User:Kirchnma/Miss Zhao's Suicide

Miss Zhao's Suicide
On November 4, 1919, Miss Zhao Wuzhen (also: Miss Chao) of Changsha slit her throat while in her bridal sedan on the way to her wedding at her fiancé’s house using a blade she had hidden on her person.[1] Her suicide was a response to a betrothal against her will. Her parents, brother, and a matchmaker had arranged for her to marry widower Wu Feng-lin of Kantzuyuan. At first Zhou Wuzhen agreed, yet had changed her mind by the day of the wedding. The exact reasoning for her change of heart is unknown; some cite that she had heard that her fiancé was unattractive[2], that she had been betrothed to someone else who had passed away but still had her heart, or that she discovered that Wu had a daughter from his previous marriage. She expressed her feelings of reluctance to her family, whatever the reason, but was forced into the marriage regardless.[3] Her suicide was discovered when blood began seeping from her bridal sedan. When she was brought to the hospital, there were no female doctors and her parents insisted that she be brought to another hospital for this reason. By the time she arrived at the second hospital, she had died.[4]

Use in Mao's Political Campaign
Mao Zedong adopted the death of Miss Zhao as a way to promote the marriage reform aspects of his communist platform. He wrote many articles for local newspapers arguing that the incident was a result of larger cultural practices rather than an instance of mental illness. Mao made the argument that suicide was in fact never a result of inherent psychological issues, but of society’s tendency to place individuals in difficult situations. The direct cause and effect of an undesired marriage leading to suicide made Miss Zhao’s case an ideal one for this argument.[1]

Mao applied this argument specifically to his proposed changes to marriage practice in China. His platform included advocacy for freedom to choose a spouse, a cause which Miss Zhao’s cases served directly. However, he also extended his argument to include advocacy for already married women to be allowed in production outside of the domestic sphere and saw traditional feudal marriage as oppressive for both men and women.

Though little is known about the specific reasoning being Miss Zhao’s decision aside from her distaste for her fiancé’s appearance, it is likely that once married she would have been confined to the domestic sphere. It was this fact that supported Mao’s assertion that married women should no longer be kept from the public labor force.

Mao’s nine articles for the Dagongbao newspaper included “Miss Zhao’s Suicide”[2], “The Question of Miss Zhao’s Personality”, “The Marriage Question”, “The Evils of Society and Miss Zhao”, “Concerning the Incident of Miss Zhao’s Suicide”, and “Against Suicide”.

Reception
Mao Zedong was not the only one to write about Miss Zhao’s death. It was reported on by many newspapers in the area and shocked the country. Mao himself learned about the event from one of these reports. In the following weeks and months after the publication of his first response essay in Dagongbao, young people across the country wrote in to the newspaper to share sentiments of outrage and disdain. In this way, it was not simply the death of Miss Zaho, but the public outcry (most notably but not exclusively by Mao Zedong) that spurred on the idea that change was necessary regarding marriage practices in China.[3]

Context and Similar Instances
Miss Zhao’s death was by no means the only one of its kind, in China or elsewhere. It has been contended that this suicide in particular caught media attention because it was contemporary with the May Fourth Movement[4]; the same generation of young people that had been responsible for that uprising were the same ones writing in about Miss Zhao seven months later. The spirit of revolution had not died down, and Mao and his anti-Confucian ideals were only becoming more popular.[5]

Another notable suicide in China pertaining to the women’s oppression was that of Xi Shangzhen in 1922.[6]