The Role of Shame in Qing Dynasty Law

Author

• Elaine Chow, Washington University in St. Louis

Language

English (en)

Date of Award

5-3-2012

Author's School

College of Arts & Sciences

Author's Department

International and Area Studies

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)

Restricted/Unrestricted

Restricted

Abstract

nce cence eee cette en eee teed estes see tesa sedeeueesasersnevecneeavens 3 PART I: BACKGROUND... ooo e tect e tet e eta ee esta seta ease eseeteeeseveeneanenes 4 PART II: PERSONAL SHAME... 0c ccc eee c eect et eee cence ee ee tne cateeaeneencuenenens 15 PART IV: INSTRUMENTAL SHAME... 0.0... ccc cece cece eee c eee ee cece sents ee eeeeenseneneseneees 55 PART V: CONCLUSIONS... ooo... occ eee eee cece ce cece eee te tects ase eeee sees eseeeenetaeneeennes 62 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. 00.0... ccc cece ececece eee c eee e cette ene ceeu ease ee caeneeeceseueueeneneen 65 WORKS CITED. ..... 0.0 e ce cece nee e bene eee e neat ceeds suten se eeeeeaeeeeeeatuerevanees 66 ----- Page 3 ----- Chow 3 ABSTRACT The legal code of the Qing Dynasty is the last legal code of China's imperial era. Known for its organized structure and complex intricacies, it contained over a thousand statutes developed over the course of more than three centuries. One significant area of the Qing legal code deals with rules that govern gender relations. In my thesis, I examine the role that shame plays in delineating the male and female identities in the Qing Dynasty. By looking at case records, official commentaries, and The Great Qing Code itself, I investigate the ways that shame manifests itself in the social and legal fabric of the time. Specifically, I argue that shame in Qing law is a three-fold concept: an internal notion relating to conscience, morality and guilt; an external notion relating to reputation and humiliation; and finally, as an instrument adopted by the penal system in order to reform and deter. Personally, the concept of shame defines one's moral standing. For women, the act of establishing one's worth as an upright citizen often involved proving one's proper sense of shame through the protection of her chastity. Thus, the concept of shame in the Qing courts occupied a highly internal realm, coinciding with one's virtues. Socially, the notion of shame was a public one that correlated with one's reputation. The defilement of one's reputation was a publicly shaming issue, and | explore the way such concepts spurred the development of the "Cult of Chastity" and justified homicide in certain instances. Within the penal system, shame serves a dual purpose of both encouraging internal reform and acting as a public deterrent to crime. These three aspects of shame work together to define and shape the unique system of one of the most long-lived legal codes in the history of China. ----- Page 4 ----- Chow 4 PART I: BACKGROUND It is said that the Chinese language possesses more than a hundred equivalents for the English understanding of shame (Chang). Whether this assertion can be proven or not, it is an indisputable fact that notions of shame play a profound role in the composition of the Chinese identity--specifically, in the act of social control. In my thesis, I explore the ways in which shame is defined and demonstrated vis-a-vis the Qing legal system. By looking at case records, official commentaries, and The Great Qing Code itself, I investigate the ways that shame manifests itself in the social and legal fabric of the time. Specifically, J argue that shame in Qing criminal law is a three-fold concept: a personal notion as a sentiment akin to Western concepts of conscience, morality, and guilt; a social notion relating to reputation and humiliation; and finally, as an instrument adopted by the penal system in order to reform and deter. The Chinese Concept of Shame Shame and guilt are emotions inherent to all human beings in possession of their full moral capacity. Guilt can be defined in the simplest of terms as a sense of regret or remorse that comes in response to one's understanding of his or her infringement of a moral standard. Similarly, the realization of shame is also brought about upon one's breaching of a moral standard, but unlike guilt, which exists in response to one's actions or wrongdoing, shame exists in response to one's identity--both personally, how one perceives oneself; and socially, how one is perceived by others. In the words of Bedford and Hwang, "while guilt is felt over one's actions, shame is felt over who one is," (Bedford 127) thus while guilt is capable of precipitating remorse ----- Page 5 ----- Chow 5 over one's transgressions, shame is capable in causing ruptures in one's perception of self and personal identity. Concepts of