What is female virtue?

Be a woman. The traditional meaning refers to chastity, filial piety, obedience and diligence.

"Thirty Years of Biography of Xiang Gong in Gu Liang": "I was burned to death. Women take chastity as a walker, and Ji Bo is a womanizer. "

"Historical Records of the Five Emperors": "Live in harmony, specialize in it. Mr. and Mrs. Yao dare not avoid their relatives with your arrogance, which is very feminine. "

"The History of the Later Han Dynasty, Biography of Women and Bao Xuan's Wife": "Being virtuous for women is called by the country."

Don? Han Yu's Epitaph of Mrs. Chu: "Auntie calls her six relatives because her wife can do her best."

Qing? Li Yu's "Flying in the Building, Angry": "My son, my father and my uncle have made a promise for you and will return to China soon to study some women's ethics diligently."

Liang Qichao initiated a girls' school: "Women are virtuous and thousands of rooms are good, otherwise!"

Three Obediences and Four Virtues

Three obedience and four virtues are the code of conduct and moral norms used to restrain women in China's ancient feudal society, which are collectively called "three obedience and four virtues". Confucian ethics and codes regulate women's morality, behavior and cultivation all their lives according to the principle of "internal and external differences (that is, social division of labor between men and women)". "Three obedience" means that a woman does not marry from her father, but from her husband, and her husband dies; "Four virtues" refer to women's virtue, women's words, women's appearance and women's merits.

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It is expressly stipulated that "the difference between inside and outside" began in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Shang Dynasty and established the first system civilization ruled by blood nobles, including the eldest son inheritance system and the enfeoffment system, which was called "Zhou Gong Li" in history. The distribution and inheritance of power need to make sure that the marriage and family system of nobility is superior to women as the organizational guarantee, divide the division of labor between men and women and exclude women from participating in political and military activities, thus forming different institutional customs between men and women.

The difference between inside and outside is not "separation" and "separation", but that men's external space and responsibilities are infinite, open, important and have development potential, while women's internal space is limited, closed, circular and degraded.

Marriage and family are also internal (male) and external (female). Men are masters and women are followers. "Being different inside and outside" has become the basis of a series of rules and regulations, such as maintaining paternalism and determining women's "three obedience and four virtues". It is also the basis and continuous institutional guarantee for men to be superior to women for thousands of years.