10.23.05
Fall, 2005 - Historian’s Craft
Ethnohistory - This week’s reading is about footbinding. Dr. Hill Gates’ essay, Footloose in Fujian: Economic Correlates of Footbinding in Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 2001 gives the reader a view of 3 geographical areas in China and some of the reasons for footbinding. Mostly, it was a matter of station, or hopes for improvement in station. A girl’s feet were bound if the work she could do was “light” (not requiring a lot of movement and time on her feet) and there was the possibility of marrying someone of equal or better social status. This is, of course, an oversimplification of Dr. Gates’ findings, but will suffice for a brief introduction here.
Of interest, are these websites: Bounded Patriarchy and Footbinding, whose author, Dawnelle Loiselle , asks some important questions about beauty and pain, and the lengths that mothers and daughters are willing to go to in order to prove their worth to society, and men.
Compelling questions with no ready answers.