shame and guilt are largely universal--most human beings, without having read the above paragraph, would already have had a thorough grasp of what the emotions encompass. Guilt and shame are inherent in every culture, and more than that, they are in fact crucial elements in the maintenance of order in any society (Bedford 127). A study conducted by June Price Tangney concludes that guilt is a "quintessential" moral emotion that gives rise to productive "relationship-enhancing functions" (Bedford 129), and such "relationship-enhancing functions" are an integral element in the upkeep of social order and a system of morality. However, despite the uncontested ubiquitousness of such concepts, there remains variations in the ways in which they are understood across and within various cultures. Shame, if to be discussed within the context of Qing Dynasty China, must therefore be first understood and recognized within the Chinese episteme of the word. The Chinese understanding of shame has always been fundamentally tied to perceptions of self, society, and morality, and is thus an integral element in the legal history of China. The entwinement of morality and law is steeped in centuries of tradition, and can most readily be traced to Confucian sensibilities of achieving societal harmony through the fulfillment of moral obligations. Geoffrey MacCormack identifies four stages in the conception of Imperial law: firstly, the laws of the early Zhou kings; secondly, the large scale codifications of the law in various Chinese states during the sixth century BCE; thirdly, the Legalist-inspired laws of the state and the Emperor of Qin; and finally, the Confucian-inspired laws that began in the Han, blossomed and stabilized under the Tang, and continued throughout the remaining dynasties (MacCormack 2). MacCormack further contends that the penal codes of all the dynasties from ----- Page 6 ----- Chow 6 the Tang to the Qing were largely Confucian in spirit, and that this Confucian ideology asserted that it was only through proper education that an appropriate sense of virtuous conduct be instilled in the people (MacCormack 7). While McCormack's portrayal of the Chinese legal system as largely unchanging throughout a period of over one thousand years is perhaps slightly worrying, the scholar's acknowledgement of a philosophy that underpins the Chinese conception of morality and law is not necessarily an accusation of stagnancy. To quote Patricia Ebrey, "Although all historians today reject the old view of a 'changeless' China, we should not overcompensate for past failings and deny that, in comparison to other major civilizations, Chinese history is marked by some rather remarkable continuities." (Ebrey 271) Indeed, although it would certainly be a gross over-simplification to cite ageless, static "Confucian values" as the sole motivation for every Chinese thought and action, it would also be remiss not to mention the Confucian virtues that so heavily influence the Chinese comprehension of shame, and the tenacious emphasis on criminal Jaws so clearly legalist in conception. In the Western schema of understanding, moral standard is largely based on the belief that human beings in a society are individuals with objective and empirical rights, and an infringement of the moral standard occurs when a violation of one's objective and empirical rights occur (Bedford 131). Such conception of personal autonomy has its origins in the Magna Carta of 1215, long regarded by the Western World to be "the source and fountainhead of political liberty" (Radin 1060). The Confucian idea of morality, however, hinges largely on ideas of duties and obligations within one's relationships with others and within the society. Confucian ideology upholds as its core tenets the five values of benevolence ({-), righteousness (#8), propriety (#8), knowledge (##), and integrity ({%). These tenets are seen as moral obligations all individuals have to one another, and it is the failure to adhere to these concepts that engender a ----- Page 7 ----- Chow 7 feeling of shame. Although the aforementioned one hundred descriptions for the concept of shame may be an overstatement, it is true that the Chinese language more nuanced representations of shame than the English language. What English assigns to "guilt" and "shame,' Chinese has seven different terms for: Nei jiu (PIYA) to describe the internal uneasiness of failing to meet an obligation ; Zui e gan (SERA) to describe the evil character of sin ; Fan zui gan GB EIEN), literally, "the feeling of breaking a rule"; Diu lian (25]®) to signify a loss of face or self- respect; Can Kui (tii) to delineate remorse and regret; Xiu kui (#1) to describe the embarrassing aspect of shame; and Xiu chi (#H}) to describe the inner