Gender Roles and the Significance of Women in Pre-Modern Asia (Essay Sample)

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Gender Roles and the Significance of Women in the Patriarchal Societies of Pre-Modern Asia
Literature was an important part of the lives of the upper classes and political elite in pre-modern Asia. This significance is evident in the numerous literary works that people living in Asia at the time produced. The literature from the kingdoms that later grew into the modern nations of Korea, Japan, and China cover a wide berth of fields that includes romantic fiction, poetry, historical writings, and religious discourse. Through these texts, the modern world is able to understand many aspects of past Asian culture such as the existing social classes, traditions people followed, and their perceptions regarding various issues. Two texts that are particularly significant in this regard are Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji and Chen Hong’s An Account to go with the ‘Song of Lasting Pain’. Both texts revolve around tales of romance and heartbreak that enable the reader to get a better understanding of the relationships between men and women in pre-modern Asia. Both novels reveal pre-modern China and Japan to be patriarchal societies that reduced women to peripheral roles that existed mainly for the service of men. However, even in the context of this gender disparity, love and romance existed and played a significant role in the way men and women related to one other. The portrayal of women in Shikibu’s and Hong’s accounts indicates that women had a higher social standing in Tang China than they did in Heian Japan, because even with their peripheral roles in both Japanese and Chinese society, they could still participate in court politics in the latter but not in the former.