Anger, Femininity, and Lyric Poetry in Late Ming China

Abstract: Although lyric poetry has long been regarded as a genre of self-writing in dynastic China, not all emotions are deemed suitable. Anger is one of them. Few poems describe anger, especially poems by women. In this essay, I will first explore the concept of anger, followed by the role of anger regulation in constructing gender norms in dynastic China. The third part discusses the literary and aesthetic traditions that led to the invisibility of anger in women's poetry. In the fourth section, I examine the representations of anger in women's poetry in the late Ming period (mid-sixteenth century to mid-seventeenth century) when social discourses on emotion underwent a radical change, and I investigate how women's portrayals of their anger contribute to reconstructing femininity.