Cult of Chastity 

Confucian men wrote about the ideals and virtues that they expected their wives to live by.  Through exemplary texts like the Lienü Zhuan, men were able to indicate how women should act.

 - Lienü Zhuan (Biographies of Exemplary Women) described model characters of female heroines 
- By exemplifying chaste women as models or objects of passion, men where creating a new kind of desired beauty and this was done through books

 - One of the ways that women were able to show to their family and to their society that they were absolutely filial was through obtaining official recognition of their chastity from the government

- The intention was that by showing women who were gaining honor for their family through filiality other women would strive for the same goal and this would increase the positive image of the community

- One of the government's rewards to families of virtuous women was to inscribe an arch erected on the way into the city

- During the Ming, female suicides were accepted as a sign of a woman’s absolute loyalty and devotion to her late husband

 - Confucianism told women to be loyal to their husband as part of the five core social relationships, the husband-wife relationship.  Some women might have understood the tie between husband and wife as eternal including absolute loyalty in death

 -The Qing government argued against suicide because by committing suicide, a woman was evading her duty to her in-laws and the rest of the family and thus harming the Confucian regulations of women’s obligations in this life: to serve and care for her in-laws.  By committing suicide, she is leaving the family and neglecting her duty to her family