Family Scandals and Family Fortunes in Late Imperial China

FAIN: FA-52014-05

Janet Mary Theiss
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)

This project is a micro-history of a 1740 adultery case involving a prominent Hangzhou family. Presenting an unusual instance of a powerful and politically well-connected family's entanglement with the judicial system over a scandalous accusation of illicit sex, the book will illuminate the intimate, if paradoxical, role of the state and empire-wide political networks in local family politics. It will also explore the contradictions between norms of family interaction and family practice, the unpredictable effects of state attempts to mold the family, and the most intimate implications of the dominant gender discourses of the day for personal identity and the texture of everyday family life in a large, extended elite family.