Ban Zhao

Throughout the Chinese history, Ban Zhao is the first and the most highly esteemed female historian. Despite her education, accomplishments, and family background, she wrote the Lessons for Women advising women to be submissive to their husbands and teaching them the proper demeanors. Ban Zhao would not be considered an example of resistance of female oppression according to her teaching and writing. However, she may be regarded as a trailblazer for women to have a full participant in the literary and intellectual activity of the court while the women during the time should stay home and manage the household.

Ban Zhao may be seen as a mouthpiece for an oppressive sexist system or a pioneer for women to be scholars or to even hold places in the office. She is a woman who seeks accomplishment and duty that passed on by her father and brothers but at the same time, had an unswerving allegiance to feudal rites and ethics, which, she maintained, and should never be transgressed.

At the age of fourteen, she was married to a man named Cao, who died shortly after the birth of their son. Ban Zhao remained in the Cao family and did not remarried according to the strict Confucian principles. She took her role as a mother to raise her son, and as a daughter-in-law to serve her mother-in-law, and eventually composed Nu Jie, which is considered to be an instructional manual on feminine behavior and had a great influence in Chinese society later on. At the meantime, she devoted herself to literary pursuits and acquiring a reputation for scholarship and compositional grace that eventually brought her to the imperial. Ban Zhao gave the incentive for women to receive education that might seem unnecessary at the time.

In conclusion, Ban Zhao is somewhat a mouthpiece for the oppressive sexist system at the time for composing Nu Jie which teaches woman to take the submissive and obedient role in the family and society. In contrast, Ban herself, took a pioneer role to finish the Han Shu that her father and brothers left on, to be socially prominent and politically and culturally active. Thus, Ban can be regarded as both mouthpiece and pioneer of womenÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s role during early China.