Chapter 5: Reflections on Lessons for Women

It is difficult to say why exactly Ban Zhou began her work in such a critical manner towards herself. As we know, women back then were very disregarded and viewed as unimportant so perhaps the beginning of Zhou's "Lessons for Women" was a way of introducing herself in the most humble way possible, as to not upset anyone. In the preface, it mentions that she was very educated and yet she calls herself an "unworthy writer" and "unintelligent by nature."She gives most of the credit to her wealthy family and, back then, women were not considered smart and so if they were even to be considered good at anything it must be due to some external cause.
The Confucian attitudes that I saw reflected in "Lessons for Women" were that of respect and leadership. Zhou emphasizes how women can be the best that they can be in Chinese society (which is pretty depressing to read) and Confucius also emphasized rules of how one can become the best version of themselves. As it says in the pretext, the premise for "Lessons for Women" was to apply Confucianism to the lives and behaviors of women since, in reality, Confucius hardly mentioned women at all.
A perfect marriage is described as one that is a balance between yin and yang. One is powerful and the other yields. Zhuo says that "The correct relationship between husband and wife is based upon harmony and intimacy, and conjugal love is grounded in proper union."She really does stress the importance of harmony in her writing, however for them, a proper relationship is seen as the husband controlling his wife and the wife serving her husband. Today, that is not what we would consider a harmonious relationship but things were very different back then. Statements such as these make it evident how low women were seen. A perfect woman should have womanly virtue, womanly words, womanly bearing, and womanly work. As for the man, they should be in control of their women, however treat them with respect, as she questions how love can remain intact if a man hits a woman.
In regards to education, Zhou questions why only the young boys are taught and the young girls are not. She says that she understands that the boys need to learn so that they can "manifest their authority" but she also says that what the men do not realize is that "husbands and masters must also be served." Zhou believes that they are ignoring the harmonious relationship that men and women are supposed to be sharing. She references "The Rites," a famous text that states that children should be learning at the age of eight. It does not just specify that young boys should be educated, so why are they not teaching the young girls as well? Zhou, being an educated young woman, knows how important and beneficial it has been for her to have had literary training.