Female Firsts: Ban Zhao

In the final female firsts of the year, Yves discusses Ban Zhao, China's first female historian.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie Hands and welcome to Stuff. I've
never told your production of I Heart Radios how stuff works.
So was a third attempt. Well, it is an exciting day,
so perhaps that's why we're making your mistakes because it

(00:24):
is the final female first of twenty nineteen of a decade. Yes,
which means you're once again joined I for our good
friend and co workers. Thank you. I didn't even think
that this was the last one of the decade, and
I'm like, oh, this is the last one of the year,
but no, it's a whole decade that's ending right now

(00:45):
right this very Yes, time compresses in my world really easily. Um. Yeah,
I am grateful to be here as always, so glad
you're here. Yeah, it's a bit of a mess in
the studio. So many peanut butter. There's a lot of
peanut butter, a lot of beverages, a lot of beveraging.
But that I feel like that's kind of status quo

(01:08):
part of course when you come use Well, this season
is about abundance as well, It's true, and we're collecting gifts,
so the more the merrier. Correct, Yes, thank you punch
peanut butter. See are you counch peanut butter. Is the
thing is is that going to somebody's Christmas present? You know?

(01:28):
Is that going to something? I could do this because
through various sponsorships, I now have no exaggeration a creative
peanut butter. So I mean, I guess if I want
to be really lazy in my gift giving, I could
just start handing out peanut butter. I'm going to give
it to a food kitchen. Yes, yes, yes, um, and

(01:51):
we are very excited to have you as always eaves.
Um it is this is our final final chord of
the year. Is it will congrats to y'all people to
rest a little right right. I've had people stopped like, yeah,
so we're recording this weekend. I was like, oh no,

(02:11):
oh no, yeah, it's I guess there's two weeks left
in the year as we record this. So this is
pretty good. I'm pretty happy. I think we did well. Yeah. Yes,
And I'm also pretty excited to talk about the person
not Todays. I am too. I'm really excited to talk
about Bungoo. Who's who we're talking about today. Um, We're
going way back in history for this one, yes, almost

(02:36):
to the BC year it's kind of dipping there for
a little bit. I'm always excited to go into the vcs,
you know, especially when we get into the twenties. Let's
look all the way back. Let's go all the way back. Yes.
And she's known as China's first female historian. Yes, China's

(02:56):
first female historian, and a very influential scholar in general
at the time. Not just female scholar, but she was
also one of like the only female scholars early on,
the only female historians early on. Yeah. And I was
reading some of the stuff that she wrote, and it's fascinating,

(03:19):
isn't it. Yes, isn't it fascinating, especially to look at
it from my point of view as an American, as
an American woman living in I'm already ahead of myself. Yeah,
but it's um. Once the twentieth century rolled around, people
like viewed it a lot differently than they did during
her time, which she was born in forty five, so

(03:43):
early early ideas. Many people had a lot of thoughts
on over the years. Yes, And as we always say
on these these episodes, these females first context is always
really important when we're talking about this. And the spoiler
not to confuse anybody. She wrote things about how basically
how to be a woman in China, and so it's

(04:04):
just an amazing window into what it was like back then.
And yeah, now with our eyes so different, Yeah, well
we're I mean, I'm not a historian, and I imagine
a lot of people here aren't historians. So it's a
really interesting as a civilian, non historian to look at

(04:25):
things that happened this long ago and in cultures outside
of my own that I'm not typically studying, and like
developing my own perspective around that and learning a lot
more about it. It's so easy to get caught up
in the way that we think today. So yeah, once
the twentieth century rolled around, the views on her started
getting a lot more complicated. Like women started thinking a

(04:46):
lot differently around that time, women's lip movements popped up,
and people who were in that realm saw her as
an important scholar and figure in women's education before then,
and then later on others started thinking that she was
perpetuating the oppression of women. Yeah, so it's a complicated history.
And I also think that on the other hand, and

(05:11):
in conversations beyond just ones about history, that we can
get in a space where we're like, Okay, because this
happened at this time, or because this happened in this context,
that means that we can excuse those things, or like
this person was just a person of their time, and
this person was just doing the same thing that everybody
else did, so that means it's excusable when it's acceptable.