reflection that comes with having shamed oneself. Such different terms to convey the much broader English notions of guilt and shame not only speak to the acute sensitivity to shame the Chinese identity possesses, but also of the close interrelationship between morality and shame. In a society where one's moral standing is defined by one's duties to one another and society, the violation of such moral code and the shame that results, therefore comes with it a tremendous power to condemn. It is on these Confucian foundations of morality and shame that the most primitive origins of China's legal history emerge. A Brief Background on Legal History As previously mentioned, MacCormack mentions four phases in the recorded legal history of traditional China. According to him, Confucian-inspired laws begin with the Han dynasty, fully develop during the Tang dynasty, and continue through the whole imperial period (MacCormack 2). Instead of adopting entirely the rules imposed by the Emperor of Qin in the dynasty prior, the Han rulers began to appreciate Confucian values and introduced rules that would implement a system governed by Confucian ideals. This process finally culminated in a ----- Page 8 ----- Chow 8 stabilized version of the legal code during the Tang dynasty, and it was during the Tang that a final product of the 'Confucianization of the law" was created (MacCormack 3). The first law code surviving in its entirety was the one that originated under the Sui and became fully developed under the Tang. It is this code that served as a basis for all the subsequent penal codes, and according to MacCormack, a survey of the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing codes reveal an undeniable continuity in Chinese traditional penal code through the course of over thirteen centuries (MacCormack 27). A revised form of Confucianism, referred to by most scholars as Neo-Confucianism, existed as state orthodoxy under the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and by the Qing dynasty, the legal code largely reflected the values of the state orthodoxy while still retaining traces of its Legalist past (MacCormack 4). In the Qing dynasty, cases were held in accordance to the penal code called Da Qing Lii, or the Penal Code of the Great Qing Dynasty. The Penal Code of the Great Qing Dynasty contained 436 statutes (du) and many of these statutes can be directly traced back to the Tang Code of 653 CE (Huang 38). The legal code during the Qing dynasty had heavy moralistic undertones, and expressed in the very beginning of the "General Principles" a list of transgressions known as "ten abominations" that were considered the most degraded and most threatened the stability of society. The moral tone of the legal system can be seen in the official commentary of the Qing Code, that states "persons guilty of any of the ten abominations destroy human bonds (/un), rebel against heaven (tian), go against reason (/i), and violate justice (yi) (MacCormack 55). The Penal Code of the Great Qing Dynasty listed five standard punishments to be administered to individuals who committed wrongdoings with varying degrees of severity: |. Beating with the light bamboo in five degrees of intensity in accordance to the crime; 2. Flogging with heavy bamboo in five degrees of intensity in accordance with the crime; 3. Penal servitude in eight degrees of intensity; 4. Permanent exile in ----- Page 9 ----- Chow 9 three degrees of intensity from one thousand Ji to three thousand Ji, and finally; 5. Death by either strangulation of decapitation (Huang 39). The Qing court did not contain "lawyers" per se, but rather, administration was conducted by local and provincial magistrates who worked together with private legal secretaries (xingming, specialists in penal law) and muyou (friends at court) (Hegel 8). Xingming and muyou were masters of statues and administrative procedures, whereas magistrates would not have been trained in the legal code, but instead understood the essential ethics needed for administration (Hegel 8). These essential ethics, largely embedded in Confucian ideals, theoretically served to ensure that the magistrates act in accordance to the highest standards of fairness-local and regional administrators were termed fumu guan, or "parental officials," reflecting the idea of the theoretically harmonious familial structure of the system (Hegel 8). The execution of the legal code, therefore, was designed to be guided by moral ethics and an adherence to social harmony-what is intended on paper is hardly ever translated exactly to what is done in practice, and things were done very differently between the working people and the more privileged members of society. It must be noted that in contrast with current understandings