ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) story of The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu. The story vividly portrays the natural, ingrained arousal of female desire for love and sex. Stein noted that the core of female individuation is for a woman to rid herself of her identification with the controlling inner mother, but this Chinese story is about how the heroine fights against the patriarchal system. In imperial China, while people recognized the primacy and power of female sexuality, they also adopted strategies to limit this feminine power and to control women’s sexual desire. While Chinese people create a split between masculine sexuality and aggression, their traditional attitude towards women’s aggression has its own different characteristics. A typical pattern of Chinese romance stories is that a beautiful woman causes a disaster, and she mostly does so actively and with a certain level of awareness.