(05:32):
So I mean, I just it's just always important obviously,
always try to gain more knowledge about things, because when
we're more knowledgeable than we were, more able to have
nuanced and deeper conversations about things. But obviously, as we know,
the world changes a lot, like the world changes a
lot in the world is also at one specific time

(05:53):
very different everywhere. And I just think having this conversation
about her after we featured a lot of women who
are kind of without much doubt or without much hesitation
or without much like discrepant see our controversy, like this
person did good things and contributed to feminist history in

(06:15):
a positive, moralistic, positive way. Like that's not how it
always was, and we had to evolve to be able
to get to where we are today. And it took
a long time before things changed from how it was
in Bunchow's time, Well, it was literally over nineteen hundred
years ago. And then also in context, that culture has

(06:36):
so much history even then in comparison to again when
we talked about the U s, it's so young, and
like that's not relevant to where we are to what
we know of the history of the land today because
it's back at that point in time, This land, when
we talk about America, was a completely different existence. Yeah,
the population of itself, right, and then China, China's history

(07:00):
just they recorded so much. There's so much recorded history
in China. Let's get into Okay, let's get into buncho.
So she was born in the town of online fou Phone, China,
and that was around the year of forty five, and
that place was around shen Yang and Shanshi province. That

(07:21):
was during the Eastern Han which was also known as
the Later Han dynasty. And so one of her ancestors
made a bunch of money raising livestock after the fall
of the Joo dynasty, and eventually they got money and
the family got into scholarship as well. So scholarship is
a huge part of her family's history, part of her elitism.

(07:44):
How they got there because a lot of the time
people valued scholarship. So someone in her lineage whose story
had a big influence on her was her great aunt
Bungee and that was her court title. Her personal name
is not recorded, but and breathe. Bungie was a sort
of Emperor Chung and she was close to him. So
there's a story in her life that they say, like

(08:06):
is one of the things that made her kind of
a big name, and that she once turned down writing
in his sedan chair with him when he asked so
because that was against norms. She kind of like she
was like, no, I don't want to do it. So
that earned her favor as a respected woman of high
moral values and wisdom. The fact that she said no
to it, even though it was kind of like this

(08:26):
flashy thing that she could do, that said her decision
could have been more practical than it was moralistic, as
she could have just been trying to avoid revenge plots
of the envious people around her. You know, survival is
important people either way. That idea of womanly humility which

(08:50):
show up in Buneau's work later. And so bun Biao
was Bungeau's father, and he was a scholar and an administrator.
He was really into confus Susianism, which will come back
to a little bit later. We'll talk a little about
what that was, and he stuck to the moral classics.
He went through several official positions in the Han dynasty,
but he wasn't so hot on those, so he kind

(09:11):
of skipped around from one to the next, and he
favored scholarship, so he wasn't able to maintain his family's wealth.
Though I can say I have no idea what it
feels like to be an elite, but I can identify
with that a lot because I just feel like I'm
a person who's like I don't care how much. But well,
I'm a writer, right, So I mean that's like I

(09:32):
don't care how much money I make. I'm just gonna
do the art thing, even though scholarship is very different.
But yeah. He died when Bunga was young. She had
two older twin brothers who were Bung Chow and Bung Goo,
and Bunau drew a lot of inspiration from them. Too.
Was Too was in the military in Central Asia for

(09:55):
over thirty years, and Goo was an avid reader and
a scholar who wrote holmes and researched history. Following in
his father's footsteps, so she wrote poems to later, so
she got some inspiration from him. So she had her
style name Bunao style name was Hibun and her given
name was g And she had this love for reading,

(10:17):
so as we know, that's something that's really big in
her upbringing and in her history. She her parents made
sure that she was really well educated. So she was
taught Confucianism, which is a system of social and ethical
philosophy that originated in China, and it really stressed the
importance of correct behavior and loyalty and obedience to hierarchy.

(10:40):
And obviously I want to say that I'm I'm really
reducing this like it's a lot more to it. We
don't have time for that, clearly, and I'm nor am
i Confucianism expert. It also stressed humanus and social harmony.
So while it was a lot about social rituals and
conformity kind of on the surface, it was also about
building contents and character over lifetime. Punjab was also taught Taoism,

(11:04):
which was a Chinese philosophy that was born from observing
the natural world, and it really emphasized being in step
or in line or in tune with the Tao or
the natural order of the universe, so it wasn't necessarily
about strict rituals like Confucianism was. But she was she
was educated. She was her parents were made sure that
they gave her, you know, a good education growing up,

(11:26):
and she learned to write. She learned about history, like
I said earlier, she learned about poetry and the classics
and those She wrote a lot of poetry. Few of
her poems still exist, though you can read some of them.
She wrote court poetry a lot, and a lot of
it got into metaphysical stuff later on, as people were
gearing their poetry towards that others who were writing poetry.

(11:50):
She was often also called to court to teach women
in the palace, and she taught them poetry, history and literature.
And she was also given access to the Imperial Library,
which was something that not everybody got, but a lot
of important works in there, obviously, and it was important.

(12:10):
As I said earlier, she did court poetry because it
was important to mark things that happened in court life
with poetry. And the Emperor was a fan of her work,
and so she wrote it some and Bungeau also advised
Empress Dowager Doom on affairs of state, though much of
the advice she gave is unknown because it wasn't recorded.

