Fertility once made ancient women walk on the altar and made them servants and tools. Childbearing is the glorious contribution of ancient women to our nation, and it is also a great disaster in their lives.
1, from the goddess of fertility to fertility tools
The unique reproductive function of women and people's superstition about female parthenogenesis-matriarchal clan era.
Nu Wa created a saint without a husband (Huang Qi abandoned).
Goddess Temple, Statue of Naked Pregnant Women, Statue of Naked Women in Painted Pots.
Male clan society
Having a son is enough. Marriage between men and women "is based on the ancestral temple and the next generation."
Wedding ceremony: the package can't pass, the bride shouts, and the husband's family is going out.
Borrowing seeds: sadness and helplessness of fertility tools, loss of personality.
The ability to have a son has become an important standard to measure women in ancient male society, and it is a decisive factor affecting women's fate and status in their lives.
When choosing a wife and concubine, we should pay attention to whether women are "suitable for having children" and "suitable for having men", even if they are from humble origins and have poor looks.
Shaanxi folk custom: A woman can comb her hair only after she has a son after marriage. Fujian folk custom in Qing Dynasty: Paixi.
Childless woman: sent out for her husband to take a concubine and adopt a maid (as stipulated by law).
Deprivation of the rights of concubines and maids-in-waiting mothers can be found everywhere.
In ancient times, women's status and power in the family were subordinate to their husbands and sons. Once their husbands die, they lose their support. Without a son to inherit sacrifices and property, they often lose their position and property rights in their husbands' homes.
China's traditional concept respects the mother and attaches importance to the mother's nurturing grace and mother-child relationship: the mother relies on the child, while Lv Hou Cixi She Taijun Jia Mu.
The struggle between women under polygamy: the struggle for survival in a patriarchal society
2. The custom of praying for children: varied, bitter and bloody.
3. Contraindications of pregnancy and prenatal education: mostly to protect the fetus in the abdomen, pregnant women are unclean.
4. Fertility etiquette: Fertility is the main cause of abnormal death of ancient women.
5, contraception, abortion, infant drowning
Times are chaotic, famine and poverty, and they don't want to have more children. Stealing the forbidden fruit, the red apricot is out of the wall.
Drowning a baby girl: men are superior to women.
Second, the labor chapter
Women supported the construction of ancient society with their industrious hands and men.
1. Women's sericulture and textile
Ancient women, rich or poor, regarded silkworm weaving as their bounden duty and duty.
In order to avenge the country of South Vietnam, the queen personally led women all over the country to weave. In a short time, 65,438+10,000 pieces of grid cloth were woven, paying tribute to the powerful enemy Wu and winning a breathing space for rejuvenating the country.
Working during the day, spinning late into the night during the slack season. Women's collective night show.
Textile skills have become an important criterion for people to evaluate women.
Some people's daughters never marry, and they are locked up at home, paying taxes on textiles and supplying them to the court. Daughter cloth.
Chicken singing cloth. Huang Daopo, Songjiang Buyi.
Those professional weavers who devoted themselves to the imperial court "Jin Hu" and "Gong Si Hu" were forced to weave all their lives, which delayed their youth.
On the one hand, under the heavy pressure of government taxes, women still can't get rid of poverty through day and night efforts;
On the other hand, some women can support themselves and their families, while others have savings.
2. Handicraft labor
Embroidery, embroidery artist, embroidery artist
Weaving and sewing: weaving mats, making socks, making Chinese-style chest covers (detours), winding silk, braiding, picking socks for wrapping, and weaving children's hats, gloves and scarves.
Sewing and mending, washing and rinsing: Fu Huan, sewing poor women, needle women.
Handicraft industry: pottery making, sword casting, inkstone making (Gu Xiaozu), fan applique, tin foil shop grinding paper, paste matchbox.
3. Agricultural labor and slavery
Picking (ear) (water chestnut, lotus, lotus root, tea), chopping wood, farming, animal husbandry, boating, gold panning, selling smuggled salt (barefoot), hard labor (cooking, building), military service (providing food, building fortifications, demolishing houses and setting fires).
4. Commercial activities
Ba Qing, widow of Qin Dynasty, was pregnant with Qing Dynasty. The fish soup of Wusao in Song Dynasty is outside Qiantang Gate.
