Women and Writing in Modern ChinaAnalyzing the protracted cultural debate in modern China over what and how women should write, this book focuses on two concepts of great importance in Chinese literary modernizationthe new, liberated woman and the new, autonomous writing. Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, women's moral virtue, or de, developed as a physical ordeal that meant sacrifices in the areas of freedom of movement (seclusion in either the father's or husband's house) and