Comparación de los modelos utilizados en otras investigaciones

Compared with the nationalist writings on home reform in the secular press, articles on domesticity and Victorian womanhood portrayed by Nü duo were more loosely connected with the nation. Promoting the apparently non-political Victorian virtues that assigned women to the domestic sphere, it asserted that domestic womanhood was divinely ordained and underpinned by Christian principles, consequently alienating them from political mobilisation. Women’s contribution to the nation, as indicated in the writings of Nü duo, was to achieve a Christian home life. As shown in the previous chapter, White believed feminine virtues were essential to national prosperity and the noblest achievement for women was one that was in line with Victorian principles, with an emphasis on domesticity and Christian belief.411

The ultimate feminine virtue, according to White, was motherhood, one that denoted a spirit of self- sacrifice and altruism. She believed a virtuous mother contributed more to the country than a well- educated intellectual woman without a family. She even admitted that paying too much attention to college education instead of mother’s education was a mistake while she was the headmaster of a middle school.412 _{In the article entitled “Zuo muqin de zeren” 做母親的責任(The Responsibility of} Being a Mother) published in 1926, White recalled her mother’s contribution to the country through a comparison with her unmarried aunts.413 _{White’s mother received the same education as her aunts.} White’s father abandoned them when Laura White was little and her mother took on the responsibility of bringing up the children. In her opinion, she was more influenced by her mother than her aunts and

411 _{Laura White, “Funü duiyu shehui zhi guanxi” 婦女對於社會之關係 (Women’s Relation with the Society), Nü}

duo (July 1918): 3–4.

412 _{Laura White, “Zuo muqin de zeren” 做母親的責任 (The Responsibility of Being a Mother), Nü duo (October}

1926): 5.

127 the unmarried teachers she encountered on the grounds that knowledge was at best received by the brain and a mother’s love reached her children’s hearts.414 _{The American women who upheld celibacy} at the time were at most delivering only a temporary benefit. By contrast, mothers acted for the benefit of the next generation. To White, political men or unmarried women used their brains to adjust themselves for opportunities (tiaoting shiji 調停時機) while mothers used their hearts to solve practical problems. Therefore, White asserted that mothers could save China, especially Christian mothers.415

In another article published two months later, White clarified her definition of motherhood. The word

mu 母 (mother in English) was not confined to the biological mother.416 _{Rather a broader} interpretation of the word also included those women who teach and guide children as if they were their own children as “mothers.” White believed that this kind of motherhood was the responsibility of each woman. She despaired over the phenomenon of Chinese women competing with their male counterparts in the workforce. Her attitude to women who abandoned their maternal duty was clear- cut, as White commented:

Some fashionable women only focus on present public opinion. With limited education, they desire an active role in society. Some want to be a medical doctor, some want to be a lawyer. … Once they start to talk, it is about patriotism, national salvation, heartless traitors, and imperious warlords. In fact, traitors and warlords were once brought up by women. If you really love the nation and want to save it, you should try your best to cultivate good little citizens. … Dear fellow women! Dear Christians, what is patriotism? What is God’s command for us? We should try our best to do it!417

414 _{Ibid., 6.} 415 _{Ibid., 7.}

416 _{Laura White, “Zhongguo funü jiqi zeren: mudao” 中國婦女及其責任（二）母道 (Chinese Women and Their}

Responsibilities: Motherhood), Nü duo (December 1926): 7.

128 White thought that logically prior to women’s rights came an understanding of women’s strengths and duties. She proposed that motherhood and mothercraft were the most important jobs in the world and the work only a woman could do was designed by the divine being. Since the virtues of the next generation were in the hands of mothers, she asserted that this was the only way for women to perform better than men.418

In White’s view, Chinese women had entered the second period of the three evolving stages of every woman. They had moved from “the period of innocence” to “an awakening to self-consciousness” and “to a realization of her powers,” but refused to enter the third period “of voluntary self- contraction.”419 _{Uplifting women’s spirituality thus pervaded White’s evangelical literature and} became a dominant feature of Nü duo’s message to Chinese households.

Yuan Yuying 袁玉英, White’s student from Nanjing Huiwei Girls’ School and also a regular contributor to Nü duo, personified the impact White’s views had on a younger generation of Chinese women. She was not interested in promoting women’s political rights but rather agreed with White that a woman’s main contribution to her country was through proper household management, which focused on home education, nutrition and hygiene, needlecraft, and establishing harmonious relationships with neighbours. Women, as the mothers of a nation, were the true patriots, who demonstrated their love for the country through the promotion of households based on temperance. Even after the acceptance of the Twenty-One Demands, Yuan wrote an article in Nü duo that linked Victorian feminine virtues with patriotism. Under the title of “Zhen aiguo zhi yanshuo” 眞愛國之演說 (A Speech on True Patriotism), the author encouraged women to take up household chores as the key expression of their patriotism.420

Nü duo stressed the important role of Christianity in the nation-building process in articles written primarily by men. Two articles written by Sun Guangdou 孫光斗 (literary name Kuige 奎閣) advocated

418 _{Ibid., 6.}

419 _{White, “A Union Woman’s College,” 645.} 420 _{Yuan, “Zhen aiguo zhi yanshuo.”}

