Author Information
Menghe Tian, Donghua University, ChinaYimeng Shi, Donghua University, China
Abstract
This paper examines clothing in Ming vernacular fiction as a material form through which female suffering becomes socially visible. Focusing on Xingshi yinyuan zhuan and selected cases from Xingshi yan, Xingshi hengyan, and Pai'an jingqi, it asks how garments, shoes, hair arrangements, ornaments, and underclothes enter narrative action. Rather than treating dress as a static marker of status or ritual propriety, the paper follows scenes in which clothing is worn down, layered, stitched, withheld, disordered, or stripped away. Three arguments structure the analysis. First, deteriorated or insufficient clothing registers the first signs of social decline and bodily vulnerability. Second, carefully arranged mourning or death-related dress organizes emotion and prepares the female body for moral recognition before death occurs. Third, public humiliation is produced through the dismantling of the dressed body, as ornaments, hair, robes, skirts, shoes, and bindings are removed before a judging crowd. The paper argues that clothing constitutes the social surface of the female body: when that surface is damaged, denied, or over-arranged, suffering becomes visible, legible, and morally consequential. This approach reframes dress description in Ming vernacular fiction as a form of narrative action rather than decorative detail.
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