The origins of separation of the sexes in China.

• Author: Hinsch, Bret

In recent years the study of the paired concepts zhenjhie [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], regularly compounded as zhenjhie [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], has emerged as a prime research topic in all eras of Chinese women's history. Although zhenjie is often called "chastity" in English, this interpretation is inadequate. The rhetoric and behavior associated with zhenjie were far broader than chastity, which is primarily sexual. In contrast, zhenjie ideals were extremely wide-ranging and touched on virtually all the major realms of female life in imperial China, including self-image, family, labor roles, education, and religion.

Liu Xiang's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (79-8 B.C.) Biographies of Women (Lienuzhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) includes two sections describing women who exemplify the paired virtues zhen and jie. Even at that early date, the subjects of Liu's biographies embody numerous virtues that go far beyond sexual fidelity. (1) Liu saw zhenjie not just as physical chastity, but more generally as behavior that prevented sexual and social improprieties. Measures that helped ensure sexual fidelity and family harmony became identified with zhenjie, including separation of the sexes, widow fidelity, wifely obedience, physical purity, education of sons, remonstration with errant husbands, and service to senior in-laws. (2) Devotion to the ideal of zhenjie was even said to have motivated some women to mutilate themselves or commit suicide.

Given these broad associations, it is apparent that zhenjie was not just one simple concept but rather a series of interlocking ideals that were vigorously contested and constantly evolving. To understand the origins of zhenjie, we must go far beyond sexual behavior to examine the history of each of its component social practices. Jennifer Holmgren has shown how certain aspects of zhenjie rhetoric changed considerably from Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) to Tang (618-907), an extremely fruitful avenue of research that has only just begun to be explored. (3) According to Holmgren, writers in each era emphasized different aspects of zhenjie depending on their goals and circumstances. In other words, zhenjie was a composite ideological construct whose connotations varied considerably over time.

Zhenjie ideals were often very different from average female behavior, especially in antiquity. Zhou peoples did not honor many of the basic principles that came to be associated with zhenjie in later ages. For example, the Shijing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Classic of poetry) is replete with sexual imagery. Many verses depict a time when unmarried women felt no need to keep apart from men, and intimacy outside of marriage was not disgraceful. (4) And records pertaining to the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu, 772-481 B.C.) era include many examples of practices that run counter to subsequent zhenjie ideals, including divorce and remarriage, a lack of absolute wifely loyalty, and women who chose their own husbands. (5) Zhenjie rhetoric gradually evolved in reaction to this relatively freewheeling early context.

There has been some confusion among scholars about when zhenjie ideals emerged. Wang Gouwei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1877-1927) noted very generally that separation of the sexes was far stricter in the Zhou than in the Shang period. (6) Chen Peng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] argues that zhenjie had already emerged during the early Eastern Zhou and its principles were already present in the Yijing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Classic of changes). (7) Tong Shuye [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] disagrees; he claims that the Spring and Autumn era lacked a clear concept of zhenjie, which did not emerge until the mid Warring States (Zhanguo, 481-221 B.C.) period. (8)

This debate has been confused by the diversity of definitions used to designate zhenjie, which covers a wide range of meanings and connotations. Depending on which aspects of zhenjie are stressed, its beginnings can be seen differently. To put the problem in Weberian terms, zhenjie is an ideal type. Classic authors and modern scholars have defined the term in many different ways, depending on their goals. But of course zhenjie did not emerge fullblown into the Chinese consciousness. This set of loosely related ideas coalesced gradually out of ancient principles and practices. Each writer or practitioner understood it somewhat differently. It seems that to appreciate zhenjie fully, we must examine each strand of the rhetoric separately. Only when each aspect of this complex tradition is adequately understood can we begin to speak of the origins of zhenjie as a whole.

