The prescriptive dialectics of Li and Yi in the Lienu Zhuan

This essay examines the relationship between li [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and yi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in Liu Xiang's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Categorized Biographies of Women or Lienu zhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the first Chinese monograph devoted to women, focusing on the contents of books 4 and 5, where Liu Xiang introduces radical ideas like self-mutilation, suicide, and compulsory separation of the sexes. Although these moral devices are employed as an instrument of remonstrance, giving women a voice that had long been neglected, they are also the result of the deontic prescriptions of li-binding obligations, which keep the self in silence and subjection.