Between the Form of a Fox and the Shadow of a Ghost: A Study on the Gender Performance and Body Politics of Female Characters in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_24How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Liaozhai zhiyi; fox-women; ghost-women; Confucian patriarchy; gender performativity; female desire; literary subversion

Abstract

Modern readers often treat Liaozhai’s fox-women and ghost-women as emblems of romance or enchantment. This article reframes them as laboratories of gender construction under Confucian patriarchy. Methodologically, I combine close textual analysis of “Nie Xiaoqian” and “Qing Feng” with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that one “becomes” a woman, reading ritual acts (confession, burial, marriage, domestic labour) as techniques that discipline the female body. I show, first, that Nie Xiaoqian’s virtue is not innate but learned through staged submission, where shame, moral pedagogy, and male guardianship choreograph her return to social order. Second, Qing Feng’s self-directed desire appears emancipatory yet remains routed through a masculine fantasy of beauty, fidelity, and service. Together, these tales dramatise a paradox: norms shape women’s conduct while narrative fantasy opens small apertures for negotiation, delay, and refusal. The article’s contribution is to move beyond the symbolics of love or magic and theorise Liaozhai’s women as a contested site where obedience and agency are co-produced, clarifying how conservative plots harbour quiet subversions.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Haiyan Wang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - Between the Form of a Fox and the Shadow of a Ghost: A Study on the Gender Performance and Body Politics of Female Characters in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 211
EP  - 217
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_24
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_24
ID  - Wang2025
ER  -