woman and a man, not her husband, was always considered a serious crime. Low-class people had no right to conform to this standard. However, female slaves and servants whether married or not were sexually availabletowards their masters, a fact explicitly recognized by law. During Qianlong's reign, the sexual use of servile women by their masters was curtailed as the law implied that if masters wanted to sleep with their female slaves, they had to promote them to legitimate concubine status. It is clear that women's rights and freedom have improved over time, but the power women had, including over personal freedom and sexual rights, was still incomparable to that of men. Foot binding is performed on girls between the ages of six and eight. The infamous practice of binding women's feet was also institutionalized during the Song and lasted until the early 20th century. Foot binding was a feminine mystique designed to please men. The practice spread from the imperial palace to the court environments, up to the larger upper social classes and then to the middle and lower classes. Ultimately, women of higher social status have smaller feet. It prevailed throughout the empire among the Chinese, with shameful exceptions only among the lower classes, wherever female labor in the fields or workshops was needed. It is seen as a sign of “kindness”. Therefore, even poor families were willing to struggle to raise a daughter with small feet with the intention of having a proper marriage. It controls sexual access to women and guarantees female chastity and fidelity thanks to the physical barrier. It also made it harder for barbarian raiders to kidnap palace women because they would have to carry them instead of driving. serious trauma that lasts months and even years. In struggling with her mother over the painful, bloody, and terrifying work of materializing the brute nature of her feet into an object of beauty, mystery, and discipline, the daughter formed a new self-consciousness based outwardly on a sense of dependence. and attachment to a world dominated by men and internally on the ability to exercise some control over her own destiny and that of the people to whom she was attached. Foot binding is one of the first movements of Chinese feminism and free women who were once confined to their homes. Marriage and Property Rights Marriage was not a personal matter but the fulfillment of one's duty in preserving the family line. Polygamy is an important component of imperial Chinese marriage. The standard marriage was between a man and a woman of more or less the same social status who ideally lasted a lifetime; polygamy was built on with the addition of concubines. Women have no choice but to submit to the order of polygamy. However, it was mainly available to elite and wealthy men, who represented a small percentage of the Chinese population. The legal wife became a member of her husband's clan and worshiped his ancestors. The secondary wife had a significantly lower status than the legal wife. No wedding ceremony was necessary, the marriage was consummated in her residence, in her husband's house. Despite Confucian rhetoric that emphasized the male patrilineal line and succession to ancestral sacrifices, since ancient times parents regularly passed on a portion of their assets to their daughters. Women enjoyed strong customary rights to dowry, which for the elite usually included land, and could sometimes inherit considerable wealth in addition to the dowry. Women's inheritance rights were strengthened and codified into law in the Song, even as the state restricted the transmission of property overall. Within marriage, women retained separate ownership of their personal property, including land and other property acquired after marriage. The law on song.