Description
The elusive fox spirit and the tormented ghost are just two of the supernatural beings present 17-18th century Chinese tales. These supernatural characters, written by men, were overwhelmingly female. This thesis examines the representations of gender in the supernatural tales of three prominent Qing-era writers: Pu Songling (1640-1715 CE), Ji Yun (1724-1805 CE), and Yuan Mei (1716-1797 CE). This study argues that these authors utilized the female form as supernatural in their tales in order to conceptualize and convey their understanding of the world around them. An analysis of these tales reveals something different about the society each author lived in. Pu Songling's tales tells us about the complexity of reality in the early-Qing by romanticizing the supernatural. Ji Yun's tales tells us about the ways in which the elites used the supernatural to redefine their class and moral boundaries. Yuan Mei's tales tells us about the existing desire to challenge societal dynamics through empowering the female voice. At the intersection of gender, culture, class, and religious influence this study finds different representations of what it means to "female" in these Qing-era tales. This thesis is part of a growing body of research on the analysis of gender in Late Imperial Chinese supernatural tales.