of penal systems, imprisonment in Qing China was not regarded as a form of punishment, but rather an intermediate stage of detainment while the defendant awaits deliberation from the court (Huang 39). Administrators were also expected to judge with firmness but fairness, and some offenses that deserved the death penalty were given serious reconsideration at the capital. Additionally, the Emperor would often reduce sentences out of leniency or issue a universal amnesty for all convicted criminals as a show of wise benevolence (Hegel 14). Judicial administration followed several tiers of review. The District Magistrate was the bottom level. His responsibilities include the overseeing of all local matters, and he possessed the ----- Page 10 ----- Chow 10 authority to make final and binding legal decisions in civil and minor criminal cases (Hegel 12). Upon the instance of receiving a complaint, a magistrate was responsible for investigating the issue immediately and resolving it in a timely matter (Hegel 13). After the District Magistrate investigated and reported on the matter, his reports were then looked at on the prefectural and provincial level and then the capital for final deliberation (Hegel 13). Gender and Shame Within the Qing penal code, crimes that disturb proper relations between men and women were regarded as some of the most depraved. In A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence: a Manual for Local Magistrates in Seventeenth-Century China, Huang Liuhong writes, "when fornication is unsuppressed, society's moral principles deteriorate...when adultery is rampant among the people, good social customs suffer" (Huang 431). Any type of sexual act outside of marriage was considered not only illegal, but immoral and punishable by death as well (MacCormack 57). The importance of protecting the different rights and roles between male and female elite or commoners of "good standing" was paramount-the enforcement of strict separation between males and females was regarded as the "foundation of the cultivation of proper conduct," (Huang 431) and girls as young as ten years old were kept physically separated even from male members of the family (Huang 431). Additionally, male and female relatives were advised not to mingle and male servants of all ages were not to enter the inner gate unless summoned (Huang 431). These seemingly extreme measures were all advocated in order to prevent improper gender relations and to "suppress the spread of licentious habits" (Huang 431) amongst subjects of good standing, a testament to the severity with which sexual crimes was judged. In addition to sexual crimes, proper conduct between men and women was also clearly delineated in Qing handbooks for magistrates. A wife was naturally expected to be completely ----- Page 11 ----- Chow 11 faithful to her husband, and this duty of chastity was not simply a feature of married life, but rather extended to all women (MacCormack 63). The Qing code provided various reliefs to men whose wives did not properly adhere to "moral" social behavior. In accordance with the prescriptions contained in the Confucian ritual books, husbands had the right to divorce their wives for the following transgressions: failure to bear an heir by the time she was fifty, shameless behavior, not serving the husband's parents, talking too much, theft, jealousy, and incurable illnesses (MacCormack 90). It is interesting to note that the inclusion of "shameless behavior," extends to cover disloyalty and adultery, further testament to the intimate interweaving of concepts of shame and immorality. At the same time, there existed a number of limitations on divorce that serves to highlight the importance with which the traditional familial structure was regarded in traditional China. Divorce is forbidden under three circumstances: the wife has no family to return to; the wife had observed a full, three-year mourning for a parent-in- law; and finally, the husband was poor at the time of marriage, but later became rich. These regulations on divorce were put in place largely as protective measures for women, lest a man invokes a woman's "moral duty" in order to divorce her on unfair grounds. In the Qing dynasty, the crime of rape was held as one of the most severe sexual crime, punishable by death. The Qing dynasty witnessed changes in their rape law that rendered it more difficult for sex offenders to be convicted of a sex crime. For instance, a substatute on gang rape in dynasties prior to the Qing originally stipulated that the ringleader was to be sentenced to immediate beheading if the woman was "good", and exile to a distant frontier if the woman was already an "immoral" woman. However, in 1814, this clause was removed from the substatute of gang rape