Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China

Rating:
Summary: Thorough and thoughtful
Review: When it was written, Ko's book was one of the first to reconsider previously accepted views about women's status in China. The traditional readings had been that women were deprived, subjugated, and prisoners in their culture. While not attempting to paint a revisionary too-bright picture of women's lives, Ko considers the factors of class and economic status in the study of women. Her observations about women's reading and interaction are especially insightful and fascinating reading.