The Ideals For Ancient Women

The Primary Source assignments are asking you to think like a historian and interpret documents from the past. Primary sources are the building blocks upon which historians write history. In each of these assignments you will be asked to read  documents.

As you read the documents you should consider the date of the document, the author, the intended audience and the purpose of the document. For instance, is the document a diary and only meant for private consumption or is it a memoir and meant to leave a record of one’s life? Dates help to give a document context. Knowing that a document was written in 1650 should make you consider the cultural and gender behaviors of that time and how this may influence your understanding of the document. Knowing something about the author will also influence your interpretation. Is the author a man or a woman, young or old, or rich and powerful? Keep in mind that documents all have bias and the bias likely comes from the person writing the document.

As this is a class on gender and many documents of the past were written by men, think about what these men have to say about women. What were their motives? What may have biased their beliefs? Or if the author is a woman, what might be her motive? As you read the documents and think about author, date, intended audience and so forth, you should also be considering the questions that you will need to answer for that assignment.

Use parenthetic citations in the page with author’s last name and page. 

The first source is written by Ban Zhao (or Pan Chao) entitled Lessons of a Woman.  If you were to cite this source in your paper, it would look like this: (Zhao, 2).

The next source is Kautilya: from the Arthashastra.  You would cite it as: (Kautilya, 4)

What are the ideals for Ancient women and their behavior and how might those ideals be at odds with their reality? What are the sources of these ideals?

• Answer the questions. Remember that these questions are asking you about ancient women’s reality and not about today’s women.
  • You must have an argumentative thesis and answer both questions.
  • You may use textbook or other information, with proper citation, but only as support for the primary sources not as a replacement of the primary sources.
• 2-3 page essay; 100 points
  • Upper left corner: Name, Course & Section/Professor/Date
  • Double-spaced, 10 or 12 point font, New Times Roman or similar font.
    • Citations should be in-text (title of source and page number)
  • 1 inch margins on all sides.