Foot binding why was it done

Wu eventually promoted Shangguan from cultural minister to chief minister, giving her charge of drafting the imperial edicts and decrees. On one occasion the empress signed her death warrant only to have the punishment commuted at the last minute to facial disfigurement. In she was persuaded or forced to draft a fake document that acceded power to the Dowager Empress Wei. During the bloody clashes that erupted between the factions, Shangguan was dragged from her house and beheaded.

A later emperor had her poetry collected and recorded for posterity. Many of her poems had been written at imperial command to commemorate a particular state occasion. Shangguan is considered by some scholars to be one of the forebears of the High Tang, a golden age in Chinese poetry. Li lived during one of the more chaotic times of the Song era, when the country was divided into northern China under the Jin dynasty and southern China under the Song. Her husband was a mid-ranking official in the Song government.

They shared an intense passion for art and poetry and were avid collectors of ancient texts. Li was in her 40s when her husband died, consigning her to an increasingly fraught and penurious widowhood that lasted for another two decades. At one point she made a disastrous marriage to a man whom she divorced after a few months. An exponent of ci poetry—lyric verse written to popular tunes, Li poured out her feelings about her husband, her widowhood and her subsequent unhappiness.

But her earlier works are full of joie de vivre and erotic desire. Like this one attributed to her:. I finish tuning the pipes face the floral mirror thinly dressed crimson silken shift translucent over icelike flesh lustrous in snowpale cream glistening scented oils and laugh to my sweet friend tonight you are within my silken curtains your pillow, your mat will grow cold.

Literary critics in later dynasties struggled to reconcile the woman with the poetry, finding her remarriage and subsequent divorce an affront to Neo-Confucian morals. Ironically, between Li and her near-contemporary Liang Hongyu, the former was regarded as the more transgressive. Liang was an ex-courtesan who had followed her soldier-husband from camp to camp.

Already beyond the pale of respectability, she was not subjected to the usual censure reserved for women who stepped beyond the nei —the female sphere of domestic skills and household management—to enter the wei , the so-called male realm of literary learning and public service. Liang grew up at a military base commanded by her father.

Her education included military drills and learning the martial arts. In , she met her husband, a junior officer named Han Shizhong. With her assistance he rose to become a general, and together they formed a unique military partnership, defending northern and central China against incursions by the Jurchen confederation known as the Jin kingdom.

In , Jin forces captured the Song capital at Bianjing, forcing the Chinese to establish a new capital in the southern part of the country. Three years later, Liang achieved immortality for her part in a naval engagement on the Yangtze River known as the Battle of Huangtiandang. Using a combination of drums and flags, she was able to signal the position of the Jin fleet to her husband. The general cornered the fleet and held it for 48 days.

Older Chinese women with bound feet, though, had a completely different story. Further clinical study of foot-binding is nearly impossible; the women who were girls when it was outlawed are dying out.

She found 50 women to photograph, all in their 80s or older, three of whom died before the book was published in They had a wider range of mobility than the women Cummings met in Beijing—among them were women who worked in fields, raised children, fixed chimneys, and went bowling—but descriptions of their childhood binding were no less horrifying.

In certain periods in France, for example, women were arrested if they were found walking on certain streets at certain times. But women have been bent in more literal ways too. Foot-binding was one. Like recent research that makes visible the long-lasting brain damage inflicted by childhood abuse or PTSD, examining the medical consequences of corsets, high heels, and foot-binding in detail forces us to look their effects in the face.

The restrictions of foot-binding and other physical constraints imposed on girls and women are obvious; the damage is real. With the unavoidable conclusions provided by modern, in-depth medical research, societies now have the knowledge necessary to avoid the mistakes they made in the past. Whether they have the will, though, is less certain.

Foot-binding, as a practice, is extinct, but as Cummings pointed out repeatedly, what it says about how we are willing to treat women, and the damage we will inflict and accept to maintain control over their movement and their freedom, is anything but settled. As a result of their diminished mobility, they were also less likely to have affairs or run from the beatings or unfair treatment of their husbands.

In these ways, foot binding was regarded as a form of control which men used to keep women loyal and submissive. Foot binding was also linked to another vital role assigned to Chinese women, the production of Lotus shoes the name given to the tiny shoes made for women with bound feet.

Shoes became a prominent feature and means of expression among women in the Chinese culture. It became social custom for female relatives and even distant friends to make shoes as gifts for the young girls who were undergoing foot binding.

The admiration and respect for these girls was reflected in elaborately embroidered shoes with decorative patterns. These patterns not only adorned the sides of the shoes, but also the soles. The styles and colours that were used reflected a sense of pride that women had in their shoes. Some shoes reflected certain regional styles, with many bearing the Buddhist symbols for wisdom and longevity, or animal symbols like that of a bat which symbolised happiness. Shoes were worn for special events and occasions which included weddings and even in times of mourning.

Extremely small votive shoes would be placed on the household altar which showcased the skills of the woman who had made them. A woman would often be judged by her Lotus shoes, particularly by potential in-laws and matchmakers.

In abiding by the teachings of Confucius, women had to bring honour to their families and their bound feet and extravagantly beautiful shoes aided in doing this. Academic MU. The Practice of Footbinding in China. Foot Binding. What did the process of foot binding entail? Written by: Jade Poole. Foot Binding The history behind foot binding in China What did the process of foot binding entail?

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