Honors Thesis Archive
| Author | Kimberly Estenson |
|---|---|
| Title | “A Good Girl Can Fight Her Way Through a Thousand Troops”: An Analysis of Nushu Culture and its International Representation. |
| Department | East Asian Studies |
| Advisors | Shelley Chan, Jia Shi, and Cynthia Richards |
| Year | 2019 |
| Honors | University Honors |
| Full Text | View Thesis (525 KB) |
| Abstract | The nushu script is a unique female writing style of Chinese created by the women of the rural village of Jiangyong in the Hunan province of Southern China. This thesis shows the complex cultural and historical circumstances that have led nushu women to take part in the creation of poetic narratives. Since the discovery of nushu by the Western world in the 1980s, scholars and the media have represented nushu women in a degrading and misogynistic manner, and so have trapped these individuals into generalized and false stereotypes, either as secret revolutionaries or as powerless actors in an androcentric, Confucian culture. Because of this, the actual women of Jiangyong are not having their stories accurately and respectively communicated. The thesis argues that the actual history and culture of nushu, rather than its current international representations, must be preserved. By analyzing how nushu women have utilized both the benefits of oral and written tradition, as well as how they worked with the Confucian system in order to gain authority over their own stories, work through their own pain, and have control in the shaping of their self, we can see that nushu women are much more complicated than their stereotypes suggest. While these stereotypes persist to this day, nushu is beginning to no longer be an isolated text, but a platform in which women's current stories and future stories can be heard and read. |
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