Chinese Patriarchy Analysis

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Since the very early stage in Chinese history, patriarchy has been one of the most influencing concepts of the traditional Chinese society, and therefore male enjoy higher social status and even more benefits. From plenty of old people’s words, such as female are treated as ‘men’s clothing and adornment’, or men should work for external issues while women are responsible for internal and domestic stuffs, it is obvious to discover the fact that women always had lower social status than men in the past. Similarly to the art industry, the ancient Chinese art world focused on male, and seldom did works of female artists passed on to the present times. The general situation demonstrated that, even women who were born in wealthy families did not …show more content…

In most of the cases, it required the endorsement of male family members, usually husbands or fathers, so that women could establish their work of art. The tradition idea about the nature of men and female is that men should work outside for external stuff, while women are responsible for internal and domestic issues. Therefore, the endorsement of husbands or fathers is of vital importance to the Chinese women female painters for the further development in the art world. Taking Li Yin as an example, people could discover the evidence of the endorsement, or even the support from her husband. We could often see the inscription written by Ge Zhengqi, the husband of Li Yin, on Li Yin’s paintings. Inscription of husbands on wives’ art works indicate the support offered by the husbands, and it assists to the construction of the women artistic personae in providing a favorable condition for their wives to develop. In addition, some of the people also treated the appearance of inscription as one of the considerable features to prove that the art piece is not a counterfeit. In a patriarchy society, giving birth to a daughter is somehow a loss as she would not be able to provide benefits to the family since she is not allowed to work outside. The appearance of the Chinese women artists is one of the cases that changed this concept. Even their wives’ art pieces were amateur works, husbands may use these works to exchange benefits, in any form. Benefit could be money, or gift, it could also be practical advantage. No matter what form the benefits were, it still brought benefits to the families of the Chinese female