Autobiographical in Bo Shaojun's One Term Paper

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One has to keep in mind that the practice of foot binding, which literally crippled many Chinese women, actually began around the same time that Shaojun was writing these memorial poems for her husband (Xue). A woman gained much of her identity from her husband. Children were considered less valuable than men, and the way that her overt grief for her husband contrasts with her apparent lack of concern for her children seems to reinforce her internalizing the idea that men are more valuable than women and children.

However, her poetry does not only speak to her role as a wife. In the commentary about her as a poet as well as in her poems about her husband, Shaojun's love of learning and scholarship was apparent. She and Cheng appeared to have spent a tremendous amount of time together discussing poetry, singing songs, and having philosophical discussions. This displayed an interest in intellectual pursuits that was not in line with gender roles at the time. Women simply were not considered the intellectual equals of males, and Shaojun did not have the opportunity to pursue her intellectual interests without the interaction with her husband.

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When placed in that context, her tremendous sadness over the death of her husband and the fact that she wasted away after his death no longer seems to reveal a woman who has prioritized husband over children, but instead indicate a woman who has so intertwined her identity with that of her husband that she cannot survive his death. What this suggests is that Shaojun valued intellectual pursuits more than material things. The fact that she lived in apparent happiness in poverty with her husband reinforces this idea. This actually defies gender role expectations, which would have assumed that Shaojun would prefer material success to intellectual pursuits.

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