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| Judicial Proceedings and Gender Metaphors of Women’s Suicide Cases in the Qing Dynasty: A Study Based on Baxian Archives |
| Mao Liping |
| The Institute of Qing History, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China |
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Abstract On the topic of suicide in women, existing researches in academia primarily focuse on chastity-related suicidal behaviors. However, less attention has been paid to suicides due to other reasons. The Sichuan Baxian Archives recorded 86 women suicidal cases in the Qing Dynasty that were not related to chastity, describing women who committed suicide because of trivia of life. Family conflicts, neighbor disputes, and the combination of poverty and illness were the main factors that caused suicide in women, while hanging and poisoning oneself were the major means by which suicides were committed. The fact that these seemingly trivial things led to suicide insinuates the relatively low family and social status of women and the difficulties they faced in life.The Qing government stipulated that homicide cases (including suicide) must be reported to the local governments. According to the archives, most of the public showed knowledge of this stipulation and took similar actions after discovering the suicides of women. First, they would notify the relatives of the dead and the village elders to examine the scene and report the case. Then, they waited for government officials’ autopsy. Finally, the county magistrate would lead a trial, form a court filing and close the case. Although most of the women suicides recorded in the county archive were “no-penalty” cases, they were confirmed suicides and no one should be penalized, it does not mean that their deaths were not related to any other people. The women who committed suicide were either abused by family members or desperate due to their inability to claim their rights (including the right to live). Nevertheless, from the officials’ perspective, as long as the case did not meet the criteria of “threatening someone to death”, as the Qing law stated, the death of the women would fall into the category of “not related to others”. During the judicial process, the husband’s family was often busy reporting the case and disassociating themselves from the suicide, whereas the natal family often requested the government officials not to autopsy to “save face”. And the officials usually focused on whether the case fitted into any fixed clauses. Few people cared why these women committed suicide and their experiences before death.Men, including family members, officials, and the scribers who recorded the social phenomenon of women “easily taking their own lives”, were indifferent and could not understand women’s predicaments in life, which led to their “stigmatized” explanation of suicidal behaviors in women. Women who committed suicide due to family conflicts were considered lack of feminine virtues; that their disobedience of the husbands and the elders and committed suicide in a rage not only destroyed the domestic order but also promoted unhealthy practices on a social level. However, when women were against people outside the family, their male family members often either failed to undertake the responsibilities to deal with affairs outside the family or overlooked the women’s grievances in the conflicts. This eventually caused the suicides, which were extreme measures taken by women to claim their rights. When the male could not provide reasonable explanations for the suicide of the female because of their indifference and ignorance, they would use “encounter evil” as an excuse to be the reason behind the death of the female. Even magistrates accepted “encounter evil” as a legitimate statement. On the one hand, such explanations conformed to the public belief that women as weaker beings in both physical and mental aspects could be more easily controlled by “the evil doing”. On the other hand, the explanations eased the sense of guilt and responsibility of people related, making the case easier to wind up.The discussion of suicide in women should be placed in the historical context of the social change in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties. The development of the social economy and the rapid population growth put both male and female beings under social pressure. However, while women suffered from social changes, they also represented the vulnerable sex in the Confucian culture. The doubled pressure is the main reason behind the phenomenon that cases of suicide in women exceeded those in men in the Qing Dynasty.
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Received: 21 July 2022
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2022, Vol. 52 
