Biographies of Exemplary Women

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Biographies of Exemplary Women

An 11th-century woodblock print of the book
Author	Liu Xiang
Original title	列女傳 (Liènǚ Zhuàn)
Country	Han dynasty China
Language	Classical Chinese
Genre	Biography
Publication date	c. 18 BCE

The Biographies of Exemplary Women (Chinese: 列女傳; pinyin: Liènǚ Zhuàn) is a book compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang c. 18 BCE. It includes 125 biographical accounts of exemplary women in ancient China, taken from early Chinese histories including Chunqiu, Zuozhuan, and the Records of the Grand Historian. The book served as a standard Confucianist textbook for the moral education of women in traditional China for two millennia.

Description[]

The idealized biographies are divided into eight scrolls, including the eighth addendum from an unknown editor, as shown below.

This book follows the lièzhuàn (列傳 "arrayed biographies") biographical format established by the Chinese historian Sima Qian. The word liènǚ (列女 "famous women in history") is sometimes understood as liènǚ (烈女 " women martyrs"), which Neo-Confucianists used to mean a "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; [a] woman who dies defending her honor".

The online Chinese Text Initiative at the University of Virginia provides an e-text edition of the Lienü Zhuan, including both digitized Chinese content and images of a Song dynasty woodblock edition with illustrations by Gu Kaizhi (c. 344-405 CE) of the Jin dynasty.

Biographies included[]

1. Meng Mu, the mother of Mencius (孟子), a single mother who raised her son carefully despite poverty
2. Zheng Mao (鄭瞀), advised her husband, who lost power shortly after she killed herself
3. Consort Ban (班婕妤), (48 BCE - 6 BCE), scholar and poet, pleaded legal cases
4. Empress Zhao Feiyan (趙飛燕) (c. 32 BCE – 1 BCE), empress from 16 BCE until 7 BCE, a powerful courtier
5. Empress Wang (王皇后) (8 BCE – 23 CE), last empress of the Western Han, refused to remarry after a coup
6. Empress Ma (馬皇后) (40–79 CE), empress from 60 CE until her death in 79 CE, a political advisor known for her modesty and frugality
7. Bo Ying (伯嬴), mother to King Zhao of Chu, fought her would-be rapist with a knife and lectured him on morality

By Huangfu Mi:

1. Zhao E (趙娥), noble of the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period, decapitated her father's killer and turned herself in
2. Xiahou Lingnu (夏侯令女), aristocrat of the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period, refused to remarry after her husband's family were executed for treason

See also[]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Lienü Zhuan

• Historiography

References[]

• Carlitz, Katherine. (1991). "The Social Uses of Female Virtue in Late Ming Editions of Lienu Zhuan." Late Imperial China 12.2: 117-48.
• Raphals, Lisa. (1998). Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. SUNY Press.
• O'Hara, Albert Richard, tr. (1945). The position of woman in early China: according to the Lieh nu chuan, "The biographies of Chinese women". Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 1955 reprint. Hong Kong: Orient Publishing Co. 1980 reprint. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press.

External links[]

• Lienü Zhuan, University of Virginia E-text
• Lienü Zhuan, ChinaKnowledge
• 列女傳, Chinese Text Project
• Traditions of Exemplary Women: Liu Xiang's Lienü Zhuan Archived 2008-10-20 at the Wayback Machine, Anne Behnke Kinney
• Chapter 11: Women & Men in Society, Gregory Smits, Topics in Premodern Chinese History