(12:31):
It was happening in private, and she got married around
the age of fourteen, but not much is known about
her husband, whose name was chaw sh Shoe, and it's
known that he came from the same district as the
Bunn family, which was often the case for people in gentry.
They had several children together, but her husband died early

(12:52):
on in the marriage. She didn't get remarried, which is
something that comes up in her writing um, which we'll
get too later, that you had on all those moral
prescriptions which she was talking about earlier, which is going
to be the major chunk of this um for obvious reasons,
very very interesting, which I'm sure y'all will have thoughts
on the things and that um. Even though it was

(13:13):
not against custom for women to get remarried, they often
did after their spouse died. But you know, this could
have been due to her Her not getting remarried could
have been due to her strict code of ethics, because
she may have done so to remain loyal to her
deceased husband, and so This is where we get into

(13:36):
her writing work in her history and her history research.
Her father started working on history of the former Han,
this big text history on the former Han dynasty, and
so the former Han dynasty was the first two hundred
years at the Han dynasty when Chanan was the capital
of the empire, and her brother Baron Gou continued work

(13:59):
on the history. After her father died and Bung Goo
also died, Bile working on it, and from that point
Bungao took over the task and she wrote some of
the last parts of it and did some of the
final editing. Even though her exact extent of contribution to
the work has been debated by some scholars. Some have
said that she given her the credit of co authoring it,

(14:21):
saying she was the one who did so much work
because she did all these chronological tables towards the end.
But that's neither here nor there. And in the larger
context of this conversation, she put in work on the books,
so she she was integral and creating the book and
getting it out to people. So the completed book was
released around one of lemon See. This book was very complicated.

(14:42):
There were a lot of moving parts to it, and
it wasn't so easy for everybody to understand, so that
meant that the book had to be taught to people,
or people had to be guided along in the process
of trying to understand it. Um and Bungao even taught
the scholar Majong the book since it was so plex
and it required that guidance to understand it. So it's

(15:03):
been considered by some historians the second most important or
most famous of China's formal dynastic histories. The second there
was this guy I can't remember his name, like Cmchen
who wrote other imperial dynasties before that, but under the
Han Emperor Wu, Confucianism became accepted as state ideology and orthodoxy.

(15:27):
So from that point the imperial state use that philosophy
as a means to maintain law and order and to
maintain the status quo. So our favorite party, I'm ready
admonitions for women a k A. Lessons for women, and
I'm going to try to pronounce this neogio. Yes, it

(15:50):
works a book um on a female propriety that she wrote,
and I call it a book, but it's only really
several pages long, so it's it's really not long at all.
So a lot is communicated in it. A lot. I
can say a lot in so many words. Yes you can,
Yes you can. Um. It kind of reminds me of

(16:14):
did you did you all do that thing when you're
growing up? Or you had to watch that video and
it like taught you posture, you had to put the
book on top of your head, how to be a
woman essentially, you know. I never, I never. I never
watched that video, but I did go to etiquette school.
It wasn't that. It wasn't terrible. I don't know. I

(16:36):
feel like I've brought this up with you all before,
but maybe not. It wasn't. Um actually had a really
fun time in it. Um. You still remember the lessons? No, well,
I remember one okay, so one was some more very problematic,
but someone was where to put the forks on the tables?
That was one and that sticks into what I remember.
So it's kind of like a cotillion type of level

(16:58):
of stuff. Like eventually you go and graduate to become
a debutante. Is that what you're talking about? Not me,
not the one that I did. Yeah, it's similar to that,
but the one I did was much more like here's
this video on how to be a lady and it
involved posture, and yeah, really it was something that I did.
Actually really appreciated the camaraderie that I like made with

(17:21):
the other girls who were there at the time. That's
what I really liked about it because I wasn't expecting it.
I did not want to go when I did it.
My mom just put me in it, and I didn't
have that manners. So I'm trying to figure out why
she put me in it. I don't remember, but um,
I remember Chili from TLC being there for whatever. She
came and visited us to talk to us about girl things.

(17:42):
I guess I don't I don't know what girl things are,
and I don't know what she don't remember what she's saying,
but I remember her being there, So I don't know.
Take it with a grain of salt. How you feel
like it's made, What kind of person you feel like
it's made me? Because all together now, yeah, both of
you have me baffled. YEA, whether I'm a lady now
or not. I can't wait until you hear uh Bons

(18:07):
thoughts on vulgarity language become ready. I don't know that
you qualify. I don't not many people have them are
called the ladies. Let's keep going, So we're gonna stay
on this text for a while because it is her
magnum opus. Uh. There were previous works or Morality for

(18:27):
boys and men, but Lessons for Women was specifically aimed
to girls and women, since at the time men and
women's nature were thought to be fundamentally different from one another,
and because of that, so what their ethics be different
from one another? So the exact date is written is unknown,
though she's believed to have the gun writing it around

(18:48):
one or six. Buneau said in the intro to the
text that she wrote it to prepare her daughters for marriage,
but the fact that it was widely circulated says otherwise.
When so some context for this, which is always important.

