Women’s Social Networks and Sociability in Late Eighteenth and Mid Nineteenth Century China: The Case of Hu Xiangduan, 1775-1850

Dan Huang, University of Chicago

Recent scholarship has challenged the traditional portrayal of Chinese women in pre-modern China as secluded figures, enriching our understanding of some elite women’s vibrant social lives and their communities centered around literary production amidst urbanization, commercialization, and the rise of print culture in late imperial China. However, the ways in which women’s involvement in cultural practices beyond literary creation forges alternative modes and opens new possibilities for social engagement, how they navigate roles in mixed-gender artistic gatherings, how these interactions reshape traditional norms of sociability, and how women’s broader social lives contribute to transforming gendered roles within the family structure remain relatively understudied. To address these questions, this paper offers a case study of Hu Xiangduan (1775-1850), a celebrated female talent who garnered public recognition, crafted a remarkable career as a versatile artist excelling in poetry, painting, and qin music, and cultivated an extensive network of contemporaries, encompassing both men and women beyond her kinship ties. The study will center on close readings and selected translations of Hu’s poetry collections, supplemented by biographies, local gazetteers, musical anthologies, and other poetry and prose collections. By employing a microhistorical approach and applying Clifford Geertz’s concept of thick description, this paper aims to reconstruct Hu’s interactions within her extensive network, delve into her subjectivities and expressions of agency, and analyze how her broad social interactions and diverse identities challenged and redefined traditional gender roles within her family. In doing so, this study intends to explore the complex forms of women’s social lives in late imperial China and to analyze how evolving patterns of sociability impacted gender dynamics both within the familial sphere and in the broader social context.

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 Presented in Session 109. Cruel Optimism? Women Maintaining the Status Quo or Organizing against It