Early Models Of Women's Writing

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Analyzing Early Models of Women’s Writings The early “Biographies of Exemplary Women” handbook is truly a significant piece of work; encompassing virtues and appropriate behaviour for women, and still continues to resonate today. It’s initial presence of being an instruction manual for women, has transpired later female writers to draw upon and also alternate their own styles of writing. Through the works read in class, one seeks to explore how women writers either draw upon or depart from earlier cultural models, and how these models inspire, limit, and shape women writers. The Early model biographies served not only as an instruction manual for women but it also confined women to their basic trajectory roles within the household. Elements of Confucian principles such as women having a lower status within the Patriarchal family structure, and women being self-sacrificial; are reminiscent throughout these early works and in Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women. Many later works by women writers adopt similar elements found from early texts. Later Women writers draw upon earlier cultural models by writing in the same context. Through the use of their education, wisdom, and religious beliefs, they achieve to write manuals for women that illustrate the proper ways of instilling order, peace with oneself, and the duties of women. An example can be seen from Empress Xu who is the wife of the Yongle Emperor. She wrote many texts such as “Household Instructions” for women, encompassing upon similar early models that teach women instructions on morality and proper behaviour. Another striking resemblance, to which she draws upon earlier models, is the way she arranges her writing. Empress Xu wrote her “Household Instructions in twenty chapters, arranging them in classified order the notable words and worthy actions of the ancients”(Red Brush, 307). This illustrates that
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