Study of Ancient Chinese Women’s Culture from the Characters of the “女 (female)” Part of Shuowen Jiezi

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_30How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Shuowen Jiezi; “女 (female)” characters; female culture; marriage system

Abstract

As one of the most influential dictionaries in ancient China, Shuowen Jiezi, contains a large number of “女(female)” characters related to women, which not only carry the evolution of character shapes and meanings, but also reflect women’s identities, statuses, and cultural functions in ancient Chinese societies. By analysing the glyphs and meanings of the “女(female)” characters in Shuowen Jiezi, as well as the socio-cultural connotations behind them, this paper explores ancient Chinese female culture as reflected in these characters. In this study, the author found that the characters in the “女(female)” part of the Chinese character family carry cultural meanings such as nurturing and subordination, and their semantic system is closely related to the family structure, gender roles and the marriage system, which shows the imprints of a patriarchal society. The “女 (female)” characters not only reflects the status of women in the family and society, but also demonstrates the cultural construction and hierarchical division of women’s identity through linguistic symbols in ancient times. This study argues that the “女(female)” characters in Shuowen Jiezi are not only symbols of language, but also products of the interaction between culture and social structure, and that future research could further explore the transformation of female culture and the construction of gender roles in language.

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  - Keying Li
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/15
TI  - Study of Ancient Chinese Women’s Culture from the Characters of the “女 (female)” Part of Shuowen Jiezi
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Mental Growth and Human Resilience (MGHR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 283
EP  - 292
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_30
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_30
ID  - Li2025
ER  -