Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the connections and continuities between the traditional shrew and the modern new woman in China. “Shrew” is a day-to-day denigratory term, a social reality or historical agent, and a narrative trope resulting from male writers' misogynistic anxiety. Shrew stories permeated literary and historical texts in premodern China and reached peak popularity during the seventeenth century with full-blown comedies, satires, and novels on this theme. Public interest in the long-standing trope of the shrew did not disappear with the advent of modernity in the early twentieth century. Rather, this pejorative imagery presented itself in new contexts suited to the changing social milieu and evolved as part of an emancipatory process for women. This book focuses on male voices to present how the shrew, as a male-authored trope, underwent shifts in meaning and orientation in the modern era while still at the hands of male authors.