129 the role of Christianity in strengthening the nation. Sun, a teacher from a missionary school in Suqian

宿遷 in Jiangsu, was a former member of the Jiangsu Tongmenghui. After converting to Christianity at an evangelical meeting, Sun believed that it was Christianity that made Western countries powerful.421 He thought that Christianity could also play a crucial role in strengthening China through solving problems that caused national weakness, namely, the ruined consciousness (tianliang天良) of human beings and the death of people’s spirit (renxing人性).422

Sun invoked biblical accounts to support his argument that Christianity could save China. When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, Sun believed that he was crying for the people who had stubborn hearts. Sun drew a further analogy between Jerusalem and the contemporary nation and criticised the indifference of the Chinese people to their country’s crisis. In Sun’s view, efforts in the political field, industry, and education could only have a limited effect. He criticised industrialists’ attempts to strengthen China as only promoting material wealth and the pursuit of luxury. Rather, he promoted the power of Christianity to achieve salvation in three key areas, namely, saving the nation from a spiritual death, correcting wicked customs, and uprooting corrupt habits. He pointed to the progress achieved in South Africa where missionaries had transformed ‘barbaric countries’ (fengsu exian zhi di

風俗惡險之地) into ‘civilised domains’ (binbin youli彬彬有禮). Based on the interpretation that Jesus endeavoured to establish a heavenly kingdom rather than a political regime, Sun argued that China could not be saved by political reform alone but needed to achieve a spiritual reform guided by Christian doctrine.

Sun’s belief in the moral power of Christianity was clearly present in another article published in Nü duo in July 1918. He asserted that Christian teaching not only transformed human hearts but also

421 _{Sun Kuige 孫奎閣, “Wo xin jidujiao sanshinian de huigu” 我信基督教三十年的回頋 (A Review of My Thirty-}

year-long Christian Faith), Zhenguang zazhi 眞 光 雑 誌 (True Light Review) (August 1935): 57–8. For Sun’s membership in the United League, see the article written by his grandson in the following website.

http://www.crt.com.cn/news2007/news/HYKZJSJNKZSLQSZNZW/15429175135EEE7512HB63DFAH2G3H9.html Accessed on 16 February 2018.

130 regenerated them.423 _{China’s salvation depended not only on government initiatives in education,} industry, shipping and railways, but required a change in the moral values of its people. Christianity was uniquely appropriate for this important role in that it could steer individuals away from corruption. Wider evangelical preaching, he hoped, would purify the Chinese people and imbue them with Christian ideals.

Another article claiming that Christianity could save China was written by Zhang Tingjing 章廷敬, a less well-known scholar who was probably the second headmaster of a local school in Haining 海寜 in Jiangsu.424 _{Echoing Sun’s views, Zhang asserted that China could be saved only through the adoption} of Christianity. He highlighted the vital role of Christian ideals including honesty, universal love, justice, and morality in the nation-making process. In response to the hostile attitudes of some Chinese towards this foreign religion, Zhang cited the doctrine of universal equality in Christianity to indicate how its application crossed all borders. For example, he traced the important role Christian gatherings played in the history of the American Constitution. In the case of Japan, he also referred to the Japanese politician Ōkuma 大隈 who once wrote that Christianity indirectly benefited Japan.425 While Nü duo barely discussed national politics, consistent with its Victorian notions, the abolition of the institution of the family advocated in Communism unnerved the editorial board. From time to time, Nü duo published articles on Russia’s disastrous experiment with the abolition of marriage to serve as a warning to its educated readers. For example, in 1927 the Christian scholar Xie Songgao 謝 頌羔 contributed to a translation of an article based on an anonymous Russian woman’s work.426 _The nine-page essay emphasised the message that free love was detrimental to the nation. It outlined a proposed set of regulations to abandon the marriage system in Soviet Russia. In October 1925, a

423 _{Sun, “Jidujiao jiuguolun,” Nü duo (July 1918): 28–31.} 424 _{Jiaxing Zhengxie嘉兴政协Vol. 24 (2011): 33.}

425 _{Zhang Tingjing 章廷敬, “Jidujiao jiuguolun” 基督教救國論 (Christianity Can Save China), Nü duo (June 1918):}

31–4.

426 _{Xie Songgao 謝頌羔, “Su e zhuzhang feichu hunyinzhidu zhi xianzhuang” 蘇俄主張廢除婚姻制度之現狀}

131 Russian committee drafted a suggestion that registration for marriage should be abandoned. Prior to this, the term “illegitimate children” was abolished by the Bolshevik regime in 1917. Under this new regulation, children of married women or unmarried women possessed the same legal rights. If a man wanted a divorce, he could do so by financially providing his wife with one-third of his salary. As ideal as it sounded, the original author believed, in reality, this regulation only made it easier for people to divorce rather than providing protection for women and children. The article referred to a case of a man who married twenty times. Each of the wives of this man produced a child. However, the man accepted no responsibility for any of his wives or children. Drawing attention to the 300,000 orphans living in Russian at the time, the author saw radical ideas such as marriage without any commitment as the central cause of the paralysis of the family system in Russia.