and became an independent statute, and the punishment was lessened to where the ringleader of the deed was sent to Manchuria as a slave to the soldiers, and those who had joined ----- Page 12 ----- Chow 12 in the rape were to be exiled to three thousand /i only (MacCormack 65). In addition, wherein previous dynasties offered a more broad definition of what is to be considered "rape," the Qing Code narrowed the specifications of rape in order to prevent innocent men from being convicted of rape. During the Qing, any type of submission by the woman renders the crime no longer "rape," but "illicit intercourse" wherein the woman is partially culpable (Huang 434). Therefore, if illicit intercourse is committed by force at the beginning of the act, and the victimized woman struggles in vain and later passively accedes to the violation, the crime is not considered rape. A woman who would like to survive sexual violation with her moral reputation intact must kick and scream until the very last second, or she would then be seen as a dissolute woman who "willfully" succumbed to her oppressor's lust (Huang 434). Such "consensual" illicit intercourse or relationship was then grounds for the women to be punished alongside the men (MacCormack 64). The Role of Criminal Law The three primary early Confucian thinkers-Confucius himself, Mencius, and Han Tzu-all placed great emphasis on teaching and moral guidelines, rather than punishments, as a way of governing people (MacCormack 7). A consistent theme in official declarations regarding criminal law was that punishments were intended to reinforce or clarify teaching, but by no means intended to be relied upon to induce genuine morality (MacCormack 11). In fact, the legal profession was not respected in Qing China-litigation was often scen as a last resort, and individuals who specialized in the art of litigation, despite their prized status in magistrates' courts, were often seen as a nuisance and general source of trouble by the general public (Macauley). A career in the legal field where one's services would be made available to the public was in fact actively discouraged by the state, and the magistrates in charge of the ----- Page 13 ----- Chow 13 execution of justice were mainly assessed on their Confucian classics and were not originally educated in a legal background (Huang 37). The magistrate's duties in the judicial process were plenty; he was not only required to hold hearings and deliver judgments on cases, but also to conduct investigations, prosecutions, and inquests. This breadth of expertise required, especially given that the magistrates had no formal training on these skills during the civil service examinations, rendered the magistrate's profession not only difficult, but also highly dependent on skilled specialists (Huang 37). The role of criminal law was not seen as a moral standard for subjects to subscribe to, rather, the moral standard is already in existence, and the role of law was seen as simply an auxiliary method of enforcing social order where existing moral standards fail. Furthermore, as litigation was regarded, under ideal circumstances, as a Jast measure, it often was only resorted to when parties fail or refuse to mediate, and therefore came with it stigma of disrupted harmony and seeking individualistic ambitions over the more noble virtue of common welfare. Of course, this ideal was rarely upheld in actuality; litigation was fairly common during the Qing dynasty, despite the ideal standard in which litigation would only be used as a final option. Thus, the imperial legal code was not regarded as the fundamental standard for maintaining and establishing social order and justice as it is seen in the West, but rather as simply a secondary but necessary supplement to the greater commandments of rightful duties and obligations. A society whose legal code is so heavily correlated with its moral code creates a near interchangeability between the two concepts, so much so that the relative autonomy given to concepts such as legality and morality can not be as readily detected in Qing Chinese criminal law. It is also due to this intimate integration that a violation of legal code also indirectly implies a violation of moral code. If the infringement of a moral obligation is what causes shame, a ----- Page 14 ----- Chow 14 violation of a legal statute has a similar effect. Shame within the concept of legality, therefore, can be understood to be what arises when one neglects to fulfill or breaches one's proper legal (and by extension, moral) duties and obligations. ----- Page 15 ----- Chow 15 PART II: PERSONAL SHAME The concept of shame took on a very legal identity within the context of Qing courts, and acts of crime were often also thought of interchangeably