It will take scholars decades to pull together all the major pieces constituting zhenjie. This article hopes to contribute to the project by concentrating on the earliest and most fundamental practice associated with zhenjie: separation of the sexes. In Chinese this practice is called nannu youbie ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Originally separation of women and men seems to have applied equally to both sexes, but over time nannu youbie was reinterpreted as mostly a restraint on female behavior. (9)

Here we shall explore four key topics concerning the origins of zhenjie: how men and women initially became socially separated, the development of separation of the sexes from popular custom into prescriptive ideology, the rise of early rhetoric justifying separation, and the question of whether the separation of women and men was an actual social practice of early imperial society or just a rhetorical ideal.

SEPARATION OF THE SEXES IN PREHISTORY

Separation of the sexes did not begin as abstract ideology, but as the pragmatic custom of simple agricultural societies where gendered occupations and customs kept men and women apart for much of each day. Long before Liu Xiang wrote his famed biographies of women, men and women of Neolithic cultures in the north China region probably spent much of each day apart. Nor was this unique: anthropologists have found that in almost all simple societies, important tasks tend to be allocated according to sex. Generally speaking, labor performed close to home is most amenable to simultaneous childcare, so these tasks tend to be assigned to women. Common female labor includes cleaning, cooking, tending vegetable patches and domestic animals, weaving, plaiting, potting, and so on. Men are more likely to assume tasks that take them farther from the home, such as farming large grain fields and hunting. (10)

Neolithic peoples in the north China region seem to have divided labor along gender lines. The Peiligang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] culture, whose remains have been unearthed in the Henan area, is a classic example. Peiligang sites date to between about 8000 and 7000 years ago. Excavation of Peiligang graves have revealed that work tools were often buried alongside the deceased. Some graves include stone agricultural and hunting implements such as shovels, axes, sickles, and arrowheads. Other graves lack these sorts of artifacts, but include tools for grinding grain. From this evidence, archaeologists have concluded hat Peiligang work roles were allocated according to gender. (11) Men hunted and worked the grain fields while women performed domestic work at home, such as grinding grain. Nor are the archaeological data from Peiligang unique. Many other major Neolithic cultures of the north China region exhibit similar signs of gendered work roles.

This archaeological information is extremely suggestive. It seems that adult members of each sex probably spent much of each day apart because they did different kinds of work in separate places. We can easily imagine a group of men leaving the village each morning to labor in the communal grain fields while women stayed behind to tend to matters at home. Did Neolithic societies also have specific rules or taboos that deliberately kept men and women apart? Of course we have no way of knowing, but modern anthropological fieldwork suggests that this was possible. Anthropologists have found that many simple societies create rules to keep the sexes apart to some degree. For example, the space in a Zulu hut is divided into masculine and feminine zones: a Zulu wife may not enter the "male" side of her own hut. (12) Similar rules prohibiting free interaction between the sexes are quite common in cultures throughout the world. It is possible that prehistoric societies in north China had similar rules, but archaeological evidence for this sort of custom is virtually impossible to discover.

Even if ancient Chinese lacked these sorts of taboos, gendered labor roles would still have kept the sexes apart for much of each day. Separation of women and men was a fact of daily life long before the emergence of sophisticated rhetoric to justify it. Nor did the situation change with the end of the Neolithic. Our first glimpses of daily life in historic Chinese society show that most tasks in early Zhou society were allocated according to gender. The Shijing and other early works describe distinct male and female work roles. (13) As loose-knit Neolithic settlements transformed into more complex societies, basic rural work roles continued to be divided according to gender. Different work roles still tended to keep women and men apart for much of each day.

Marriage customs also seem to have encouraged separation of the sexes. Wang Guowei gave a unique view of the origins of gendered space in China. In his seminal essay discussing the differences between Shang and Zhou, Wang stressed the importance of exogamy to Zhou culture. He believed that many Zhou institutions grew out of their exogamous kinship system, and attributed the custom of physically separating the sexes to exogamy. According to Wang, since the Zhou elite wanted their daughters to marry men of different surnames, they restricted interaction between...