(19:09):
When a woman got married, she left her family and
then went to live with her husband and in laws,
and Chinese families typically had several wives and concubines and
many children, and in Bungoo's text, the advice was for
women to subjugate themselves to the men, so the husband,
the brothers, the brothers in law, and father, father in law,

(19:30):
et cetera. And Lessons for Women codified those rules of behavior.
So before this point there wasn't a ton of instruction
regarding the duties and the virtues of women, but Bungoo
approached that subject through a lens of Confucianism. It's also
important to remember that it was a time of a
lot of transition and reform in China's history. So there

(19:53):
was the old feudal system, which sometimes afforded Chinese women
the opportunity to move up, sometimes afforded them the opportunity
to rule in powerful political positions. Um that was replaced
with the imperial system, and Confucianism at this time was
central to the Han court, and because of this, women's
role was considered inferior to men's. So that said, there

(20:16):
was social mobility in the culture, and there was an
emphasis on education and scholarship that did not change. And
because times were so turbulent, you know, politically, every socially,
everything that was happening at the time, it was important
to support this kind of Confucian lifestyle which provided a
sort of political order and social stability as the government

(20:40):
was doing declining and everything could be chaotic, and so
there were there was a way that gentry families used
that Confucianism to say, hey, look everything's orderly for me,
and separate themselves from everywhere else by adhering to that

(21:02):
those straight guidelines of those rituals. So that's a little
bit of context for lessons for women. We have some
more with our conversation with Eves. The first we have
a quick break for word from our sponsor, and we're back,

(21:32):
Thank you sponsor. There are seven sections in the text,
and like we said earlier, it's about like a page
per section, like it's very short. They're the first three
are called servile and meek, husband and wife, respectful and cautious,
giving leeway for translations, and they reinforce the importance of

(21:53):
women taking a subservient role. And the next two are
wifely behaviors and wholehearted devotion and there about how lives
should behave. The last two are absolute obedience specifically as
a daughter in law and harmony with younger sisters in law.
And the gist of those are essays, and he smiling,
She's like, I feel like you've got a lot going

(22:15):
on in your hand right now. Oh yeah, yes, So
I'm gonna read an excerpt from these um so we
get a sense of what she was talking about. In
these a woman ought to have four qualifications womanly virtue,

(22:37):
womanly words, womanly bearing, and womanly work. Now, what is
called womanly virtue need not be brilliant ability exceptionally different
from others. Womanly words need be neither clever in debate
nor keen in conversation. Womanly appearance requires neither a pretty
nor a perfect face in form. Womanly work need not
be work done more skillfully than that of others. Um. Yeah,

(23:02):
so there's a lot um more that's that's kind of
like a summaria taste of the things that she says,
because she gets into a lot more specificity she does that.
The section that's some momently qualifications goes on to say
that a woman has to guard her chastity, she has
to speak at appropriate times, and not to love gossip

(23:23):
and silly laughter. According to the tests, these qualities are
really easy to have. You just desire them deeply enough. Yeah,
and even need to leave now your silly giggles are
too much. Well, we haven't even talked about the vulgarity.
I'm annoying that part. Yeah, it's really just to have

(23:46):
it written out like this is how you be a
good woman. And essentially it is you be quiet and
I love, don't speak too keenly, like, don't be too
educated just and she was one of the more educated
women of the time, so that is interesting. Yeah, she said,

(24:06):
you don't have to be educated, you don't have to
be intelligent, you don't have to be that type of
person to be humble basically, and that's the key. As
long as you're humble, yes, that you're good. Yes, humble
equals I mean there are a lot of people today
who could use more humility. This is true. And to
be fair, even though this was way back when, I've

(24:30):
heard this in different formats in the Christian world as
I grew up in it. Once again, not bashing religion
in any way, but this is actually fairly not so shocking,
and it makes to me this makes more sense because
of the time frame. Is it great? No? Is it
still like? Oh God, why? For sure? But I've not
It wasn't more than five years ago that I've seen

(24:51):
that in like Christian texts as this is who you
are as a woman, yet subservient, kind woman. Yeah. To
put it in terms of morality, like this makes you
good to be good to be a good person, you
have to be less than to be subservient men. It