5. Other occupations and labor
Female teachers, doctors, third aunts, Taoist aunts, divination aunts (fortune-teller), sixth grandmothers (buyers and sellers), matchmakers, teachers (witches), pious women, medicine girls, stable girls, vagrants, handmaids, domestic servants and cooks.
Three. Educational articles
Not to let them learn knowledge and develop intelligence, but to let them understand etiquette and women's morality and become virtuous Mrs. Privet privet, which meets the requirements of a patriarchal society.
1, moral etiquette education
Etiquette, know that men are superior to women, be content with humble status, obey, and abide by the moral principles of "three obedience" (father, daughter and son) and "four virtues" (female virtue, female appearance, female speech and female merit).
Four books for women: female commandments, Analects of Confucius for women, internal training, Fan Jielu for women and so on.
The enlightenment education that ancient women received from childhood was Confucian ethics.
2. Cultural education and training
Before the Ming and Qing Dynasties, although the society did not strongly advocate women's learning culture, it seems that no one put forward the idea of opposing women's reading and literacy.
It was not until the Ming and Qing Dynasties that the concept of "a woman without talent is virtue" was spread and popular. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the ethical code was strengthened in an all-round way, and the status of women declined in an all-round way. I am afraid that their minds will be developed, they will no longer behave themselves, and even make some "indecent moves". But there are also many people who oppose it.
Generally speaking, the mainstream concept of ancient China society is to advocate women's literacy and learning culture, and to appreciate women's cultural literacy and talent. In fact, most women from ordinary scholar-bureaucrat families and scholarly families have been studying since childhood. Many citizens and businessmen also let their daughters learn to read and write, and some concubines and even maids in Plutocratic family are also required to learn to read and calculate. Therefore, there were many literate women in ancient times, and women who advocated Excellence, concubines, nuns, Taoist women and so on often had culture.
There were many intellectual women in the upper class of the Han Dynasty who studied since childhood. In the Tang Dynasty, women's study of poetry became a common practice, and talented women came forth in large numbers in the Song Dynasty. Although the concept of "women without talent are virtuous" was popular in Ming and Qing dynasties, it did not completely change the tradition of women's reading and writing, and the Qing dynasty also formed a peak of women's literature.
Talented women full of ancient poems are rare, and most women have nothing to do with culture and education.
3, feedback and other skills training for female workers (music, opera, chess, cooking, etc.). )
4. Educational methods
The imperial court set up schools, hired specialized masters to teach, set up home schools or libraries at home, set up libraries in towns and villages, set up libraries at home for teachers, and women went out to study by worshiping famous teachers-the proportion was very small. Taught by elders.
Fourth, love and marriage articles
1, marriage concepts and customs
The purpose of the combination of men and women is to serve the ancestors of the family and continue the heirs. A tool to realize family wishes.
(1) Marriage age
Generally from 15 to 18.
Early marriage: early childbearing, population increase and labor force increase.
Child bride, big wife and little husband.
(2) the right to decide on marriage
"Parents' orders and matchmakers' words" are the orthodox ideas and mainstream customs in ancient society, and there are exceptions in reality.
With the strengthening of ethical codes, the prevention between men and women is increasingly strict, and women's autonomy and right to speak in marriage are becoming less and less.
(3) mate selection criteria
Women's Choice of Spouses: Politics, Status, Power, Family Status, Wealth and Talent (after the Imperial Examination System in Tang and Song Dynasties)
Men's choice of spouse: personality, temperament, appearance, face
Different roles of men and women in marriage and family needs.
(4) "Seven endings", divorce and remarriage
Seven out: childlessness, fornication, ignorance, talking, stealing, jealousy, witchcraft.
Three don't go: I once mourned for my in-laws. When I got married, I was poor, but later I became rich and desperate.
Don't please your in-laws (Liu Lanzhi). There are also women or their families who take the initiative to divorce.
Before the Song Dynasty, women divorced and remarried or husbands died and remarried in large numbers.
After the Song Dynasty, remarriage was regarded as dishonor and shame, and the first widow became fashionable.
2. Gender customs and chastity.
(1) The evolution of gender customs
The relationship between men and women is free and there is no concept of chastity → keep chastity and stick to it.