as acts of "shamelessness". For women, the act of proving one's worth as an upright subject often involved proving one's proper sense of shame through the protection of her chastity at all costs. The concept of shame in the Qing courts thus occupied a highly internal sphere, a sphere that coincided with one's own morality, own virtues, and ultimately, own sense of self. The Concept of Liang One of the most initial semblances of Chinese societal classification took shape as early as the Qin Dynasty in a concept known as The Four Classes, or Simin (ZOE). Within this concept, society was structured by a four-class system consisting of the following, in descending hierarchy: gentry, originally "knights," to indicate the lowest level of aristocracy during the Zhou dynasty (=); peasants, those considered upright as they cultivate the land to make valuable contributions to society (2); craftsmen, slightly below peasants in an agricultural society dependent on farming (7_); and merchants, considered least important as they do not create goods of their own (#4). The Four Classes served as an integral backbone of Chinese civilization because each of them contributed to the society, albeit on unequal terms and varying degrees of importance (Hansson 20). Below these four classes, however, existed an additional demographic. During the Period of Division and the Tang Dynasty, social structure was mainly colored by ----- Page 16 ----- Chow 16 elaborate hierarchies of hereditary elites who employed, and to a large extent, depended on, the help of unfree laborers, slaves, and serfs. These laborers were not only entirely subject to their masters, but also considered debased, defiled, and "mean" (Sommer 5). Thus, this category of "mean persons" came to be distinctively reserved for government-owned and privately-owned slaves; descendents of criminals and war captives; people who engaged in occupations deemed humiliating or of little value to society; or others proven dishonorable or unclean (Hansson 1). The Chinese term used for mean persons is jianmin (}E%), two characters that literally translate into "inferior, lowly subjects". In fact, the character jian (J) does not simply entail connotations regarding one's rung on the social ladder, but rather, it has to do with a much deeper level involving one's upbringing, class, and quality as a human being. Beyond "inferior" or "lowly", jian ($88) can also be used in the term wujian (353}), meaning "filthy and disgusting"; and guijian (Ex}8%), to describe the dichotomy between precious and valuable versus worthless and vulgar. Jian (8). Conversely, the people belonging to The Four Classes who contribute their honest work to the general public are considered commoners, or liangmin ([& EQ), literally "good people". Initially, these strata comprise the minority of the population and were explicitly labeled by law as "good and honorable" subjects of society (Ansson 1). As "good and honorable" subjects of society, liang commoners were held to a certain criterion of morality that involved following a set of ethical norms delineated by society (Sommer 5). Traditionally, such moral criterion was not considered a burden by society on the free, but rather, was considered a privilege that came with one's fortunate echelon in society. In the words of Matthew Sommer, "People of mean status were not expected to conform to [moral standards]; more accurately, they were not entitled ----- Page 17 ----- Chow 17 to conform to [them]" (Sommer 6). By the Qing dynasty, however, in particular as a consequence of Emperor Yongzheng's policies towards unifying a standard for sexual morality and criminal liability (Hansson 3), most subjects were considered a commoner in the eyes of the law, and the former distinction between liang and jian within the sole context of social strata became increasingly obsolete. The policies of the Emperror Yongzheng in unifying a standard for sexual morality created a shift from shame as a status-related (liang versus jian) concept to a gender-related concept. Sexual standards was a key demarcation between the commoners and the mean persons, as it was largely a given that persons of mean status were not worthy or morally couth enough to live in accordance to the Confucian ritual norms that ensured social stability through proper gender relations (Sommer 6). Such interactions between the male and the female genders were deemed as unruly, chaotic, and wicked. In the text "Great Commentary", Da Zhuan, by second century B.C.E. scholar Fu Sheng, he writes about a variety of crimes and their appropriate punishments (Sommer 34). Some years later, however, writers paraphrasing Fu Sheng began to replace the terms yi (#£), which means morality or righteousness, with /i (#8), a term