The Making of the Ephemeral Beauty: Acceptance and Rejection of Patriarchal Constructions of Hongyan Boming in Late-Ming Texts

This thesis explores how late-Ming writers interpreted the expression “beauty is ill-fated” (hongyan boming) and how male and female writers constructed and accepted the image of the ephemeral beauty (hongyan) differently. I argue that late-Ming male literati destigmatized and immortalized hongyan, but their interpretations of hongyan reinforced male fantasies about women, and served the status quo of the patriarchal family structure as well as the established literary conventions of the time. Female writers, conversely, often rejected the image and idea of hongyan and even managed to assert female subjectivity in order to reinterpret the male-constructed hongyan. However, ultimately, female writers of the period could not escape from the containment of these patriarchal literary conventions. Even for those female writers who have preserved their voices in their writings, women’s self-expressions have always been undergoing a seemingly infinite process of reinterpretations and reconstructions by male literati