Abstract
This essay analyzes ritual and legal texts, case records, and judicial writings and consequently challenges the conventional understanding that equates parental authority in late-imperial China with the authority of the father or “head of household” (jiazhang 家長). It traces the gradual development of a child's mourning obligations done equally toward father and mother from the Tang dynasty onward, and it shows how
father's and mother's authority was symmetrically upheld in Qing judicial practice regardless of the biological mother's position, or lack thereof, in the child's father's patriline. The logic underlying the late imperial elevation of the mother's status in both ritual and law was the increasing emphasis on the child's obligation and natural desire to repay the “debt” (en 恩) that he/she naturally owed both parents. While the emotional bond between mother and child was important in social life, the source of legally-buttressed maternal power was state sponsorship of the authority of father–mother (fumu 父母) — a bi-gendered concept lying at the heart of formal ritual-legal establishments of an empire that “ruled through the principle of filial piety.”
Keywords
state-sponsored filiality, paternal authority, maternal authority, mourning rites, generational relations, patriarchy
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