The Depiction of Female Students in Novels of the Late Qing Dynasty

Abstract

Girls' education was one of the most significant innovations in Chinese women's education during the late Qing Dynasty. Before the 1890s, instruction was largely given within the family or acquired by women through private study, and it remained confined to the private sphere of household and lineage. The spread of girls' schools after 1898 moved women, for the first time, from individualised domestic space into a socialised school space, and produced a new social category, the female student. This article examines the depiction of female students in eight late Qing novels published or serialised between 1902 and 1919. By identifying the features these figures share, namely unbound feet, restrained adornment, physical training, a mixed Chinese and Western curriculum and collective social activism, it analyses the dilemmas they encounter, the mentality of their contemporaries towards them and the progressive significance of such writing. The article argues that these narratives register both the first awakening of female subjectivity and the limits that a male-authored project of enlightenment placed upon it.