Late Imperial China

TO CHASTEN SOCIETY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF WIDOW HOMES IN THE QING, 1773-1911* Angela Ki Che Leung During the last decades of the eighteenth century, in the Jiangnan region, a new type of public philanthropic institution arose: societies and homes for chaste widows, generally known in Chinese as xuli hui or qingjie tang. Most research on this institution discusses it only in the context of the nineteenth century, implying that it was essentially a phenomenon of the post-Taiping era (Gao 1990 [1935]; Lum 1984; Tao 1991). A more precise and complete historical reconstruction of the institution has recently been provided by the Japanese scholar Fuma Susumu, who argues that the origin of widow homes can be traced back to the late eighteenth century. According to his evidence , the idea of a home for chaste widows was first conceived in 1773, by Wang Zhong of Yangzhou; a year later, the first home was established in Suzhou. Fuma rightly emphasizes that the first organizations for accommodating chaste widows were essentially for widows of poor scholars, and that the institutions extended their services to other social classes only later on, in the nineteenth century (Fuma 1991). The present study, while confirming Fuma's basic findings, sets out to explain the social and ideological forces that lay behind the proliferation of widow societies in the Qing. I am particularly interested in tracing the links between the cult of widow chastity, the familial model of philanthropy, state ideology, and local social activism in the development of such societies during a period of increasing social disorder. First, however, it is necessary to highlight the importance of the institution's development: after the appearance of the first model and before the outbreak of the Taiping rebellion in 1850, at least 56 widow institutions were established in the provinces of Jiangsu, "This paper has appeared in a slightly different form in the proceedings of the conference "Family Process and Political Process in Modern Chinese History" sponsored by the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, and the Department of History, University of California, Davis, June 1992, pp. 415-50. I would like to express my gratitude to Cynthia Brokaw, Jerry Dennerline, Louise Edwards, Benjamin Elman, Evelyn Rawski, William Rowe, and an anonymous reader for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article . I am also grateful to the participants of the Nankang conference for their criticism and remarks. Late Imperial China Vol. 14, No. 2 (December 1993): 1-32 1 2 Angela Ki Che Leung Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Hebei, although most of these were concentrated in the two provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang (41 out of the 56, or 73.2 percent). After 1850, the spread was even greater: at least another 132 institutions were established in the half century between 1850 and 1900, reaching the provinces of Hubei, Gansu, Anhui, Yunnan, Henan, and Shandong. In the remaining eleven years of Manchu rule, another 28 institutions were founded (finally reaching Jiangxi). Thus, a total of 216 institutions were established between 1773 and 1911, not including those numerous multi-functional institutions, quite common in the nineteenth century, that included aid to chaste widows as one of their many functions (Leung 1991).1 When compared with the other major types of philanthropic institutions— foundling homes, poorhouses, and dispensaries—that were established at the beginning of Manchu rule, chaste widow institutions seem to have been a belated effort and their number relatively small.2 But their organizational principles are most revealing of the nature of Chinese public philanthropy of the mid- and late-Qing period. They reflect the deep-seated anxiety of the elite classes, as well as the lower gentry, over the preservation of Confucian virtue in a period of increasing social violence, especially against young widows . They reveal the enormous gap between the ideology of widow chastity and the social conditions of the later Qing period. Chaste Widow Institutions as a Moral Instrument The emergence of chaste widow institutions was not only part of the philanthropic movement of the late imperial period, but was also closely linked to the penetration of the cult of chastity. Indeed, one major purpose of these institutions was...