"The Death of Woman Wang"

Paper Summary:

Jonathan D. Spence's book "The Death of Woman Wang" paints a picture of life in rural China in the seventeenth century, referring to the death of a woman who ran away from her husband, was returned to him and then was killed by him. The paper shows that the story of Woman Wang serves as an illustration of the place of women in this society, the nature of the law of the time and the social structure which allowed such things to happen. The paper explains that while the story of Woman Wang is an important element in the book, it does not become the central focus of the book until more than two-thirds of the way through and for most of the book, the focus is on village life in T'an-ch'eng in the era under discussion, the people of the village, their mode of life and the internal and interpersonal dynamics of that society.

From the Paper:

"This raises one of the issues raised by the book. The reader has to be careful in reading the book to differentiate between accounts offered by Huang and Feng, accounts which have a historical basis, and the stories of P'u Sung ling, which are fiction, though they do reflect the same issues and contain much useful information. Still, it would not do to presume that a story by P'u Sung ling carries the same historical weight as a direct account from one of the other two. Paul Berman reviewed the book when it was published and notes that Spence's "great achievement is to have revealed something about the literary possibilities of historical scholarship" (Berman 210), though he is also revealing some of the historical possibilities of literature at the same time. It remains important to keep the two separate when considering any aspect of the account in this book, though."

More papers on "The Death of Woman Wang":

• Book Review # 139319 : "The Death of Women Wang" - An Analysis"
• Analytical Essay # 14691 : "The Death Of Woman Wang" ( Jonathan Spence )"
• Analytical Essay # 51991 : "The Cost of Conforming and Non-Conforming"

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