Abstract:

Research on the history of educational activities requires researchers to pay more attention to the common people and multiple sources of historical documents. As a classic novel，A Dream of the Red Chamber has been used as the research text of history, as well as one of the important material for studying the history of education, e.g. body history during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. This article attempts to study female body education through combining the official historical documents of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and A Dream of the Red Chamber. Results show that in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, though men favored talented women, they could not escape from the influence of deep rooted feudal ethics. In terms of female education, Confucian ethics is full of contradictions. On the one hand, intellectual men disliked foolish women; on the other hand, women were not supposed to read many books, but to restrain their body and behaviors. This made women depressed about receiving education. Influenced by the traditional Confucianism, female body education gradually developed into that of the nobleness and humbleness, and thus legally prescribed. Female body education in this period tended to pursue the gentle and quiet state of body as noble, while the active state of the body as humble. At the same time, female body education emphasized the ethical structures through the relationship between superior and subordinate, father and son, husband and wife, and that a woman's body belonged to her husband or son. As a result, female body education was mandatory under strict legal control. The authorities published many textbooks for women, and women's words and deeds were limited to men’s requirements in the form of mandatory laws. The alienation of female body education is not just about the discipline of social ideology under male’s surveillance, rather, the female themselves transformed the education into a kind of selfsurveillance. This invisible surveillance and discourse could gradually erode and change the female group, reducing them to obedient group. In the official historical documents, we see death in women, most of whom committed suicide in the name of love. However, A Dream of the Red Chamber revealed the true cause of women’s death, which reflected their fight against female body education. The novel may help us return to the fundamental problem of women's liberation, that is, to regain the body’s self consciousness. In this sense, A Dream of the Red Chamber is the enlightenment of female body education in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Key words: History of body education, women in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, body education, A Dream of the Red Chamber