Analyzing the protracted cultural debate in modern China over what and how women should write, this book focuses on two concepts of great importance in Chinese literary modernization the new, liberated woman and the new, autonomous writing. Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, women s moral virtue, or de, developed as a physical ordeal that meant sacrifices in the areas of freedom of movement (seclusion in either the father s or husband s house) and the body (chastity, fidelity, widow suicide). While physical concepts of virtue existed for men, they were not canonized nearly as extensively as they were for women and did not constitute a marker of masculinity. Posed against de was cai, or literary talent, a male-gendered practice that contained a variable content of profound lyricism, deep intellectuality, and analytical skill.