meaning rite or ritual, in particular ones in accordance with Confucian ideals. To further illustrate the relationship between the understanding of Confucian propriety and morality, the seventh-century classicist Jia Gongyan writes, "To engage in intercourse with morality (yi yi jiao) means intercourse between man and a woman who are married according to the six rites of matrimony (liu liy' (Sommer 34), drawing the Confucian understanding of Ji as a necessary condition for yi, morality. Therefore, to be sexually lax is to associate oneself with what is despicable and lowly, whereas to be sexually pure is to associate oneself with the upright and honest. To take it a step further, if the adherence of sexual principles is a right conferred only to those endowed with the ----- Page 18 ----- Chow 18 moral sophistication to understand it, then it follows that the shame that comes with having violated these principles is also a right exclusive to those few. Shame, therefore, naturally serves as an authoritative emblem of the righteous amongst the degenerate in society: to know shame is to know morality; to be shameless, however, is to be vile, unethical, and base. Legal sexual standards, however, was not universally applied to all subjects of the empire. The privileged class was held under a different light from the lower, or "mean" classes. An example of such delineation can be seen in the fact that although Qing law did forbid mean persons from participating in extramarital intercourse with each other, violation of this Jaw was punished much less severely than adultery amongst commoners. Indeed, it was considered a crime punishable by beating and mandatory divorce for a commoner husband to pimp his wife or grant her permission to infidelity, but cases in which mean persons commit the exact same deed would go unpunished and be dismissed as "normal"(Sommer 7). A similar lenience can be found in Huang Liuhong's A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence when he writes, "{The law] is the law, and it is not subject to dispute. But there are...[ignorant people] who commit crimes out of sheer necessity or ignorance...oblivious to a sense of shame because they are ignorant and have to strive for a living" (Huang 287). Huang employs a vocabulary that is highly indicative of the Qing attitude regarding ignorance, crime, and shame: people commit crimes due to their ignorance of a rightful sense of shame. In an 1849 case from Shanxi, a gang rape case takes place that illustrates the differences between liangmin and jianmin. Three men- Wang Er, Ming Ju, and Er Zhao-were arrested for the rape of a musician girl named Liu. Female musicians, at the time, were not considered by the Qing social hierarchy to be liangmin, due to their occupations as public entertainers who do not remain within their properly assigned domestic sphere. Liu's status as a musician, despite the fact that she had never been involved in ----- Page 19 ----- Chow 19 an illicit affair, rendered her an ambiguous case in determining her morality. On one hand, her profession would have rendered her a "mean" person before the advent Yongzheng's standardizing policies. However, on the other, she had remained faithful to her husband and had never committed any illicit sexual activity. The conclusion of the case rested solely on determining whether she Liu was a "good" woman or not, and thus, the officials were careful to point out that no sentence could be drawn before confirming that Liu was truly a woman of good repute. Ultimately, the crux of the decision thus not rested on her social status, but rather her womanliness, and fortunately it was decided that the ringleader of the gang deserved capital punishment. However, he did not receive the harshest sentence of immediate decapitation, as "the distinction between violating the body of a chaste woman and that of a disreputable woman must be maintained". The other two accomplices were even spared death altogether (Ng 67). Therefore, despite Liu's own clean record, her value was thus discounted due to her lack of identity as a "chaste" woman. Indeed, the degree of evil of a crime toward a woman of chastity was considered much higher than one toward an unchaste woman. In this manner then, it is clear to see that the concept of chastity occupied an imperative role in defining one's worth and identity in both the legal

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7936/xgm2-4z69

Mentor

Robert Hegel

Additional Advisors

Zhao Ma

Comments

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Recommended Citation

Chow, Elaine, "The Role of Shame in Qing Dynasty Law" (2012). Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses. 142.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/xgm2-4z69