Ban Zhao

Ban Zhao a Han dynasty historian, scholar and writer (c. 45-120 AD), the first great woman of letters in Chinese history and the author of the Admonitions for Women. She completed the great history of the Former Han begun by her father and brother, taught at the imperial court and was among the most learned figures of her age.

Family and Education

Ban Zhao was born around 45 AD into the distinguished Ban family, one of the most remarkable scholarly households of the Han dynasty. Her father Ban Biao had begun a history of the Former Han dynasty, and her elder brother Ban Gu continued and greatly expanded the work. Her other brother, Ban Chao, became a famous military commander in the western regions. The family combined literary learning with public service to an unusual degree.

She was educated alongside her brothers in the classical texts, history and literature, an opportunity rarely granted to a woman of the period. Her intelligence and diligence were such that she became thoroughly versed in the classics, and she is said to have been her brother's collaborator in the historical project. Her father and brother evidently regarded her as a full intellectual partner.

She married at the age of fourteen into the Cao family, but was widowed young and never remarried, devoting the rest of her long life to scholarship, writing and teaching. This freedom from the ordinary duties of marriage, won at the cost of early bereavement, allowed her to pursue the scholarly career for which she is celebrated.

The History of the Former Han

When Ban Gu died in prison in 92 AD, the history on which the family had laboured for decades was still incomplete, its tables and treatises unfinished and its text not fully arranged. The emperor summoned Ban Zhao to the palace libraries and charged her with the task of completing it, and she worked for years to finish the tables and the eight treatises and to bring the whole work into order.

The resulting History of the Former Han is one of the foundational works of Chinese historiography. It established the pattern of the dynastic history, with its annals of the emperors, its chronological tables, its treatises on institutions and its biographies, a pattern that was followed by every subsequent official history. Its completion by a woman was an extraordinary event, and it earned her the lasting respect of the scholarly world.

Her authorship of parts of the work, and her responsibility for its final form, made her the earliest recorded woman historian in China. Later scholars praised the elegance and judgement of her contributions, and the work she completed remained the model for the genre for nearly two thousand years.

The Admonitions for Women

Ban Zhao is best known to later tradition as the author of the Admonitions for Women, a short book of moral instruction addressed to her daughters and to young women generally. It is written in seven sections and offers guidance on humility, obedience, the management of a household and the relations between husband and wife, drawing on her reading of the classics and on her own experience as a widow.

The book is a product of its time and reflects the patriarchal assumptions of Han society, and it was later read as a defence of female subordination. It should be understood, however, in its own context, where it insisted that women should be educated and that they should cultivate virtue and self-respect, and where it treated the wife as a moral agent responsible for the harmony of the household.

Its influence was immense and long-lasting. Preserved and elaborated by later writers, the Admonitions was used for centuries as a handbook of female conduct, and it was eventually joined to three later works to form the so-called Four Books for Women that were studied by educated girls through the imperial era. Thereby a Han scholar's private instruction to her family became one of the most widely read books in Chinese history.

Teacher, Scholar and Courtier

In addition to her historical and moral works, Ban Zhao was a teacher of the imperial family. The empress and the consorts of the emperor He were said to have admired her learning, and she served at court in a quasi-official capacity as a scholar and instructor. She was addressed with the honorific title of Great Lady Ban, a mark of the esteem in which she was held.

She wrote poetry and prose on a variety of subjects, including memorials and accounts of her travels, though much of her output has been lost. What survives shows a writer of cultivation and moral seriousness, able to move between the historical, the didactic and the personal with equal assurance.

She was also a participant in the intellectual life of the court, in a period when scholarship was closely tied to politics and when the interpretation of the classics carried public consequences. Her standing in this world was exceptional for a woman and rested entirely on her recognised mastery of learning.

Influence and Legacy

Ban Zhao died around 120 AD, at an advanced age, having spent some seventy years in scholarship. Her completion of the Han history secured her a permanent place in the history of Chinese letters, and her Admonitions made her the most famous woman author of the classical period. She is honoured in the Confucian temple and named in the genealogies of Chinese learning.

Her legacy is deeply ambiguous and has been debated by later readers. To some she is a model of the learned woman who achieved eminence through intellect and virtue. To others she is the author of a text that helped to codify the subordination of women. Both readings draw on the same body of work, and she remains a central figure for any consideration of women and learning in Chinese history.

What is beyond dispute is the scale of her achievement. In an age when women were largely excluded from formal scholarship, she became the leading historian and one of the most respected teachers of her time, and the two works by which she is known, a dynastic history and a book of moral instruction, have remained in circulation for two thousand years. She stands at the beginning of the long tradition of Chinese women of letters.

See also

• History of the Former Han
• Admonitions for Women
• Han dynasty historiography
• Women in ancient China