(25:15):
is sort of shocking, and that it isn't that far
off from Yeah, when I think about some lessons and
things I might have picked up from my etiquette class
or they're teaching, I think at fourteen, um that to
be a good woman, I have to sit quietly essentially

(25:36):
and know how to serve people at a table, and
that that makes me good and to host the party. Yeah. Yeah,
And I can imagine as you say, and during this
time there's a lot of transition and chaos and having something.
This reminds me of when the first cookbooks came out

(25:57):
and women just love them because it was it is
a resource in a way that they felt they could
control things in their life. And I can imagine that
women at this time we're like a hare had to
be a good woman and maybe I can like move
up or get a better situation than I have now.
And like you said earlier, she was a woman of

(26:19):
she had you know, she had privilege, so her experience
is a lot different than people who weren't in her situation.
When it comes to I need this order in my life. Well,
some people are worried about a little bit more basic
survival needs. So there is that as well to think about.
So I want to point out some more of the
things that she said in the text. She said, women

(26:39):
must always think of themselves. Last, widows should never remarried,
as we spoke about earlier. Women must be clean and neat,
and reading and education are as important for women as
they are for men, though later Confucian scholars would reject
this notion, and women's education went through a lot in
China after after bon Jo died and all that, all

(27:03):
that said in Lessons for Women, a wife wasn't just
a husband's servant, like that's not the only thing her
role was. Spouses shouldn't use harsh language, is one thing
she said in the text, And that they shouldn't resort
to domestic violence either, and that women don't have to
be super talented and like we said, early and intelligent,
but must be humble, chaste and diligent and obedient. H

(27:28):
And that's that. I thought that was interesting about the face.
It could be you didn't have to be beautiful, Yeah,
is that to be you know, pretty much quiet? There's
a lot of middle lines, and you don't have to
be or and either or, but be does instead. Yeah, yeah,
just overall, be cool about it, right, I'm not gonna lie.

(27:52):
When you were talking and we're talking about the qualities
and such, it kind of pushed me back to the
Mulan reference at the beginning of the Disney movie in
which that she's reciting to find a husband and you know, like, wait,
that which makes sense because it would have been kind
of in that time frame, kind of um in that
lesson of trying to come up in society and bringing

(28:13):
honor and all of such. Is to marry into which
is actually everywhere, like for the longest time, you as
a wife, your privileges to bring in the best whatever
merging of the families, my privilege. Yes, your duties as
the daughter to be a good person. I must do this.

(28:34):
But anyway, that's just a moment. I was like, oh,
I was like the beginning of the plot of Mulan.
And then she reveiled yes, well good for her, Yeah,
I mean all of her cheat notes, right, that's what
do you do this and be that? And I was like,
I can't remember that saying really well, I don't know
what exactly she said, but I know it's in that reference. Yeah,

(28:55):
there's there's also a section in there that I liked
about um watched and scrubbing filth, right, and yeah, the
the body regularly and keep the person free from disgraceful filth.
And that's maybe called characteristic characteristics of womanly bearing trying.
I mean it sounds like good for anybody, right right,

(29:18):
it might be just a health Yeah, get that lines
off of you. He's gonna make life better, I promise.
And I may have missed this at the beginning when
I was trying to keep up because there was a
lot of things happening. What was this in reference to
why was she writing these? So she said that she
was writing in preparation for her daughters to be married, right,

(29:38):
so that was the only Were they having a hard
time finding husbands? Or was this such a big deal
for the women that you must do this in order
to continue the family line? Well, that kind of it
kind of goes back to the order um thing. But
we'll talk about another reason that historians think that she
wrote this are what she was trying to provide with
it in a little bit, but just in general, like generally,

(30:02):
night Confucianism was the way of the crime, So that
was in line with people thinking this is what men
should do and this is what women should do. But
obviously she was the first person to lay this out
like this, so it's kind of like, oh, she probably
had a reason for it, which we'll get you in
a second. Um, no spoilers. So this is a work

(30:23):
that made her a well known author, but it caused
a lot of debate, as you could imagine, um, And
that's within the historical record. Like over the years, its
historians were like, oh, look at this Chinese gender studies
and feminist history. We're feminists now, like you know, so
they're going back and finding her work and thinking about

(30:44):
it a lot more. You know, first Westerners didn't get
into it until much later. But this is a work
that kind of blew up her name and cause all
this talk about it. At the time, it earned her
a lot of acclaim as a wise and a moral woman.
But later, particularly towards the end of the King dynasty,
which was the last imperial dynasty in China and that

(31:07):
lasted until about nineteen eleven, people began to question her
values about how the book or the text stripped women
of their autonomy. So there were a lot of people
like that, like later on, this was repressive, This held
women to outdated and regressive standards, all those things. But