In the pre-Qin period, the sexual relations and marriage relations of princes and nobles showed strong primitive customs, which were not only chaotic, but also often appeared in the form of "incest" in later generations.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, "disrespectful boudoir" was also common. People are not surprised. Head (male concubine).
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, ethics ......
(2) The concept of chastity and the heroic women in Chastity Woman.
Form of expression: marriage, death due to resistance to violence and humiliation.
In the pre-Qin era, the concept of chastity has sprouted in the primitive and free atmosphere of the wilderness.
In the Song Dynasty, the Neo-Confucians "starved to death is a trivial matter, but dishonour is a major matter".
Although virtuous women have won a good reputation, in fact, their lives are miserable. Even if they are well fed and clothed, they have unspeakable distress and endless pain.
Seeking moral perfection has nothing to do with feelings for her husband. Poison the mind and distort human nature.
Some people have to die because of various pressures. Some areas in southern Fujian also held grand martyrdom ceremonies for widows.
Men's attention to virginity and their obsession with virgins.
The concept of chastity has made millions of virtuous strong women consciously and voluntarily slaughter by the neck without feeling pain, and some women accused of "losing their virginity" have been hacked.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) communication article
1, official social activities
In ancient China, ladies in upper-class society and women in official families always had formal court meetings and official social activities.
On New Year's Day or the birthdays of emperors and queens, ladies-in-waiting enter the palace to congratulate them. Wife's social activities in officialdom.
When a woman appears as a mother or wife, it means that the husband and wife are expensive, and the mother is more expensive than the child and belongs to the man. It also shows that women, as mothers and wives, have a certain position in society and family.
In the pre-Qin, Han and Tang dynasties, it was common for men and women to meet in social activities, although it was opposed by some people who maintained ethics.
2. Personal communication
Before the Han and Tang Dynasties, there were not many taboos for women's personal communication activities and communication with the opposite sex.
During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Confucian ethics was impacted, scholar-officials ran rampant, and men and women interacted more casually.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the ethical code was at a low ebb, and the bondage to women was relaxed, so the communication between men and women was very free.
Women in the Song Dynasty were not as unscrupulous as those in the Tang Dynasty, but there were few taboos in the communication between men and women. (Midnight Dinner)
The Ming Dynasty was the peak of the development of feudal ethics, and women's social interaction was restricted.
Women's activities were not banned in Beijing in the Qing Dynasty. In Manchu customs, unmarried girls have the most prominent family status.
3, communication, become sworn.
Women's Buddhist Association, Mutual Women's Association, Literati Association, Men's and Women's Association.
Lack of emotional comfort or impatience with depression in family life requires communication and sympathy and help from others.
Sixth, entertainment articles
1, customs and entertainment activities at the age of 30
On the seventh day of the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month of "People's Day", "Lantern Festival" and "Shangyuan Festival": Walking on the bridge, touching the doornail.
Beginning of spring Day, the 20th day of the first month, the "Tianchuan Festival", the 2nd day of February, the "Dragon Raise its Head", and Baihua's 12th birthday.
Shangsi Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival, June 6th in memory of Nu Wa who died in mending the sky, beginning of autumn Festival, Chinese Valentine's Day, August 1 day, "Medicine Day" (wiping eyes with dew), Mid-Autumn Festival (walking or stepping on the moon), Double Ninth Festival, East,1/kloc-
Recreational activities in spring: playing grass, swinging, flying kites and offering sacrifices to the gods.
2. Other cultural and recreational activities
Reading and writing, reciting poems, calligraphy and painting, throwing pots, gobang, hiding hooks, playing with leaves, playing chess, throwing dice, touching dominoes, catching children, riding horses, archery, hunting and playing ball.
Make tea and enjoy the snow.
VII. Decoration articles
1, makeup, clothing, bun, others (earrings, bracelets, rings, nails)
Step 2 bind feet
At first, I pursued the slender beauty of women. Male society advocates femininity.
There were few people who bound their feet in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. Although foot-binding was popular in the late Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty, some people who maintain tradition and pay attention to family ethics regard it as flashy fashion and excessive makeup, and disapprove of women catching up with this fashion.
During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, foot-binding became popular in the lower classes and everyone did it.
Women's feet are not only playthings that men appreciate, but also tools to satisfy men's lust.
Privileges and patents of good women. Sick aesthetics.