Signifying bodies: the cultural significance of suicide writings by women in Ming-Qing China.

Abstract

This paper examines the form, content, and cultural significance of poems written by a number of otherwise unknown women before they committed suicide. The specific conditions under which these inscriptions are produced are disorder or violence in various forms, whether cultural, social, or familial, that threaten the integrity of the female body. The suicide poems are often accompanied by a short autobiographical preface. The author argues that this act of self-inscription at the moment of death is an act of agency. Through this textual production, the women reproduce a peculiarly Chinese sense of embodiment in inscription, and as selfrecorders, they write themselves into history. These women construct the integrity of their bodies in/out of disorder by textualizing and transforming them into cultural bodies inscribed with value and order.