(31:29):
then there were also people who thought the text should
be placed within the context of all norms of proper behaviors.
So women and girls weren't the only ones who were
held to certain standards of behavior. Boys and men also
were so to them, bun Jao was just another person
who was perpetuating and recording those norms. And then a

(31:49):
lot of way more interpretations you know that you can
get into of the text, But there was a change
to critics thinking and viewing it as a more pragmatic
strategy to answer your questions, Samantha. That may have helped
women thrive at the time because it was such a

(32:10):
patriarchal environment and following those strict rules could provide women
who were getting married and leaving their families and going
to this environment in this house that they didn't know
like you're having to. That's a big experience even for
people today, like leaving their homes and going to a
different one. That's a big life experience and a life change.
And you never know how these people might be. They
may be envious people they may be vengeful. They maybe

(32:33):
you never know, um, a lot of dynamics going on
back at this time, you know, um, so leaving that
environment and stepping into it. So this text could be
a strategy for survival. Like, once a woman won everyone's
approval through following these guidelines and all these ingratiating rules,
she could then gay and prestige and power, And as

(32:56):
a means of avoiding conflict and surviving that new life
of hers would who knows how it's going to be,
this text could be a practical manual for that. So,
regardless of all of those different thoughts that critics had
on the text over the years, it did have an
impact on traditional views of how women should behave. Um,

(33:19):
there were elite men who praised her for what she
was saying in the work. And also there is a
it's clear that later works that came on female ethics
can be traced back to lessons for women, so it
inspired later works. That said, some scholars do suggest that
her work didn't have a ton ton of influence on

(33:42):
women's education and family relations in her dynasty and in
later ones, And so there can be an I like
the idea that her influence has been overrated. It's honestly
very like the interpretations of her work go very deep. Um,
what did you think about digit? Do you have any

(34:03):
feelings on the various interpretations over the years. I it
is hard to when things are that far removed. Sometimes
I find myself feeling like, it's just hard to imagine
it really happened, you know what I mean. And I

(34:25):
was reading some criticism, especially when the Western world kind
of learned about this, and people were writing like, look
at how she helped maintain the oppression of women, and
people called her like Trader Bond or Trader gile Um,
And I guess I get sort of torn. And we

(34:49):
have come so far, and it's hard with history and
historical the way we interpret things, especially written kords, some
things don't mean the same thing that they did then,
and I'm always like, well, what is their missing meaning here?
What else was going on? There's so much of the

(35:10):
picture we don't have, So it's almost kind of funny
to me to see all of this really in depth
criticism of her work, which there should be, But at
the same time, there's just so much we don't know
about it, and that doesn't mean it's not worth having
the conversation, but it is funny to some people get

(35:34):
really angry about it. Yeah, it's in fighting, Yes, there is.
I didn't know the historian world was so no, actually
I did. I'm not going to act like on that night.
History and context is very important as to what is
relevant what isn't relevant, And again, what was occurring at
that time kind of like the same idea with the

(35:54):
Old Testament ideas that is still being used as fore
front of this is what should be have? And you're like,
you're taking this a lot of context. You've got to
remember where this is coming from. And again, like we
were saying, you were saying, what if this is a
health benefit? What this what if this was a survival
guide more so than this is how it should be
because we've got to honor these men or honor whatever

(36:16):
on a religion, and Confucianism was very much about what
you were talking about, just kind of finding peace and
a balance in things. And at this point in time,
at this time, in this context where she got brought
up because of her family and because of the male
members of her family, what did that look like? She
got made really young? Correct? And then he died off
and no one really knew what was going on, and

(36:37):
then the debate of okay, does she disrespect how does
the marriage come about for her? Or remarriage? And she
had children at that of an age too, so that's
a lot of yeah. And now that you mention it,
it's like that wasn't It was typical for girls to
be married like she was a girl when she was married.

(36:58):
So imagine being at that stage just as a human
being in your life and all these different things and
changes happening to you, and on top of that, going
through the whole really rigid marriage process that require so
much of you, and then you're having all these people
asked more of you and have all these expectations placed
on you. And I'm still fourteen, and I'm still sixteen,

(37:19):
and I'm still seventeen. You know, Um, then you're taught.
Because the thing about for me, we're not looking at
myself at sixteen. I'm embarrassed about some of my values
that put that point in time, if that makes sense,
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I was reiterating the
ignorance that I had thought were true at one point
in time. And therefore, because if you look back on

(37:40):
some of my journals. That's super embarrassing about what I
thought was perfection and the goal of life and all
of that, and I couldn't imagine that being taken as
this is the holy context of what you should be.
It's so helpful when you're young to have somebody telling
you what you should do, and then later on you

