Shrews and Domestic Violence
Literature also often explored problems related to violence in the domestic sphere. Chinese law traditionally treated the relation of husband and wife as a hierarchy, with each spouse having different rights.
Although the specific content of laws varied in each era, generally speaking a husband received little or no punishment for assaulting his wife, while a wife was held culpable for assaulting him. A wife might readily put up with considerable abuse from husband and in-laws, as she needed the support of a family to survive. Nevertheless, many fictional and historical writings describe wives verbally or physically abusing their husbands, and the shrew became a standard archetype in Chinese literature.[1035] [1036]Records from antiquity mention angry, jealous, dangerous and loquacious wives in passing. In the third century, the shrew emerged as a stock literary character. After the fall of the Han dynasty, strict standards of behaviour fell into abeyance and it became common for women and men to express their feelings publicly. Some wives took advantage of the new atmosphere of freedom to give vent to extreme emotions, including possessiveness. Laudatory epitaphs began to praise a deceased woman for having lacked jealousy, implying that men no longer automatically expected wives to be meek and tolerant.
The Grand Princess Lanling, daughter of Emperor Xiaowen (r. 471-99) of the Northern Wei dynasty, became particularly notorious for her jealousy. 16 After her husband Liu Hui impregnated a servant, Lanling killed her rival in a fit of rage. The unhappy couple routinely quarrelled and Liu beat his wife severely while she was pregnant, causing her to miscarry and eventually die. This early historical narrative set the tone for the shrew genre, and these stories remained a popular literary theme until the end of the imperial era.
Despite the violent behaviour of shrews, they often struggled to achieve a more intimate type of marriage. Violently jealous women became a common topic of discussion due to the inequality of the Chinese marriage system. While a wife was ideally expected to devote herself to just one husband, a man could take multiple concubines and freely seek sexual adventure outside the home. The blatant unfairness of these inconsistent standards drove some women to extremes.
Ironically, the shrew longed to bring her husband closer and guarantee his fidelity. Steadfastly dedicated to her marriage, she expected comparable fidelity from her husband. Yet because marriages were arranged by parents, spouses often lacked deep feelings for one another. The wife's tenuous emotional hold on her husband easily gave rise to insecurity and suspicion. Although men could seek sexual and emotional satisfaction outside of marriage, growing emphasis on female chastity exacerbated women's desire for a completely monogamous union. Female jealousy thus expressed the wife’s frustration with the double standards of traditional Chinese marriage.
Authors and readers exhibited an enduring fascination with shrews. These fierce women appear frequently in histories, popular literature and polite letters. Educated gentlemen saw shrews as a threat to the prevailing patriarchal order. More directly, men dreaded the possibility their wife might make a fuss and bring public humiliation. Because men hated and feared shrews so much, authors almost always portrayed these women negatively as petty, tyrannical, insubordinate and out of control. Jealous wives may have seen themselves as victims, but they bullied and abused others, often persecuting weaker female rivals such as concubines and servants. Sometimes a fictional shrew appears in comic guise as an ugly, lazy, gluttonous woman who has alienated her husband through her own faults. Moreover, a jealous woman opened herself up to suspicions of licentiousness. Her obsession with male attentions could well be due to rabid sexual desire rather than ordinary marital fidelity. By casting a wide range of aspersions on shrews, censorious authors encouraged men to assume a strong marital role and firmly manage a wayward wife.
The shrew casts light on an intriguing aspect of female agency in imperial China. Male anxiety about termagants gave the aggressive woman a degree of power over her husband. Given the importance of a man’s public image to his masculine identity, even the threat of domestic violence or public insult might frighten him into submission. The use of jealousy to terrorise husbands highlights how women could manipulate social conventions to negotiate a position of authority in spite of their supposedly weak status within the prevailing patriarchal system. For those in a position of inferiority, the strategic deployment of violence could sometimes empower them.