Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

as it is possible to deduce a general answer, it can be said that filial duty, or a choice which falls under this category, is usually privileged.

Even more paradoxical is the case of Wang Cuiqiao 王翠翹, the unlucky protagonist of “The Story of the Gentleman and Two Sisters” (Jin Yun Qiao Zhuan 金雲翹傳). The story develops within the framework of the genre of talent and beauty, whereby Jin and Cuiqiao fall in love with each other, but soon the scholar has to leave for some engagements, while the girl’s father is unjustly accused of embezzlement. Cuiqiao pursues a life that is heroic and humiliating at the same time. While resisting the requests of her lover to maintain her chastity until marriage, she has to face a life of prostitution and to become the woman of ten thousand men (Wanren qi 萬人妻). The moral quandary is the forced choice between a moral transgression to respond heroically to filial piety or ignoring filial piety to maintain chastity. She decides to sell her body to obtain the money needed for her father’s legal defence. In a heroic act of extreme filial piety, she asks her younger sister to take her place in the marriage with Jin. However, Cuiqiao ends up marrying Jin, even though she has to refrain from having any intercourse with him in order to preserve her chastity. This is a paradoxical choice—the degradation of her body is a way to affirm her chastity (rushen zhi wei jieshen 辱身之爲潔身), her puritanism, and heroic filiality. In this sense, her humiliation is determined by destiny, but it is also the outcome of a clear choice driven by filial piety to save her father. The inevitability of this choice is thus an unavoidable condition as much as it is a free decision.¹⁴² Moreover, the happy ending of the story challenges not only the classical genre of the talent and beauty fiction but most importantly official morality and the merits of filial piety.¹⁴³

Another classical case of conflict is between widow chastity and filial piety when the woman decides to self-mutilate. Since Han dynasty’s Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü Zhuan), difficult moral choices have been presented to the reader. The Filial Widowed Wife of Chen (Chen Gua Xiao Fu 陳寡孝婦), after the death of her husband, faces the