(38:01):
take that and say, oh, they gave me this, and
now I can continue to delve into these ideas and
see what works for me. It's kind of like the
typical five sentence paragraph that they used to give you,
or the five paragraph I say that they used to
give me, the say this is your your topic sentence,
and then this is your and then these ones you
explain the three points you're gonna say the next three paragraphs,

(38:22):
and then you have a conclusion sentence. And like when
you're young, like, oh, look at my look at my essay.
I just did that, did five paragraphs and did everything
the teacher said, and I get these checks. I did
this right, I did this right, did this right, got
a hundred on the paper, And then you take that
paper to your college later and they're like, m, this

(38:43):
is so stilted. This is so formulaic. What is this?
Like everybody told me this was right like years ago,
and like that's what it's like to have guidelines like that.
Like if you think about it in that way, where
these girls were girls when they were get go, getting
married and having to deal with all the things that

(39:04):
have to do with maturity and uh, maturity and sex
and relationships and like all the rules and all the
like social practices that were very ingrained in the culture.
And I just think about also, especially and even today,
the idea of maintaining a reputation for her to go

(39:27):
and be placed that Okay, you're this person's family member.
We're gonna make you finished this because you know you
have some education. I'm gonna give you this. And I
like what you're saying, So finish my historical reference here
that's been started by your father, your brother, now you,
and so I have maintained that level of respect. What
does that look like in the eyes of whomever. So

(39:47):
it's kind of like when you hear and this is
very very obviously a broad generalization and broad comparison, when
women are like or girls. I'm a girl, I'm a
guy's girl. I don't really like girls because and in
a lot of majority of these girls think that's how
you get in with guys are being liked by, you know,
dismissing or being um negative about others, putting them down.

(40:12):
So you don't look like that whatever you're afraid of becoming.
You know, could you I couldn't imagine in that historical
context of you have this reputation already because of your family,
you're supposed to maintain this and how do you keep
going with that? It's a lot of it's a burden,
it's a lot of responsibility. Does it excuse those things? Now? What?
I think these things are great now? But I've been
burned at the stake by her standards. Yes, yes I would,

(40:36):
but yeah, you got you have to come back. And
this was over nine years ago this and isn't very
weird time frame because you had those dynasties and that
doesn't exist anymore. And you kind of just know the
historical romancing context of what it was back then, what
you imagine had happened then two now it's kind of like, huh,
I wonder you take those words, what does that look

(40:56):
like then today? What was that comparison? What was her life? Really?
A lot yeah, and I also think that for me,
I can read all I want to about these times.
I can't embody it, like I have no idea what
it's like to live in that time. I can't fathom it.
It's like trying to figure out what a billion light
years is, Like I can't fathom it. So, yeah, we

(41:18):
do have a little bit more for you, but first
we have one more quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you. Fun. She lived to her seventies,

(41:39):
so she was really all. It was around one sixteen
around that time, and Empress Dowager Dune reportedly mourned her death.
They said that she did that for her, So that
would ad meant that Button Jail was an important person
in the Empress Dowager's life. And like I said about
her poetry, you can read a lot of her literary

(41:59):
works and you can read Lessons for Women and all
of the scholarly debate that's happened over the issues of
gender and her work, and just delve into that beyond
this description, because there's only so much we can get into.
But the point is, like historians returned to her work
over time to view it through lens of gender as
society was transforming a lot, and as people were developing

(42:22):
different views on women's roles. Yeah, it is fascinating to
see something like being a woman quantified almost like and
it's it's such a good snapshot. It makes me wonder
if we wrote now, like if if we almost kind
of satirically wrote, these are the things society expects you

(42:47):
to be a good woman. You are these things, and
then two thousand years from now, if somebody read it
and it just doesn't make any sense. I actually love
that idea, just like a I can't think of the
word just some of some sort. It's kind of like
historical fiction, like historical realmaging, but with current commentary on it,

(43:08):
I'm gonna have to do that. Yeah, we should be cool. Yeah,
it's a new decade doing things. It's time. What could
have been we'll never know, speculation perhaps, but yeah, but yeah,
but that's she's that deep history and being that important

(43:30):
in in that culture and being a historian and someone
who was brought on even that's m hm. Intimidating. Yeah,
as are most of the women we talked about. Doesn't
she have a crater? That's right, I knew it. She
does have a crater as a crater on Venus named
after her, and that's how you know you've made it.

(43:51):
Don't you want to have a name to that even
happen People who discover it are like, let's name it
after nobody knows unless you look up that person, and
like the crater was named after that. I mean, I
get I wanted though, Okay, you want to know what
you're saying. Yes, if anyone listening has that power. If

(44:13):
I created one on the earth and said this as far,
oh my gosh, we could probably if we raised enough money,
we could probably get it done, honestly, and thank you.
You know what I learned last night how to name
it crater? No, so my dad named me after um,
his mom, but also Mickey Rooney. That's why I spent
my name with an E. Y. I thought Mickey Rooney

(44:35):
was a baseball player, and I learned last night he's
an actor. My whole life, I thought I was named
It took you to the last Have you never heard
the stories of Judy Garland and Vickey Rooney, Like we
all have stories like that. Though we just realized something
after however many years we've living historian. Yeah, I think

(44:57):
I said something recently, like yesterday we were port in
something else. I never knew that. But this is my namesake.
I've been telling people my entire life. I was named
after a baseball player. He didn't die until recently, like
it was. I don't know. My point being if if
you name a crater after me, at least I'll know

(45:19):
where the name comes from now. But he was, Yeah,
he died in fourteen. Like I don't need the judgment.
I don't need the judgment. I got it last night
because I found this out at a party and everybody
had like you didn't know that. They just kept going
and going and going. And I got all the texts

(45:39):
this morning. I remember when you didn't know Mickey or
any one, like, oh my god, Okay, don't think of
anything like that ever happened to me, so we can
commits right in arms. I'm trying to think of it too,
because you know, I told you I love old movies
and I loved Mickey Mooney and Judy Garland films because
that was before Judy Garland. Well that was during the
midst of them abusing Judy Garland and started her drug addiction.

(46:03):
And he was a part of that too, because they
would feed both of them, uh different drugs to keep
them awake, to put them to sleep, and then that
kind of just because they were making a lot of
money for the studio, so they were Yeah, and Judy
Garland's whole story story is so dramatic. He was a
part of that, not as in like he was main
or anything, but he was a part of that trope

(46:24):
of Okay, one of our mini stars. This is what
we're gonna do. We've gone really really often. Yeah we have.
Now I've got to look him up and see if
there's anyway I'll do it that later any other final
But no, I think that works for me. I love

(46:44):
that history. I also love that it's not it's not
just setting easy tones like there are so many complications
and so many debates, and because that's absolutely reflective of
that time and generation and we've got to acknowledge for
what it is and also acknowledge the historical context. And
I think it's very portant because again, one of the
things we talked about and we're going to talk about
forever obviously, but even when politics and such, when there's

(47:07):
like that back and forth like yeah he did this,
but they did this as well. It's kind of that
same level of she did some amazing things, she was
recognized for these amazing things, but then she did this,
which became problematic. So how do you, especially in this culture,
when when it's one sided, it seems like you're you're
either this or that and you can't be both. I
think it's very good to keep looking at that as

(47:27):
relevant in what we're talking about today and how things
are changing today. When I also think two things that
One often when we look back at stuff like this
and say, oh, it's so horrible, but like that's not
always the case, like too easy to judge. It's they
were living fine lives within these kind finds still. And
just because it isn't the type of freedom and movement

(47:50):
that we're able to have today doesn't mean that it
was horrible, And to that it is encouraging to see
how long things can take. We often think, oh, this
is never going to change, and we had to do
and thinking bureaucratically, like specifically staying in the US, it's
gonna take forever for this legislation to happen, and this
is never gonna happen because there there's this is two partisans,

(48:13):
and like we think all that all those things which
are important parts of the conversation obviously matter in terms
of things actually happening. But if we can be so
humble to think beyond our own lifetimes, that we can
imagine change and continue to have hope excellently put Eaves excellently.

(48:33):
Happy freaking New Year. That's right, Happy New Year everyone year.
Where can the listeners find you? Eaves? So you can
find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at this same
in history class. Just look up that podcast, which is
another one that I'm on, is a daily history podcast,
and you can find me on all those things. Look

(48:55):
up I'm Popular. It's a podcast about people in history
who challenge the status quo and we're persecuted for it
in some way, and what lessons we can learn to
be able to link those to today's world and from elsewhere.
My names Eves, Jeff co Y, b S. Jeff cot
Not named after Mickey Rooney, Not named after Mickey Rooney,

(49:17):
named after Eve St. Lauri. And I was thinking about
when you said that, maybe I'll find out that I wasn't.
One day. I'm gonna I'm gonna check in on the
history again. You should do a devil check, really really through.
I think that was partly hers, wasn't it also adjusted
today this day in history class. It was, but I've
already offered her the Pinot beter Um. Anyway, well, it

(49:42):
was a pleasure, as always, Eaves, thank you so much.
If you would like to contact us, you can our emails,
Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at mom suf podcast or
on Instagram and Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as
always to to our super producer Andrew Howard. Thanks to
you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You. He was

(50:02):
a production of iHeart Radio, as how Steff works for
more podcast from my Heart Radio. You can listen to
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